Scavenger Life Episode 407: Never Give Up

Posting numbers now, listening to the podcast tomorrow morning while I take a long commute for a side gig. Working all week, so eBay/listing will take a backseat until Friday at least.

Numbers dipped just slightly from last week. Some days with zero sales, then a winner day with several. Started a few sales this past week, and lowered some prices outside of that, on items that have been around a long while. Sent a few offers to Watchers, resulting in two smaller sales so far. Might try some auctions to move some stuff, but will have to take a closer look at my inventory and watchers to see what items those might be.

I’m running an estate sale for my grandmother next month, and I plan to take some of my larger, heavier inventory items (crocks, lamps, etc) and see if I can sell them in person for cash. Fingers crossed!

04/14/19 – 04/20/19
Total Items In Store: 1071
Items Sold: 19
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $559.40
Highest Sold Price: $120 Antique woven coverlet
Average Sold Price: $29.44
Cost of Items Sold: $32.50
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $27.00
Number of Items listed this week: ~12; also removed some listings

2019-04-14 – 2019-04-20

Total Items In Store: 2946
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: $ 70
Total Sales: $ 676.00
Highest Price Sold: $ 85.00 (Vintage set of luggage)
Average Price Sold: $ 70.60
# Items Listed: 49
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 4

Gut Sales Report for the week: Just an average week, which actually felt good after a few slow weeks in a row.

Challenge of the week: I got the vintage trophies listed this week. They are long tail, but will be good money when they sell.

Strategy of the week\month: Still looking to cut back on buying items and try to get the stereo equipment and some other items listed.

Mark S

items sold: 54
sales: $1,476.96 (i don’t include shipping revenue)
average selling price: $27.35
cost of goods: $203.04
returns: 0
purchases: $185.54
store listings: 954
inventory $ risk: $3,587
listed this week: 55 items
ebay hours: 26.5
what’s on my mind:
This is a great, great week for me. My goal is 2k before shipping & this is the 4th week this year I hit $1400-$1500 in sales. I began tracking my ebay hours this week. I had to cancel my main sourcing day (~10hrs) as well as all listing for that day, so 36-40hrs is probably closer to my average. I have really refined my processes & eliminated 10-15 hrs of ebay work.

April seems to be pretty slow for me. Wondering if it’s because of spring break.

I wrote a blog post comparing selling on eBay with investing in stocks. You guys might enjoy the read.

Hello, thank you for the company packing last night with the fresh podcast! Very interesting, lots covered! I was seven listings shy of my listing goal of 6 items a day. Listings still consistent and improved over pre goal months! Both eBay and Etsy stores ‘came alive’ this week. Different pipelines kicked in, a myriad of new & older listings selling, a few nice surprise sales, and some weird little stuff selling at good prices. I attacked scavenging this week yet I did not find much.

4/14 – 4/20/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 591
Number of items sold: 17
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $609.00
Cost of items sold: $54
Consignment payouts $10
Highest price sold: $110 – New GM LED truck bed lighting kit – dealer trashed it, free!
Average price sold: $35.82
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $10
Number of new items listed this week: 23
Sell through rate for the week: 2.9

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 626
Number of items sold: 8
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $237
Cost of items sold: $11
Consignment payouts: $5
Highest price sold: $75 – 4 K Englehardt prints, free! gifted from an old consignment partner.
Average price sold: $21
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $19
Number of new items listed this week: 16
Sell through rate for the week: 0.3

Store 1
Total Items in Store: 1,696
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $220.90
Cost of Items Sold: $19.00
Highest Price Sold: $32.99
Average Price Sold: $22.09
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $25.97
Number of items listed this week: 19

Store 2 (CAD)
Total Items in Store: 927
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales: $90.67
Cost of Items Sold: $8.50
Highest Price Sold: $13.99 (vintage patch)
Average Price Sold: $11.33
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 16

Amazon.ca sales: $299.00 (CAD) (Approx $89.70 net profit)
Amazon.com sales: $2,272.00 (Approx $681.60 net profit)

Wow. What a dismal week of sales. Both stores took a bit of a nosedive. I’ve been listing less that usual, but have been trying to list at least a few things each day to keep the algorithm happy. Been pretty busy with moving planning, taxes, and other personal stuff, so that’s taken up some of my time. Additionally, I lost my TRS status a month or two ago as a result of some cross border issues (eight late shipments in one week, BARF). I’m close to getting it back, but suspect this has done nothing but hurt my sales. I’ll push to get more listed this week, and will run a few sales to try and flush the late shipments out.

