Scavenger Life Episode 291: Our New Years Trash Elf Goals

Total Items in Store: 403 on etsy, 212 ebay
Items Sold: 8 on ebay, 6 on etsy
Total Sales: $670
Highest Price Sold: $200 painting on ebay
Average Price Sold: $47
Returns: 0

good week.

I have taken out several loans with Working Capitol–I am a big fan, I KNEW that you guys would pick the 30% repayment scheme, LOL, I always do the 30%.

Sales: $994.26
Sales qty: 41
Average sale price: $24.25

Sales never fully recovered since after Christmas despite running higher percentage sales. People are either broke from spending too much on Christmas or they are drunk from NYE and can’t login to purchase my items.

In building my business spreadsheet I was pleased to learn very close to exactly how much I net after taxes per month and even per item. My average profit margin is 42% or I net 42 cents for ever dollar of sales.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Freds_Premium.

Total Items in Store:
Items Sold: 18 (17 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Total Sales: $428.83
Highest Price Sold: $60 (tie between a set of Duplicate Bridge boards and a set of Homeschool US history textbooks)
Average Price Sold: $23.77
Returns: 0
COGS: $37.13

With the coming postal rate changes, I decided to stop offering free shipping on everything, except a few paper ephemera items. Free shipping didn’t seem to impact sales very much.

My new experiment is to move stuff that isn’t selling from “Fixed Price” to “Auction”. It is all stuff that is decent, but low dollar (small kids toys, vintage ceramic miniatures, books). I actually have a few bids on some items, and picked up a lot of watchers on others. The hypothesis is that some buyers perceive auctions as more of a “deal” than fixed price.

Dec 25-31 2016

• Total Items in Store: 709
• Items Sold: 25 eBay
• International 2 GSP
• Total Sales $1160
• Highest Price $160 Under dash 8 track deck
• Average Price Sold: $46.40
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Items Sold: $78
• Cost of items purchased this week $53

Steady sales since a lull on xmas day.

Experimenting with a higher priced item searched for on eBay and making money by doing a better job of presenting it and of course asking for a lot more.
Made a $250 offer on a very nice reel to reel deck from the original owner after doing some extensive research, he countered $25 higher and I went for it. Free shipping plus accessories, a hard case and a collection of tapes. I’ve received assurance of proper packaging. With what I know about these items I’m hoping for a $600 minimum return.

I’m stumped by the saline solution thing! Interestingly enough, if you google “saline solution norway”, you’ll see that the American Health Assoc reported the US had a saline solution shortage in 2014 and Norway helped us out with production and we imported a bunch from them.

Makes that sale even weirder.

Good episode 🙂

RR Store Week Dec 25-31, 2016

Total Items in Store: 1113
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: $19.49
Total Sales: $705.84
Highest Price Sold: $229.99 (Lot of 90s Rave Flyers)
Average Price Sold: $37.15
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 42

Yes! I hit my short term goal of $700 this week; last week I was about 5 bucks shy. It was a nice mix of low and high priced items, and I’m not mad at that average price, especially since I sold a handful of items $10 and under. And some of the items from my friend’s mom’s house are starting to move, which is great because it was all free. I recently listed a Mah Jong set I got from her. Gorgeous set…butterscotch and jade green Bakelite tiles. After a bunch of research, I put a crazy price on it, $1200 Or Best Offer. I’d be happy with half that, but fingers crossed for full price.

Before I started moving a few months ago, I had completely forgotten about that box of rave flyers. Although I attended a couple, I was never a rave kid; I preferred small, moody clubs that played old funk and soul (still do). But when you came back to your car at the end of the night, it was inevitably covered in flyers. Those, plus the ones randomly handed to you on the street. So glad I kept them all these years. The buyer is a big time rave promoter in Las Vegas, but he got his start here in Los Angeles. And in a strange coincidence, he bought a hat from me a couple of years ago. Crazy.

OK, back to work and the podcast! Happy New Year, everyone!

*Paul*

Week: Dec 25 – Dec 31

Total Items In Store: 352
Items Sold: 1
Total Sales: $41.77
Highest Price: $41.77 (Lot of 2 Spice Girls Concert Dolls)
Average Price Sold: $41.77
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $26.70
Total Profit: $15.07

Items Listed: 102
Cost of Items Purchased: $91.15

Purchased some Wii U Fight pads. Nothing huge but should be able to clear $5-10 on them. Some Disney Infinity figures from the local thrift. Brand new in box. A few more overpriced pieces of clothing. Won’t make huge money, but the sold listings lead me to believe they’ll help me enter the clothing market… and the piece-de-resistance is a video game related statue I got for $45 after tax, which is actively going for $110+.

