Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Quarter 4: T minus 86 days



Quarter 4 is quickly approaching. This is when most sellers make the bulk of their money for the year. Last year was my first year preparing for fourth quarter as a full time ebay seller. I shipped in more inventory to Amazon FBA than I ever had before and my ebay store inventory was at an all time high, but even with all of that, I was grossly under-prepared! I sold more from October -January than I did the rest of the year combined, and I could have sold more, if it had been listed and sitting in the Amazon warehouse. So, this year I am gearing up and I hope to double my sales from last year.

So, here's my plan
Amazon FBA:
August 1st- resume 2x weekly pick up from UPS- which means I'll be sending in 12+ boxes a week instead of the 4-6 I am now
Get backlog of Amazon inventory listed and sent in, including Halloween costumes, some bundles that are half way in progress and new listings made for some items that aren't in the Amazon catalog.

From now until January, only purchase items that are quick to list and ship- which for me means no used appliances that need cleaning, open puzzles that need counting, etc. I have a hard time passing up things I know will sell for a good profit but require work to get them ready to sell. There is no time for that in the 4th quarter.

I also am guilty of purchasing one or two items with a higher profit margin in lieu of lower profit margins with higher quantities. I am going to experiment with a few items that I can buy a lot of, but that have a lesser profit margin.


Ebay:
I would like to be at 2000 items in my Ebay store by September 1st, which means, without any sales I would need to list at least 14 items a day to reach my goal. I'm going to try for 15+ a day, to help cover for sales and days that I can't list. I don't know if I will really be able to get to this goal, but I'm going to go for it!
I also plan on having 3-4 days of only taking photos so I can get a big backlog built up so taking photos won't get in the way of listing. I list at night while watching TV with my hubby, and during my kiddos nap time, so I would like to be ready to list when I have the time. I have plenty of inventory backlog for ebay that I can easily reach this goal and not have to buy anything else. (Didn't promise I wouldn't buy anything, just said I wouldn't have too!)
I'm going to start by listing my teacher stuff, then move on to Halloween and Christmas, with most of it hopefully listed by Mid September.

Order Shipping Supplies by end of August:
tape, boxes, international label holders, shipping labels, packing peanuts

Family Prep for Quarter 4:
I already have most of my son's school supplies//clothing purchased and ready to go for back to school. When my son goes back to school (I think around August 20th?) I'm going to start having cooking days where I cook or prepare freezer meals for a month at a time, so I can can just reheat or put into the crockpot to cook while I work for the day. I also plan on packing/making lunches each night so I can just grab them and eat (or feed them to the kiddos) so I can get an extra 30 minutes of work time in each day. It saves a lot of time and money, because it will help me use up what we have and make the temptation for eating out less.

What's your plan for Quarter 4? Please share in the comments, I'd love to hear what you're doing to make it awesome!



1 comment:

  1. wow!?! already!?! last year i was all about it. this year somehow has flown by with backpacks and costumes already starting to sell! Good luck you sound organized! my plan is to keep my sanity!

    ReplyDelete

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