Amazon keeps chugging. I’m going to be soooo close to breaking $10k gross in the US this month, but expect I’ll end up landing in the $9.500 mark. It’s entirely an arbitrary goal, but nice to know I’ve got a spread of products that can sustain that level of sales on a monthly basis. Really helps when ebay has a “soft” week.

Personally, been selling a lot of odds and ends locally, and have been purging/donating a bunch of others. Our move is just over a month away. This week we’re hoping to finalize movers for the small amount of things we’re having shipped. We’e got a home to go to (month-to-month rental), and a cargo trailer to pull us, the cats, a few personal items, and all of the ebay inventory across the country. We expect the drive to take about four days (10-12hrs/day). The move is coming FAST. Feels terrifying, but eventually, we’ll have bought a new house, will be settled, and can just coast for the next 20+ years.

It’s kinda funny you were talking about wishing you could just refuse returns sometimes, lol, yeah I never mentioned it but when I started my store back I came back with a NO RETURN POLICY. Now I can’t predict the future but this far it has not lowered me in search rank and we continue to enjoy a high STR and believe it not I have not had a single issue with people getting mad about it. I also have 2 day shipping and this also has not caused any problems whatsoever.

As we scale up will those things become an issue? I dunno but I will let you know =)

I go to the post office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and that’s it. Oh yeah also I don’t do free shipping either, lol. I know you guys are probably thinking well your doing it all wrong, and yeah might be but thus far it’s not been an issue so I dunno.

When I get closer to 1000 listings I will let you know if I had issues that made me change or if I still have the same policies in effect.

#WaitingForTheHammerToFall
#ShouldBeInteresting
#WhatsAHashtagDoAnyway

Later!
Tony

Week April 14-20, 2019

Total Items in Store: 987
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $221.74 (28.2% of sales)
Total Sales: $787.18
Highest Price Sold: $170 (c1962 Barbie)
Average Price Sold: $49.20
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 5 sales, $327.99 (41.7% of total sales), $18.67 fees (5.7% of sales)

Pretty solid week – several high dollar items sold, but with that comes the high COGS. I’ll live. Outside of the Barbie (down to 4 left of the collection of 28 I bought), other higher dollar sales included Pearl Jam poster coffee table book for $125 (+$90 Priority Shipping to Australia) plus 6 more items over $50.

Two+ solid weeks in a row, would love to keep it going, but nervous because I have to travel this week for work and will have extended handling time, shipping Friday night/Saturday morning when I’m back. Fingers crossed there is little to no effect.

April 14-20
Total Items in Store: 2247
Items Sold: 12
Total Sales : $359
* BELOW yearly average of $896
* BELOW 2018 total week sales of $996
Highest Price: $79 (Three Whirley Industries Hands Off My Mug Plastic Mugs)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $13
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 47

It was a very “soft” week last week. There were a couple days that I didn’t sell a single thing, which is very unusual. I just wish I knew why the sudden change in sales this year. Like Mark S mentioned in the forums last week, I too have more items up for sale than ever before, yet my sales have been constantly below my previous year’s sales. But I’m still feeling fine as long as I’m able to keep my head above water.

I sort of eased off on listing last week to focus on lawn work. There’s so much that needs done outside. I’ll need to make a list and just focus on the important items first. Though I can’t wait to get to use my new power washer on the brick and siding! The roof was finished last week and we couldn’t be more happy. We chose a nice neutral tone for if we wanted to change up the color of the siding or shutters later down the road.

I also happen to notice that I hit a nice milestone recently. I made $100,000 in sales since I first began selling a few years ago! Now granted, that doesn’t include the deductions of fees and taxes and COGS, but it was nice to finally make it to the 6-digit club.

Good morning everyone!

A fairly quiet week this week.

Sales: CAD$702, 6 items, COGS: $84 –> Item profit: $507
Expenditures: $523 (mostly shelving for my new storage unit)
Cashflow: $68
Hours: 5, -$23/hr after tax
Listed: $1970, 8 items
Notable sales: I had 2 sales for a total of $500 from a box of optical components I bought a while back for $52. There’s still a fair bit to sell from that lot.
Scavenging: bought some medical imaging film at auction for $10. It’s a large lot of the stuff and I’m hoping the total will be around $3000.