2017 is the year I’m going to take this super serious. Not full-time by any means, but I’m gonna hope to average at least $100 a week. Still listing my $1-2 items while I clear my deathpile, which is really my number one goal. Clear the death pile of the cheap stuff, scatter some new good stuff in there, and at the end (hopefully tearing through death pile by June), just lot up what doesn’t sell.

Got some goals in place this year. Not sure how depressed I’ll be if I can’t clear them, though.

Twice this month I reached 700 items listed, but each time sales picked up and now I’m 12 items short of that goal. For the fun of it, I have included some numbers for the whole year of 2016.

Numbers for end of December
Total Items in Store: 688 (671 last month / 542 on Jan 1, 2016)
Items Sold: 53 (51 last month / 605 in 2016)
Total Sales: $1,603 ($933 last month / $12,092 in 2016)
Cost of Items Sold: $163 ($116 last month / $1,916 in 2016)
Highest Price Sold: 3 memory cards: $475, Avirex Jacket: $150
Average Price Sold: $30.24 ($18.13 last month / $19.98 for 2016)
International Sales: 2 GSP
Number of items listed: 49 (37 last month)
Spent on new inventory: $0 ($118 last month)
Returns: 0

Years ago I would buy old computers for gold scrap. I would save the old core memory cards just because I thought they looked cool. I sold 3 in December, 2 at my asking price via GSP to France:

I purchased this Avirex Leather jacket at a yard sale for $20, I had it listed for $225 but accepted a best offer of $150:

A while back I went to the Coliseum Swap Meet in Oakland, CA, I only found one vendor with items I wanted, I bought the lot for $32.

I took a best offer of $100 for the Pocket Barometer, the other items are all listed.

I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Years – and has great sales in 2017.

-Steve in Richmond, Calif.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Steve List.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Steve List.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Steve List.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Steve List.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Steve List.

Store Info:

(Main/T-Shirt/Postcard)

Items in store: 169/82/11
Items sold: 2/1/1
COGS: $0/$1.99/$0.05
Total Sales (less shipping): $43.98/$19.99/$4.99
Highest price: $34.99 Plush moose rug/$19.99 NWT Knicks Shirt/$4.99 Large Letter Gulf Coast Postcard
Avg Sales Price: $21.99/$19.99/$4.99
Net Profit: $35.21/$12.72/$4.43 – $52.36
International sales: 0
Returns: 0
Customer Issues: NY Knicks shirt customer messaged and said shirt shows delivered, but not there, asked for replacement. I messaged back that I don’t have any more and directed them to call the post office to find out if it is just at the wrong address. We will see where this goes.
New listings: 0/0/2
Money Spent on new inventory: $4.71 (went thrifting with my mom)

Last week I had off from the day job so my time has been sucked up by doing projects on the house. Managed to get the tile work done for the fireplace hearth, tile in a half bath laid, all painting done, second floor floors sanded and ready for polyurethane (today’s project), and started to put down the underlayment for the tile in the master bath. By the time I quit for the day I am so tired I haven’t wanted to do much listing, but I need to get a few things up this week on each account to help keep things active.

I have a spouse who isn’t my eBay partner and he does have his frustrations with the whole clutter and exploding inventory parts of this, but other than that he has been supportive because it is something that I enjoy doing and there is a little bit of added cash flow into the household. He has his hobbies that I am not active in, but neither of us put these things before family needs. I feel for anyone who does this as a hobby and has a partner who just doesn’t want them to do it. My son is actually the one who comments about me spending too much time on eBay so I try my best to get him involved in the process and scavenging, but it can be difficult to keep him engaged in the process when it is just working on the computer.

12/25-12/31/2016

Approximate # of Items in Store: 240
# of Items Sold: 14
Average Cost of Items Sold: $6.99
Total Sales: $686.76
Highest Price Sold: $80 Women’s Sweater
Average Price Sold: $49.05
Returns: 1 – $40.48
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $77.41
Number of items listed this week: 8

Not included in the above figures is a Leroy Neiman signed print that I bought at Savers in June for $60 and sold on Friday (through Craigslist) for $300. It’s sailing-related, so I put it up on Craigslist for a couple of runs over the summer and then planned to post it again in the spring. Had to move it out of my dining room before Thanksgiving dinner and decided I’d give it another go in December as it might make a good gift. Happy I did. No fees. Yay!

Looking forward to listening to the podcast. Congrats on the necklace!

Wasn’t exactly sure where to ask this question. Why don’t you just have a Facebook page? I know you started in the blogging world first. Yet you wouldn’t have to pay anything to keep it up and running. Aversion to it? Other reasons I cannot think of?

Dec 25-31, 2016

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 13,428
Items Sold: 96
Cost of Items Sold: $12.48
Total Sales: $586.57
Highest Price Sold: $24.99 (artist signed Archie Gunn Canada Hockey Woman)
Average Price Sold: $6.11
Returns/lost in the mail: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $75 (box of 800 NJ postcards)
Number of items listed this week: 390
——————
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 44
Items Sold: 3
Cost of Items Sold: $8
Total Sales: $120.85
Highest Price Sold: $59 (crossbows/Catapults game pieces)
Average Price Sold: $40.28
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $112ish
Number of items listed this week: 45

Slowest postcard week I’ve had in months, which happens when I don’t have auctions going. Next week should be better since I got almost 400 auctions up this week.

I’ve been buying inventory at Goodwill for the 2nd store. I just happened to be in the store at the right time and checked the neckties which I never did before and came away with more than a dozen high end ties. I only recognized the Ferragamo name because of your podcast. Quickly sold the Ferragamo tie for $40 (probably could have held out for more). I had actually left some ties on the rack and came back the next day to look through them again. I had dismissed a Hermes one the day before because the name wasn’t on the label (just their logo) and then I saw the name on the small end. It needs to be cleaned, but it’s a $100 tie.

I’m not sure how long I’ll experiment with this 2nd store because I am already hating how much storage space this stuff takes up.

Total Items in Store: 335
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $7 (used) + $226 (new)
Total Sales: $508
Highest Price Sold: $240 (Anthropologie Bedding Set – paid $120 Springtime)
Average Price Sold: $56
Returns/Int’l Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0! Week one of death pile challenge.
Number of items listed this week: 8 + multiples

Well it’s week one of my death piles challenge, which really should be called a pile challenge because I haven’t necessarily cherry picked. I’m starting with the bulkiest items – throw pillows, wool blankets and afghans. I’ve posted some on Facebook too. I spent some time organizing the piles and I’m kind of excited to list the art. It should be fun to rediscover items perhaps except for all of the coffee mugs.

I dumped the other Hatchimal and got my $ back and happily sold some RA bedding. Hopefully it will be a good month for bedding. It was unfortunate that I was sick and swamped in December because immediately after I started listing I started selling other items. There is definitely a correlation.

I just reviewed the IRS guidelines for hobby sales and see that you only get two years of hobby profit, then it is by default a business. This is my third year of selling so it’s time to open separate accounts. Also, I really should be making purchases on a cash back card for shipping etc. but have been too lazy. I used Easy Auctions Tracker this year and successfully loaded all of my data. The spreadsheet looks overly complicated but hopefully bookkeeping will be faster this year. So much to do, so little time!

Just getting started here 🙂

Store Week Dec 25-31, 2016

(Only) Store #1
Total Items in Store: 89
Items Sold: 2
Cost of Items Sold: 1.99
Total Sales: $54.98
Highest Price Sold: 29.99 (Hard Drive Dock)
Average Price Sold: $27.99
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20

I am working on getting my workflows for everything together. I’m working on my pipeline just trying to figure out the Ham from the Spam.

I’m very grateful for this forum and website and podcast.Hope everyone has a very profitable 2017!

Thanks!
Tracy

I was reading the Bonanza “2016 in Review, Annual Survey Online” and came across this note related to Turbo Lister:

“Offline inventory management tool. More than 10% of our eBay sellers rely on TurboLister, so we were pretty shocked to learn eBay would stop supporting it in June of 2017. We’re currently finalizing a partnership that should let us revive an improved version of this venerable tool before support for TurboLister officially ends.”

So, looks like it will live on!

url for the Bonanza article on Turbo Lister: http://www.bonanza.com/blog/main/2016_in_Review__Annual_Survey_Online

Goals for 2017

Growing my number of listed items is top on my list. I am on the brink of 2000 items listed right now (1970 items, including a hand full of scheduled items). I have an aggressive schedule of listing 200+ items per month. I have been able to stick to that in November and December of 2016. This is only possible because I have a contractor doing all the listing for me. If I can keep up the pace, I will have over 3000 listed items by the end of the year.

I have a full time job and family also, so this is going to be a challenge. But I know the goal and have a plan to get there. I’m ready for all the great things awaiting in 2017!

Ryanne – that’s how I read it, Turbo Lister will be an Offline inventory management tool for Bonanza. However, since you and I both have all of our ebay inventory on Bonanza, it will have the same effect of backing up all of our ebay listings.

• Total Items in Store:228
• Items Sold: 9
• Total Sales $123.93
• Highest Price $19.99 picture frame
• Average Price Sold: $13.77
• Cost of Items Sold: $9
• Cost of items purchased this week $25

Here’s a look at how my first eight months on eBay turned out: http://imgur.com/a/4GYvX

The profit margin would have been higher in November and December, but I did some reinvesting into the business by buying a bunch of storage stuff and a label printer. My results for the year are way better than what I’d hoped for. The goal for this year is to pay down what’s left on my wife’s car, which if this year is anything like the last is an attainable goal.

Not to get too sentimental with a bunch of strangers on the internet, but I really appreciate the podcast and the community around the forum. It’s been a huge inspiration and motivation. Hopefully we all have a good year ahead of us.

Dec 25 – Dec 31
Total items in store 1086
11 Sales
COGS $25.00
Total Sales 1,419.99
Highest Price Sold 14 yards $74.99 per yard of Waverly Greenfield Village Collection Fabric
Highly desirable gorgeous print made in USA
Average price 129.00
Intl –
Returns –
.00 spent on new merchandise
no new listings

Haven’t been able to work my business the way I like to since Dec 16 when I totaled my vehicle on black ice. On Dec 30 I bought a preowned Honda CRV and settled with the Insurance Co. Without going into a lot of detail I will share that after my vehicle was totaled I stood on the side of the road in freezing rain calling 911. I couldn’t get through because the lines were busy from other accidents. I called my church they sent help but I ended up taking off my shoes walking in my wool socks and sometimes crawling on my hands and knees to get home. As I look back I think I must have been in shock? So because of all the trauma I haven’t been able to work my business. Yesterday I finally felt a release from all the trauma and stress. Tomorrow I fly to San Diego where I will enjoy warmer weather and my grandkids. I love the Ebay business and look forward to listening to Jay & Ryanne each week.
Because I will be traveling I wanted to go ahead and post a short video of my $1,050.00. Fabric Sale. Hope that’s ok I know Wednesday is the place for what sold videos.

Sales for month of December
Total items in store 502 Ebay (228 Amazon)
Items sold: 175 Ebay (151 Amazon)
Total Sales: $7,550.96 Ebay ($14,456.52 Amazon)
COGS: $1,764.50 Ebay ($3,012.38 Amazon
Average sale price: $43.148 Ebay ($96.38 Amazon)

As I said last moth I will do a review of the year and also say what are the plans for 2017.

Looking back at 2016:

THE GOOD:

– My wife initially had the goal to make from Ebay before taxes as much as she did at her full time job (around 24k). We beat that goal halfway thru October so we had to come up with a new goal: 40k, we beat that as well and ended up with a little over $50k before taxes.
– Q4 exceeded our expectations by a lot on Amazon. I could have sold probably double what I sold on Amqazon but kinda ran out of merchandise.
– Discovered in December that you can find a lot of good merchandise at thrift stores (up till December I did only garage sales and estate sales)

THE NOT SO GOOD:

– The return rate on Amazon is around 12%. We started to implement some changes in Q4 and we are starting to see better results.
– We spent around 3500 on shipping supplies. Looks like I have to go pick up some boxes and packing materials from Big stores to supplement some of it.
– We tracked COGS by calculating the cost of the items that sold. That complicated the way we tracked defective items that we bought. I am switching to the formula INVENTORY_VALUE_JANUARY1 + MONEY_SPENT_THROUGHOUT_THE_YEAR – INVENTORY_VALUE_DECEMBER31. This way I don’t need to track items that I throw away anymore.

