Our office/junk yard |
Here’s a photo of our current unlisted piles. Winter coats, plastic bins of shoes, books, random vintage Americana. Anything we could buy for under $5 and sell for over $30. It was all such fun to scavenge, but now it can feel like a burden. It’s a goldmine, but also worthless until it’s listed on eBay. That’s great paradox for any eBay seller.
This is why people flock to doing retail arbitrage on Amazon because they can buy a single item in bulk and send it to the FBA warehouse for fulfillment. We eBayers have to photograph each and every item, possibly clean it, write a detailed description, and list it. When it sells, we lovingly ship it and hopefully wait for the good feedback from the buyer. I’m not so sure Amazon FBA is really that much easier (need to make custom barcodes, bundling, worry over expiration dates, warehouse fees, more competition, lower profit margins), but FBA proponents make it sound easier. Just different challenges.
Over the next six weeks, I’m determined to get through the piles you see above. I’ve done it before, so I can do it again.
- Group items up into similar categories (purses, mens shoe’s, kitchenware..)
- Break the big piles down into smaller piles (about 20 items each)
- Every day I photograph and write descriptions for 20 items. (using Google Docs)
- Items are then put into storage.
- I do this every day without fail (almost without fail)
- At the same time, Ryanne is listing from folders I’ve created in Google Docs.
The consistency is the magic to this process. In five days, I can process 100 items. In thirty days, I can process 600 items. That’s a gigantic pile. This is also the unglamorous part of being an eBay seller, but it’s the only way to earn a living as a Scavenger. Unless of course, we wanted to just sell out of the back our car at the Flea Market and get pennies on the dollar for our items.
Because Ryanne and I work together, the burden isn’t as great as for the person who works alone. But these are the facts of our process. Welcome to our summer.
As always, this is a great thread for any new Scavengers to get their questions answered.
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