Week of 04/14-04/20
Total Items in Store: 3,143 (Up 55% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 136
Number of Items Sold: 91 (Up 28% YOY)
(Includes 3 Etsy, 7 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 13% (Down 3% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,715 (Up 58% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $484
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $511
Cost of Items Sold: $503
Cost of Labor: $130
Highest Item Sold: $95 – VTG Cast Iron Dutch Oven
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 10-7.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,866
# Sold: 60
STR: 14%
ASP: $27

Shoes
# Listed: 695
# Sold: 24
STR: 15%
ASP: $34.16

Hard Goods
# Listed: 582
# Sold: 7
STR: 5%
ASP: $39.21

EBay
# Listed: 3,143
# Sold: 81
STR: 11%
ASP: $28.27

Etsy
# Listed: 233
# Sold: 3
STR: 6%
ASP: $26.50

Poshmark
# Listed: 723
# Sold: 7
STR: 4%
ASP: $49.29

Love the conversation about it being Deferred Income. It is 100% accurate. When you are buying inventory, and putting work into that inventory to get it listed, you are creating future income. Coming from my accounting background, this is how I view assets, as future income. This is why if we were all on Accrual Accounting, then the work that we do today (or pay for today), would actually attach to the inventory we have on hand. Then our Inventory Value would represent both the cost to purchase as well as the labor to list it. When it sells, our COGS would reflect a more accurate picture of our “costs”. But I feel it is important to look at your inventory as future revenue.

So, a good thing to look at for everyone. Look on your total Active listings page, where it shows your number of listings and the total dollar value that you have listed. Imagine that in a pinch, if times were tough, how much you would discount your entire store (for us, that would be 50%). Then that is the minimum about of future income you have coming to you. Maybe not all at once, as just discounting doesn’t mean a sale, but you get my drift. You can look at what you have listed, and think about the amount of money you can have come back to you.

Makes me smile when I need it sometimes… 🙂

4/14 – 4/19
total items in 2 eBay stores: 910
Gross Sales $617.56
COS 108
24 Sales
ASP $25.74
I have been selling on eBay part time for 21 years. I will be quitting my job in June and at that time, I will have been prepping to go full time for 1.5 years…building up my inventory to hopefully over 1500 items.
As for your comment on slower sales… I believe the many other platforms that have appeared are taking some sales away from eBay. I remember whenever eBay made a big change the eBay forums were on fire about leaving and selling on another site. The problem was back then…there were no other “popular” sites that had enough buyers on it. I think Poshmark and Macari are taking some (although small in eBay standards) sales away from eBay. Once I become a full time seller I will try out those 2 platforms as well.

Total Items in Store: 1916
Items Sold: Ebay 29 Poshmark 5
Total Sales: $1602.45
Highest Price Sold: $950 (Nintendo Game)
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0

We had a good week thanks to a nice sell of a rare Nintendo game. A lot of our sales have just been smalls here and there. We were away in San Francisco most of last week so we did not list anything. We are working on setting up a shipping station in the office, as well as organizing. UG.
Because we have had a very slow couple months we are focusing on selling our own items as well as “to be listed” items, instead of shopping. I am wondering if some of the “soft” sales are due to the shipping changes as well as ebay now charging taxes. We were thinking of possibly doing a test of free shipping on some of our smaller items, see if that helps boost sales.
Happy listing to everyone. 🙂

@T-Satt
80-20 Mens clothing, shoes & accessories & random thrift finds.

I accept 30 day returns but not free return and I do charge for shipping most of the time. I have free shipping on very lightweight items.. under 8 oz. My question to sellers who offer free returns, do you really think it is worth it?
Do you feel your sales increased enough to make up for the cost of the returns? Has anyone been able to track this since they started free returns?
I am asking this not because I am thinking about accepting free returns…I’m just curious.

WOW, seems like alot of folks here had awesome sales, great job!
Sales were slow for me this week on ebay, $200 for a sono zp100.
And on mercadolibre it was DEAD, that’s always the way with semana santa holidays, no one is online buying, they are out at the beaches for the 2 week holiday. This happens every year here so it doesn’t freak me out anymore…

Thanks for the show R&J.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 2926
Items Sold: 35
Total Sales: $754
Cost of Items Sold: $96
Average Price Sold: $21.54
Average Cost of Item: $2.76
Highest Price Item Sold: $84.96 Bounty Hunter TR550-D Vintage Metal Detector Coin Finder w/ 6″ Coil – TESTED
Number of items listed this week: 59
YTD Sales: $13798
YTD sales compared to this time last year: -3%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 387
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 185
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 113
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.2%
Hats sold this week: 21 (60% of sales) worth $381.06 (50% of sales $)

Sales were about on par with last year (15% up with 25% more items than this time last year).