LOOKING AHEAD – 2017:
1. Changed the way we track financial goal. Is very hard to predict a net income in a relative void. So assuming a 40% ROI we’ll go with daily/weekly listing goals. We’ll start with $500/day Ebay/Amazon combined listing goal. Basically if you feed the pipeline at one point you have a relative predictable stream.
2. Add thrift stores to our sourcing (that should increase our sourcing by 20-30% in my estimation)
3. Enter the clothing market (we sold a total of 17 clothes listing – mostly clothes that kids outgrew). I feel like it’s a missing opportunity for us. Time will tell how this experiment go.
4. Reduce the return % on Amazon. As I said we started to change some practices in Q4 that started to pay dividends, we’ll try to see if we can improve further.
5. Reduce the cost of shipping supplies by supplementing with free supplies from big chain stores.
6. Add bread and butter to our stores (we did a deathpile push in November and it was mostly bread and butter, and it was a good chunk of our Dec sales). Our average sale price is 55.86 on Ebay and 84.22 on Amazon for the year. That is because we had less than 3% of inventory bread and butter. After doing the death pile push in November I noticed that I can list 50-60 bread and butter in about 4 hours so we’ll revise our principles when picking merchandise to include bread and butter that can be easily listed.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by John Baston.

Just finished the podcast and wanted to comment on the shipping coupon.

On seller hub, click on Manage Store. Under store design click on Subscriber Discounts. I know that the shipping coupon is available because it will say “NEW” in green. The ebay shipping coupon will be listed first (at least it is on mine). Click on see details and you are ready to start shopping. I don’t know if this is any easier than signing up and waiting on an email. But this is another option.

Total Items in Store: 832
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: $583
Total Sales: $2,103.68
Highest Price Sold: $379 (bag), $180 (bag)
Average Price Sold: $75.13

December was very good for sales, my 31 day total is over 10k which is great for me. I’d been going to sample sales for some time in the fall, so the higher end NWT items were great for listing for the holidays. Congrats on the necklace sale! I remember when you guys picked that up 🙂

Goals: TAXES AND BOOKKEEPING! I fell off the wagon and am again left with shoeboxes and piles of receipts. Yikes. Open a cash back type card to get better rewards for all the $ I’m spending.

Organization: getting more shelving to better wrangle all the stuff.

New $ streams: consign with the Real Real as well as check out Amazon -_-

Happy New Year all!

I’m doing my own numbers tracking by month now, but I’ve calculated what an average December week looked like for me so as to be consistent with others’ numbers (divided Dec sales by 31 then multiplied by 7).

# of items in store: 250
# of items sold: 11 (4% sell through rate)
Total revenue: $382
COGS: $62
Gross profit: $310
Average sale price: $35
Average gross profit per item: $30
Highest price sold: $275 (handmade men’s shoes, paid $15) – highest sale ever!
Returns: 2, One was a NOS 1980s ski hat that started falling apart after two weeks of use. Next time I invest in any NOS items, will have to do a better quality check.

December was a fantastic month for me, and I’ve sure come a long way in the last 12 months. Last December I was thrilled to sell something for $10-15. I’m also feeling great b/c yesterday I removed 25 low-value non-selling items from my store, AND I decided that the lowest price I will ever have anything listed at is $9.99. Before that I was playing around with lowering prices on cheap things that weren’t selling, and it was just getting ridiculous – like going down to $4.99 & $3.99. What a waste of time!

Goal for 2017 is to maintain the same store size while increasing gross profit per item. Would love to get closer to $50. This means I will have to shop more, but buy less, which also means higher mileage costs since I’m in a rural area, so I’ll have to keep an eye on those.

Thank you J&R and the rest of the SL community for your help in getting to this point.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by sonia.

I was away between Christmas and New Years, so I am catching up. Here are my past two weeks of sales:

Week of Dec 18 – 24
* Total Items in Store: 550ish
* Items Sold: 9
* Cost of Items Sold: $41.50
* Total Sales: $192.10
* Highest Price Sold: $40 Fratantoni Italian Terra Cotta Ceramic Sun Tile Address Plaque
* Average Price Sold: $21.34
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: about 20ish

My higher cost of goods is due to a pair of boots in great condition that no longer fit my daughter. I chose a cost close to the sale price since we owned it.

Week of Dec 25 – 31
* Total Items in Store: 555
* Items Sold: 9
* Cost of Items Sold: $18.29
* Total Sales: $231.80
* Highest Price Sold: $50 Lenox Jewish Seder Plate
* Average Price Sold: $25.76
* Returns: 1 Insurance payment for casserole that broke in shipping (set of 2, only 1 broke)
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 0 (out of town)

The Seder plate was something I bought in an online auction during the summer with 4 other Lenox Jewish items. My mother actually had the same Seder plate, so she wanted three of the other items because they coordinated with the plate. I gave them to my mom and dad as a Chanukah gift, so that was about $100 I didn’t have to spend – almost like making a sale!

Both weeks were good in that my average price was higher than normal, but the number of sales was lower. This is actually part of my strategy, but I am disappointed that I didn’t sell more items during the holiday season.

Hey fellow scavengers,
Here’s my latest what sold video;

J & R

I understand your position but I don’t do the employee thing. Originally, we had an S Corp and paid employee taxes. What a serious pain in the a$$ on several levels. Waaaayyyyy easier to 1099 somebody as an independent contractor.one thing the IRS excels at is getting their employer taxes. It’s something you never want to accidentally under pay. We farmed that all out of course, but it just ends up being an added headache and expense.

BTW, I generally mention your forum on my infrequent YouTube videos. I am trying

PS. Your caller’s wife sounds like a controlling, self absorbed jerk. Maybe I got triggered here. Lol.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Eve Everett.

Weekly numbers:
Total Items in Store: 646
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $52
Total Sales: $446
Profit: $394
Highest Price Sold: $50 Kalso Sandals
Average Price Sold: $29.73
Average Profit: $26.26
FBA items sold: 2
Total FBA sales: $80
FBA COGS: $4
FBA Fees: $20
FBA Profit: $56
FBA Average profit: $28

Steady week without much effort put in. Our house is a total wreck right now and is taking up a lot of my time. We’re converting our dining room to our homeschool room, and the former school room (originally a den) will become my temporary dedicated ebay room. I think it will really help me focus to have a dedicated space, kill some death piles, and get a better feel for what I need space wise if I ever go full-time.

On the scavenger/DIY front, I rebuilt our dryer yesterday. I sounded like a tank was rolling through the house while it ran! I replaced all the moving wear parts and it ran like a new machine…until it quit heating. Doh! I think I may have smashed the dryer duct so hopefully I don’t have to replace the element also. Side not, if your dryer has some years on it and you’ve never done a thorough, disassembled cleaning – DO IT! I have no clue how that dryer still worked. The entire duct was filled with compacted lint. In the end I’ll have a like new dryer and I’ll be out less than $50 even if I have to get a new element.

How do you ship Saline to Norway? You can’t put it on a plane can you?

• Total Items in Store: 289
• Items Sold: 19
• Total Sales $219.07
• Highest Price $108.77 – lot of 96 hair metal cassettes from 80s/early 90s

I haven’t had a chance to list as I traveled for two weeks during the holidays but now I’m home and can start listing again. Last night I listed the $60 Bose Acoustic Wave CD player for $599.99 so we’ll see what happens there.

The tapes I sold last week were purchased from someone through the Offer Up app. I paid $20 and put them up for auction starting at $24.99 and a couple of hair metal fans bid them up to $108. Not bad.

Yesterday I purchased a TON of vintage audio gear for next to nothing from a couple downsizing. I got 4 receivers, 3 turntables, a CD player, headphones and two sets of beautiful Sansui speakers from the 70’s. The guy just kept throwing stuff into the pile. I’ll make my money back just selling one set of the speakers which I’ll probably do via Craigslist or through Facebook as shipping those things will be a BEAST. Again, I found this through Offer Up which, along with Let Go, has been a great sourcing tool for me for electronics and gear.

Love the podcast.

Happy new year!

Just catching up and listened to the podcast today on my way [back] to work… love hearing yinz mention me! Yes, here’s a site that shows all of the sample sales in NYC (there has to be one for other cities/areas): https://www.chicmi.com/new-york/sample-sales/

Dec 25-31 2016

• Total Items in Store: 719
• Items Sold: 11 (1 Amazon)
• International 2
• Total Sales $305.53
• Highest Price $89 1980 SW ESB Imperial Ice Base Playset
• Average Price Sold: $27.78
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Items Sold: $87
• Cost of items purchased this week $0

Slower week, but definitely picked up a bit later in the week after Christmas. Based on the items I sold, I bet we’re getting into the “self gifting” phase of the holiday that usually lasts until end of January.

On the ongoing topic about “spending more on higher dollar items”, I do this quite often in my estate sale finds in the NYC burbs. There is always a lot of high quality stuff, but because the competition is so fierce and the sellers are checking eBay, the prices can be higher especially on the opening day. It all about getting a balance in your stores… I have probably 50%-60% of my store bread & butter $1-$3 items listed for under $50 and then some higher dollar items that I’ve paid up for that I might only double my money on. For example, the Star Wars play set I sold this week for $89 I actually spent $35 on. I knew there was room on it, but not 10x-20x that I might get for a $2 item. Earlier in 2016, Ryanne might remember me selling those Cartier sunglasses for $950 – I absolutely did not pick those up for $3, I paid something like $280 for them – only 3x my money but that 3x = $600ish profit.

As another example, I recently from an estate sale bought 40 NFL hall of fame autographs. They were not authenticated, so I paid an average of $5 each (already $200 right there). I just packed them up to get authenticated at $20-$30 each (another $900 for that). I’m already up to $1100 invested, but once they come back with certification each one should be worth close to $100 putting the profits close to $3000.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.

My goal for this year is to be more focused throughout the day. I’m easily distracted and it is quite common for me to sit in my ebay room the entire day and only get 3 or 4 things listed! One major motivation for me to stay on task & list is I bought a new-ish car yesterday. It was desperately needed as my 16 year old Ford Escape with 198K miles had become very unreliable and left me stranded more than once. So now I have a car loan for the first time in over 15 years. Having that debt hanging over my head is very motivating. I want it paid off ASAP!

Happy 2017 everybody!

I had an excellent weekend–9 packages went out today. I definitely think that collectibles and antiques sell better after Christmas.

My numbers for the week of 12/25/16:
Total Items in Store: 49
Items Sold: 6 (All BIN)
Cost of Items Sold: $23.50
Total Sales: $232
Highest Price Sold: $65 – Reindeer candle holders
Average Price Sold: $38.66 + shiping
Returns: 0

I expected the slowdown since I haven’t listed in the last few weeks. Happy to have sold 90% of what I listed this year, though. I strive for high sell through rates and in 2016 I really improved my average selling price while keeping COGS steady at 10-15%. I am about 3 weeks behind on listening to the Podcasts and was happy to send the kids to school this morning and get back to eBay. My goals for 2017 are to do double the listings I did last year, spend less time on FB and more time actually doing the things that translate to money.

Happy New Year everyone!

As someone who has built businesses with employees, I can tell you first hand that 1099’ing an “employee” can get you into hot water if they are not truly a contractor. A contractor provides services for multiple businesses and they also have their own business. In Jay and Ryannes case, they have an employee and therefore they are going about it correctly.

Ebay
• Total Items in Store: 8120
• Items Sold: 109
• Total Sales $2581.74
• Highest Price $100 Textbook
• Average Price Sold: $23.67
• Returns: 12 (clothes, PC game)
• Cost of Items Sold: $115
• Cost of items purchased this week $368.60

Still going good even with slow days on Sunday and Monday. Top sellers were a math textbook for $100, Washing machine control board $75 and a tie between a huge tug boat model and a pair of Nike Lebron shoes $65.

Bought a lot of crap this week, 426lbs of kids books, a huge cart of mens boots, two gaylords(large cardboard containers) of toys and two large containers of electronics. Its all loaded in the van from last Thursday and I will hopefully get to it this week sometime.

I kinda laughed out loud when I heard the caller about his wife. My wife does not work with ebay or amazon and she didnt understand why I put in so many hours working in D.C. and then so much work on Amazon in my off hours. She became a lot more understanding when I showed her I could make more money selling on amazon than I was making after 14 years in the Air Force. That, and I got everything out of the house, it was taking over our entire bottom floor.

Goals for 2017: Develop another stream of income separate from online selling. Continue to foster a relationship/partnership with two small charities (I have already started some of the groundwork) Find an employee to replace my sole employee who moved out of state back in November. Possible start going back to school, just for the free check from the GI Bill. Maybe take volleyball classes or underwater basket weaving.

Just finished running our amazon numbers for December, it was a good month.
All numbers are net.
Large charity partner $21,451 45% split to us
Small library partner $981.49 50% split to us
Small library partner $1296 50% split to us
Small charity partner $1005 %50 split to us
Our own product (books,board games, dvds ect) $9505 100% us

Antique booth netted $650 for the month.

2016 Recap:
Gross Sales – $23,131.23
Avg. Price Sold – $48.60
Total COGS – $5,583.04
Avg. Price Paid – $11.75
Net Profit After COGS, Fees, etc – $14,133.47
Net ROI – 253.15%
Cost of Donations (thing purchased but unsold, donated for a tax write off) – $306.62

Biggest scores (highest ROI):
– (40) 1930s & 1940s National Geographic Maps – paid $1, sold for $200 for 16900% ROI after fees
– (5) Sealed Maxell MX-S 100 cassettes – paid $0.45, sold for $80 for 14800% ROI after fees
Biggest scores (highest price sold):
– Vintage Cartier Sunglasses – paid $280, sold for $950
– Dolce & Gabana Sex/Love Sweatshirt – paid $30, sold for $260
– Bakelite Poker Chips – paid $100, sold for $260
Worst buys (calling out my mistakes too):
– Jeff Koons Puppy Scultpure – paid $158, sold for $110 (-41% ROI after fees)
– Art Deco Saucer Set – paid $185, sold for $130 (-29% ROI after fees)

Summary & 2017 Goals:
I envy a lot of you out there that have been able to quit your day jobs or retire or support a family on your selling. I’m not there and likely won’t be for some time, partially because of storage limitations in our urban condo and partially because my wife & I do make a very decent living that will be infinitely difficult to match. This is a hobby/side hustle for me that supplements our incomes. My profits have paid for long European vacations (10 days in Italy & a long 4 day weekend in Ireland) and helped fund our master bathroom renovations (light at the end of the tunnel, will share a completed video once we’re 100% done).

In 2017, I’m going to continue to focus on limiting the junk/under $20 items I buy and focus more on higher quality/dollar items, even if the high % ROI is not there. I am completely comfortable buying something for $100 and selling for $200 or $250, buying something for $500 and selling for $1000. I’m focusing on finding things that interest me and have a history, which is half of the reason I love doing this. If I ever lose interest on the researching & learning, it’s likely I’ll stop the buying and selling.

Good luck to everyone out there and here’s to a wonderful 2017!!!

Friends, I am on an all year low because of my health, Holidays fully dedicated to my kids (only 2 of the 5 live with me now, so I do not even go to restroom to spend most of the time with them when they are here).
So sales are slow, listing is depressing.
However I had sometime to put my head around my other 2 businesses and at the end I got good outlook to balance my life.

Anyway, don’t want to bother much with off topic business matters.

I have 3 main challenges:
(1) Space: my short term goal of 1000 items listed was useful to show me my major roadblocker related to storage space.
(2) Average ticket: it was a mistake to focus on fast listing going after low ticket items. This is a skill I have not yet mastered from Jay and Ryanne and my area seems to be slightly different than the Heartland in terms of finding $1-$5 items that can be sold for $30 or more. Also, I was dedicating my time a lot more on signature/designer items that I would pay $10-$20 but would sell for >$50. Combine topics 1 and 2 and you can see my equation got messed up.
3) Organization system: I need an inventory week to reorganize my storage, it would be a potential full week diving down into my storage

Also, I benefit a lot from having a formal LLC for my eBay business. I have a domain, email address, dedicated email to receive messages, other for customer matters. Also, I have separated and dedicated bank accounts and credit cards for income and revenue. This has been helping tremendoulsy to keep my operating costs super low and to understand clearly the business performance.

It is good to have clarity of what I need to do to take next step up.

Cheers

Brian, your 2016 is what I’d like 2017 to look like. Not sure if anyone’s familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk (online entrepreneur guru), but he’s started a 2017 Flip Challenge, with the goal of making $20,170 in 2017 on eBay, Etsy, Craigslist, etc. I’ve been eBaying since 1996, but very part time, as like you, I make a decent living at my 9-5 job. This is a side hustle for me, but would love to hit that $20,170 goal.

I too maintain a spreadsheet where I track the cost, sales price, and all fees for each item I sell, so I can monitor my revenue, profit, ROI, fees on a monthly basis. I think you’re spot on with prioritizing profit dollars over ROI %. My goal is always to make X times my initial investment, but I think that is more applicable when buying $1-$5 items. You want to make sure it’s worth your while. But when you graduate from that entry-level selling, and are buying $100 items, making 10X your initial investment isn’t necessary. I’m fine selling a $100 item for a $50 profit after fees. I’d rather make $50 in one transaction than 3 transactions that were 500% ROI’s.

With that in mind, my listing goals this year are going to be dollar based and not quantity based. I’m not impressed with having 5000 items in my store. To me that says I spent alot of time listing, and not much of it is selling very well. Instead, I’d like to have goals like listing $100/day, whether that be 5 items or 1 item.