You don’t want to end up with a couple dozen storage units full of unsold art, so I taper off my production when sales are down. These days, I can’t work fast enough to satisfy the marketplace, which is maybe a good thing.
But, yeah, this is going to be yet another talk about eBay and that sort of thing — you know, marketing, entrepreneurship and general media mayhem, and we have to do it soon, before the Second American Civil War breaks out. Even before we start back on subject, I want to mention that THIS is the time to acquire Pre-War coins, and I have plenty for sale.
That having been said, let’s get on with the thing.
First of all, I want to make sure you have an eBay account. I’m not discounting other selling sites, but I’m restricting my selling characteristics to the eBay mode for the moment. We will discuss other means of presenting merchandise to the public.
Forgive me, I meant, of course, “merch”, not “merchandise”. The reason for the shortened word is always the same — spelling is a major obstacle to most people, even college graduates.
I taught a remedial English class to kids just short of graduation from UCLA, and I can aver to the fact that they were brutally ignorant of any language, much less their native tongue.
So when I put out a few hundred art pieces on eBay, I did not think that there would be an onslaught of sales, but there were, hundreds of them, and we have only one color printer.
It’s going to take a while, and in the meantime, Marvette can’t do anything else but print up those sold prints — eBay is watching. They monitor when we ship, when it’s delivered, the whole shebang.
You find that listing of sold stuff on your seller management page, of course. There are a ton of tools for you to use, if you have the skill, the energy and the time to learn the real ropes.
I don’t, so I fudge a LOT of stuff, particularly the part that happens after I launch an item, like billing and shipping. Normally, I don’t have to — my helpers generally manage it, but in the case of the art prints, they can’t, nobody can.
It’s just printer time and prep time of the file before it goes into the printer, and that can take a while, so figure one print per hour, and you’ve got the picture, spread over 200 prints that are already past due for shipping.
It’s a worrisome thing, but I’m not asking people to stop buying until we catch up. We spent a few hours tonight working out the details, and we’ll have the blockage cleared well before the end of the century.
We’re not sure exactly which century that will be, however.
Just kidding; we’re of course hacking away at the jungle of prints we have to deliver, and we will get them out as fast as ever we can, which is pretty darn fast.
Hey, speaking of darn, what do you say we try to introduce the idea of “darn” for “damn” in the local spoken language — it worked once, might work again.
Well, never mind, let’s get to the subject, shall we? But what exactly are you DOING on eBay? Why are you there? Is it the money? The fame? The hairstyles?
So one of the things right away I wanted to tell you is that it almost doesn’t matter what KIND of merch you offer, just so long as you can ship it right away.
Did I say that?
Well, lemme tell ya what happened, and you decide. Right up until yesterday, I had no idea we’d sold HUNDREDS of prints and that they ALL had to be printed right away.
Well, there’s no printer I can get hold of that will do all of them at once, and if there were, I wouldn’t buy it, much less fill it with toner and paper and trust to luck.
Each print is handled with care, signed in pencil or pen, whichever is appropriate to the paper used, and carefully wrapped and shipped FLAT, which costs extra, and I’m the one who’s paying the shipping, remember?
Now, you need to learn what I call “The Iven Lourie Lesson”, which is that the new publishing world is about promotion and marketing, not about reaping immediate rewards.
What I mean is, the competition for book sales is so ferocious that you’ll find hundred-dollar books out there offered for a single penny, and they pay the shipping.
How come that is?
Well, nobody really knows, but it’s sort of announcing the death of the printed book, which we all saw coming years ago, but it’s actually here, right now, in our faces, and the publisher who doesn’t see the handwriting on the wall can’t survive the coming crash.
You DO see it coming, eh, what?
I hope so, because I wouldn’t want to have to lay out the facts in order to convince you that electronics are the way to go, at least until the giant EMP that wipes out all communication systems worldwide in a single flash.
Hey, easy come, easy go. The Wright Brothers were not the first in the air, just the ones with the best publicity department, and that’s what you need for eBay.
You can’t depend on strangers.
You’ll have to tap into your social network to start selling anywhere, and that includes facebook, twitter and all those social media nets you’ve been developing a presence within for all these many years.