I visited a great family-run estate sale on Saturday. I was the first person to find a small table of good cameras priced at $5 – 10 each so I filled a bag. I also picked up an armful of hats and a computer so it was one of my best scores in a while.

I just noticed my seller limits on the seller dashboard. I presume “B” is for billion. This is certainly a lofty goal:

Hope everyone has a great week!

I have a question for Jay and Ryanne. I follow your store and check out your sold items every few days. I noticed only one sold Polaroid part sold a week ago, but you said that you sold $450 worth of equipment. Did you just invoice the guy for the rest?

When a buyer tells me that they want to buy multiple items, I usually ask them to either buy what they want and I will refund the difference in shipping or buy all the items but not pay and ask for an invoice. Not everyone knows how to ask for an invoice, so I end up refunding most of the time.

This is going to be an issue once PayPal starts to keep the fees. I’m thinking I need a new process, and I’d like to know what you guys did.

I had an average week for me:

Week of Apr 14 – 20
* Total Items in Store: 1389 eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 23 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $20.65 + $2 Commission
* Total Sales: $364.04
* Highest Price Sold: $49 Vintage Knox NY Straw Fedora Hat
* Average Price Sold: $15.83
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 12

Things to do list: I have a number of items on auction that ended today. With the exception of a few, I will not be relisting them. They will go to my town’s freecycling event this Saturday.

April 14 – 20
Total Items in Store: 1310
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales : $552
Highest Price: $110 (2 Lacquer Asian Wall Plaques/Pictures)
Average Price: $46
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $52
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 29

Hello all,

Slow week on my end as well. Like Doubly mentioned, the roof is finished! Now we wont have to worry about leaks. And it looks great!
The holiday was nice too, stressful but nice.

No returns on my end but I have a troublesome buyer. Fun, fun! lol
Received a very passive aggressive message about how the package was stolen when it was delivered to their business and that they need a refund. I looked at the tracking and of course it says it was delivered. Sketchy. So I called eBay (Doubly recommended that), eBay rep looked in to it. Said yes the tracking indicates that it was delivered. There was nothing further that I was required to do. Rep recommends me to reply back to the buyer saying to check with there post office with the provided tracking number (in case the post office took the package back with no to drop it off to). The rep reassured me that even if a case was open that they would close it in my favor.
I proceed with sending the message to the buyer. And of course the buyer was super butthurt. Giving me the ol’ “YOU” need to call the post office, that it was my fault for shipping USPS and not UPS (?). That happened on Friday and they of course continued to send me messages of the same nature. But today they threw me a fast ball! They opened a case via PayPal. Currently it’s under review (and still clearly shows that the tracking indicates that it was delivered). I can only laugh at this point because there’s no sense in engaging a person like that.
Happy Human Holiday, hahaha

For those with slow sales, I recommend looking at the Sourcing Guidance section of the Seller Hub. This can be found under the Growth tab.

After having a great March, my sales have been trending downward over the past few weeks. I looked at the main categories I have items listed in using sourcing guidance, and realized that similar sellers are also experiencing a sharp reduction in sales. For my main categories, this will likely go on through July.

I haven’t listed anything in my generalist store in a month. This is a good time to be listing non-niche items!

Thoughts about today’s podcast in regards to the caller asking about how to find inventory when items are scarce/expensive.

My opinion will not be popular, lol….

There are some things you can learn from Youtube and many things you cannot.

Persistence is KEY to this business. In my mind there is never a scarcity thought. There’s no need for it because there will always be valuable stuff to find. As long as people are dying and as long as people are wasteful, there will never be a time when stuff can’t be found. I can guarantee those two types of people/situations will always be part of our culture.

Those that are successful in this business look for buying opportunities outside of thrift stores. Yes I frequent them, but more so elsewhere. Estate sales, yard sales, rummage sales, on the curb for free… if you look for inventory I promise you will find it. Sure it’s work, but this is a career. You’re supposed to work.

If your mindset is of the negative type, you most likely won’t succeed in this business. At the very least, you won’t reach your true potential because negative thoughts attract negative outcomes. If someone has to constantly spoon feed this business to you, this isn’t the business for you. And the reason for this is that your knowledge and the growth of it through trial and error will lead you to finding better products to sell. If you don’t take the initiative to learn/research this stuff on your own, you will be limited in how much you make.

Sorry to be blunt. I’m sort of a make it work kind of human.

Apr 14-Apr 20

Total Items in Store: 3677
Items Sold: 62
Gross Sales: $902.07
Consignor Commission (COGS): $240.03 (26.60%)
Highest Price Sold: $64.90 tabletop curio cabinet
Average Price Sold: $14.54
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 28

I was away for half the week, so excited the store made money even while
we were away. We changed the store to 2 day handling.

Items in Store 1068
Items Sold 9
Total Sales $378.00
COGS $34.00
Total Profit $344.00
Average profit $38.22
Average sales price $42.00
New Listings 0

Terribly slow week. A $180 pair of cordovan shoes saved me.
I did sell a $2800 pinball, but the buyer is having payment issues. I don’t think that one is going to happen so I didn’t inlclude it in my numbers.

We had the baby on Wednesday night. A happy healthy little boy! Needless to say, I haven’t really done much ebay since. I’m working from home for day job today, which is a nice luxury to have. I’ll be able to stay home for a week and a half and I have used only a single day of leave.

Slower week for me as well.
Store: 1400
Sales: 12 items
Sales$ : $600

Alternate platforms:
April Poshmark has been slow for me this month thus far: $200 after fees
April Mercari thus far: $100

Facebook: $80 large doll house, $20 wooden toy box, BBQ grill $150, Ottoman $50. As annoying as Facebook is, it really is nice having cash in hand. I like buying big stuff and this has been fun to pick up more of that.

Some interesting discussion going on today. 🙂

Apr 14-20 2019
Total items in store: Etsy 450 // Ebay 790
Items Sold: Etsy 5 // Ebay 17 // Poshmark 1
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $5.87 // Ebay $54.01 // Poshmark $4.54
Total Sales: Etsy $83.25 // Ebay $212.83 // Poshmark $19 ((Total = $315.08))
Highest Price Sold: $30 Tie between vintage Little People Western Town and a Tolkien Hobbit Record
Average Price Sold: $13.70
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 24 (at $504.36)

Long time weekly listener, I need to post in here more. I was checking my Returns Preferences on eBay, and notice I have “Approve a Return Automatically” turned on. I think my reasoning was that eBay is going to make us accept returns anyway, so why fight it. Is there a benefit to NOT having this turned on?

Thanks, I edited my rules and unchecked any reason that would be my fault. Appreciate it!

Total Items in Store: 277 Ebay, About 50 Mercari
Items Sold: 7 Ebay, 1 Mercari
Gross Sales: $214 Ebay, $15 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $75 + $3 shipping included + one item ours
Highest Price Sold: $95 New Tote Bag (Paid $27 on clearance)
Average Price Sold: $30 Ebay, $15 Mercari
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

Again, grateful for the sales as I’m sick and super busy with non Ebay stuff and contract work. I feel very removed from my Ebay business so glad to be shipping some items out. My store is down from almost 400 items.

Read the Ebay first quarter results and some statements by the CEO. Looks like many sellers are going for promoted listings so revenue was up but sales were down. One wonders if some Ebay sellers going for trending are not really paying attention to fees and the bottom line. IMHO Ebay fee statements are not completely straightforward. Will be interesting how this all flushes out but I’m pleased they haven’t been having all the tech glitches they used to.

Apparently they cut back on advertising in the first quarter and they are not running those flash % off sales so much.

4/14-4/20

Total Items in Store: 2830
Items Sold: 38
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Total Sales: $1238
Highest Price Sold: $93 (Vintage Lee Jeans)
Average Price Sold: $32.57
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $28 (me cash)
Number of items listed this week: 68

Better week than last week. More items sold by 14. Slightly less sales price per item.

Where is podcast #408? I’m dying not listening to my weekly eBay podcast.

We appreciate you and Ryanne, rest and be well

J&R: Glad you are okay. You had me worried. I sound like my mother.

Whew, I was worried about you two! So glad to here you guys are okay!

Thank you for all you do.

YES! THANK YOU!