Um, you haven’t? You’re wildly antisocial and that’s how come you have the time to devote to higher things? Okay, well, let’s work on not being social and at the same time developing some sales.
You’ll need a sales personality. The best one you can possibly bring to the forum would be yourself as you really are. What I’m saying is, be authentic and stay authentic. Don’t give in to the tendency to bullshit. If you don’t know much about the product, say so.
Of course it goes without saying — actually it goes WITH saying — that the more you know about your product, the better your chances of selling it, and it’s not the product that’s important, it’s the interaction you have with your buyer.
That’s the whole secret.
Not much to go on, is there? You’ll need every bit of your social skills, sure, but your spiritual skills are what’s going to get you out of the bottom-dweller category and up into the stratospherics.
So every work session, try to list at least a half-dozen items, and do this every day for a while, until you feel you’ve done enough for the moment, then sit back and watch the fun.
At first, you won’t get any views, and nothing will sell, but that will all change once YOU start changing, and that happens as you work toward perfection in your listings.
When you have your title right and your photo right, you’ll get views, lots of them, but you still won’t be SELLING anything.
You need to know the specific reason for that, and I’m about to tell you what it is:
It’s almost invariably something about the shipping. I know, it sound’s ridiculous that it would be an issue, particularly since YOU’RE paying for it — did I mention that shipping should ALWAYS be free? — but it is an issue, and I’ll give you a clue how to handle it:
Don’t.
What I mean is, offer First Class Free Shipping. Okay, they want more, they want faster, better? Fine, that’ll cost ya another ten bucks, or whatever it comes out to be.
I’ve never had a complaint, and between two main seller pages over a 22 year period, I haven’t had a SINGLE complaint. 100% positive response, thousands of customers.
That’s what Customer Service is all about.
Most businesses today don’t have any idea of customer service, not a clue, nor would they at all be interested in the least, because they’re playing the odds.
They believe that they can survive any negative movement in the market, and they’re usually right.
I was on the Southern-Pacific Railway in 1956, heading from Grand Central Station in New York City out to the Wild West, in Hollywood, California.
In the middle of the night, I suddenly awoke with the sensation of being powerfully bitten by SOMETHING.
I eventually cornered it, and instantly recognized it as the infamous “bedbug”, and he wasn’t the only one — there were dozens or more.
I didn’t stay long to find out. In a few minutes, a porter was taking me to another roomette, and I had a free meal courtesy of the railroad while the move was accomplished and the new room checked for bedbugs.
It was clear, and I rested well the remainder of the night. I was pretty impressed two weeks later, when a letter arrived at my door, evidently from the CEO of the railroad!
“Please accept our sincere apologies,” the letter read, “and you can believe me when I tell you that we are shocked and surprised; it has never happened before. We will make every effort to completely eradicate any sign of a pest in our accommodations. Your next ticket on our railroad will be free of charge.”
I was feeling pretty good about it, until a small light pink slip of paper fell out of one of the folds of the typed letter.
On it was a quickly scribbled hand-note: “Send this guy the bug letter.”. So much for corporate heart.
So what do I do with fifty pairs of sterling silver earrings with ancient Jewish coins stuck inside a twin set of German watch crystals mounted in the silver bezel?
I typically have about $40 in the coin. There are two of them in a pair. The silver bezels with the double crystals come to another $30 apiece, and the ear wires are .25 cents a pair, so that makes a little over $140.00 of cost.
It’s really hard to move something at that price. Heck, it’s hard enough at ANY price.
In order to sell those, you need a huge crowd of Observant Jews who might find the Prutahs, Leptons and Widow’s Mites attractive.
They come from two major time frames — the Maccabee Family and the Time of Jesus. Either one works for me, and Christmas and Easter are two marvelous times to market them, but you have to start EARLY, months ahead of the holiday.
If you wait until December 24th at 6:00 p.m. to sell your Christmas trees, you’ll not do well. So how do you turn a simple eBay selling and marketing campaign into a Work Practice?
That is the trick, isn’t it?
I’m willing to share it, but it can’t be learned in a book, nor in a blog, so get yourself to one or more of our ZOOM meetings and bring your questions!
It ain’t easy, but it IS possible.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby