Scavenger Life Episode 408: The In Between Work

Hello!
I’ll be listening at work tomorrow morning!
Accomplished 6 items listed per day goal, and creative/aggressive scavenging goal.

4/21 – 4/27/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 614
Number of items sold: 6
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $332
Cost of items sold: $35
Consignment payouts $0
Highest price sold: $135 – Cool old detonator direct to a ‘famous’ prop master, paid $20
Average price sold: $55.33
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $76
Number of new items listed this week: 26
Sell through rate for the week: 1.0

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 636
Number of items sold: 7
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $185
Cost of items sold: $18
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: $55 – rusty old 15 pound boat anchor, paid $8
Average price sold: $26.42
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $23
Number of new items listed this week: 16
Sell through rate for the week: 1.2

Week of 04/21-04/27
Total Items in Store: 3,190 (Up 56% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 115
Number of Items Sold: 107 (Up 12% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 12 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 15% (Down 7% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $3,219 (Up 21% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $180
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $370
Cost of Items Sold: $609
Cost of Labor: $249
Highest Item Sold: $100 – Cougar Paws Work Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 11-7.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,911
# Sold: 65
STR: 15%
ASP: $25.87

Shoes
# Listed: 689
# Sold: 31
STR: 19%
ASP: $36.94

Hard Goods
# Listed: 590
# Sold: 11
STR: 8%
ASP: $27.48

EBay
# Listed: 3,190
# Sold: 95
STR: 13%
ASP: $27.88

Etsy
# Listed: 232
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0

Poshmark
# Listed: 759
# Sold: 12
STR: 7%
ASP: $40.00

Excellent about the theme this week. The In-Between (not to be confused with the Upside-Down) is where the money is made. And for most of us, that is where the WORK is. And that is also where the money is made. And making solid processes in the In-Between to make that efficient, that is so important when making that leap to full time…

Haven’t listened yet, but will tomorrow morning while I’m packing!

April 21-27, 2019

Store 1
Total Items in Store: 1,699
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales: $571.85
Cost of Items Sold: $51.40
Highest Price Sold: $119.99
Average Price Sold: $33.64
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $81.86
Number of items listed this week: 20

Store 2 (CAD)
Total Items in Store: 935
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $84.94
Cost of Items Sold: $6.75
Highest Price Sold: $26.99 (vintage patch)
Average Price Sold: $14.16
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 12

Amazon.ca sales: $747.00 (CAD) (Approx $224.10 net profit)
Amazon.com sales: $1,940.00 (Approx $582.00 net profit)

All around pretty average week. Maybe slightly slow. Had a few decent sales pull my main store numbers up, and Amazon was working well.

Started listing on Poshmark, just as a trial. No sales/offers yet, but I’ve only listed 12 or 13 things over there so far. Not holding on to a ton of hope, but it would be nice to have an additional income steam/platform working for me.

Soooooooo soffffffffft this week. Even for now considering eBay more of a PT, flex job. My listing went way down last week, while I worked and tired myself out at my other flex job, riding that wave of busy-ness while it lasts. Both jobs involve lots of STUFF, and I’m getting a bit burned out on it all. Perhaps need to go sit in an empty white room, or hike in the middle of the woods or something to get a break!

04/21/19 – 04/27/19
Total Items In Store: 1059
Items Sold: 12
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $263.60
Highest Sold Price: $99 antique knife
Average Sold Price: $21.97
Cost of Items Sold: $17.25
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $27.00
Number of Items listed this week: 0?

Total Items in Store: 270
Items Sold: 2
Gross Sales: $40
Cost of Items Sold: $7
Highest Price Sold: $25 Craft kit
Average Price Sold: $20
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

Reporting to you from the dead zone this week. I’m amazed too about people who have like 3 or 4 kids, work full time and squeeze in Ebay. Hat’s off! I’m getting sandwiched between the older and younger generations through the summer on a reno / relocating project and honestly I have been a little bit on a tv binge lately, which is not like me so maybe to deal with the stress of it all. I guess I’m taking a hiatus from listing (and buying). Might as well make it official. My luck finally ran out this week getting $200 in sales despite that.

Still need to finish the podcast. Thanks for doing it!

2019-04-21 – 2019-04-27

Total Items In Store: 2939
Items Sold: 21
Cost of Items Sold: $ 60
Total Sales: $ 610.35
Highest Price Sold: $ 60.00 (set of baseball bases)
Average Price Sold: $ 29.06
# Items Listed: 14
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 47

Gut Sales Report for the week: Felt like I had a lot of sales (and there were for my store), however I had a very low ASP. But, for this time of year and my lack of listing, this was a good week.

Challenge of the week: One of my vintage trophies that I listed last week sold for $50. That felt good because I was assuming very long tail on those.

Strategy of the week\month: Rummage sale season is here. I usually find good items at these sales.

One of those Guys: I am one of those guys with a full time job, kids, and ebay on the side. Plus, both my girls are in competitive gymnastics. It is off to Kentucky this weekend for the Regional Championship.

Mark S

Good to hear from you guys! I am embarrassed how many times I refreshed your site to see if it was live, the podcast is like a weekly ritual for me now. 🙂
Yes, kids definitely make productivity hard. Most of my ebay stuff happens after our 2 and 6 yo’s are in bed for that reason. I once tried to do my day job from home and it was a disaster. I think I got like 10 minutes of work done all day.

I have to disagree on immediate payment for offers and auctions. At least, keeping other ebay infrastructure constant. Probably 1/3 of my sales involve some sort of prearranged deal on shipping such as a quoted shipping price (overriding the calculated shipping), free shipping, or local pickup. The buyer relies on me to invoice them after sale for the appropriate amount. Ebay would have to make offers more detailed (including specifying a shipping method and cost) before it would work to immediately take that money out of their account. Plus, to be frank, it’s annoying but it’s not really a big problem if 1 item out of my 650 is unavailable for a few days because a buyer flaked. All in the game.

Sales: CAD$1237, 8 items, COGS: $75 –> Item profit: $950
Expenditures: $356 –> Cashflow: $669
Hours: 11, $30/hr after tax
Listed: $2085, 14 items
Notable sales: more voip phones, total of 50 for $375. Maybe should note, this is an experiment with promoted listings that seems to have worked out well. Also a pump probe for $375.

Got some great scavenging in this week. On Saturday I had to haul some stuff to the dump, so I stopped in at the dump thrift store and got a big box of brand new sealed identical remotes for $25. there are 62 remotes and I see lots of solds for USD$10 each. Some lot sales too… so this should be worth $600 at least. Also some random biomedical equipment at surplus for very cheap.

I also snagged 17 Herman Miller chairs for $5 each on Friday, which I posted about elsewhere in the forum. Going back to try to get more today at lunch – fingers crossed. Most of them have tables like for a lecture hall, but I believe the shells alone should be $100+ each. A lot are bright orange and in mostly good shape. In order to make room in the car, I took the first carload to a vintage furniture shop a few blocks away and put them on consignment – we’ll see how that experiment pans out. Yesterday I got 10 more.

I know what you mean about having kids, a job, and eBaying. That’s the story of my life. I’ve been eBaying part time for over 20 years, with pipe dreams every year of “taking it to the next level”. But with a full-time job and an 8 year old son, I lack the motivation to get eBay going. We do enough to keep TRS, but I know we could ramp it up to a legit part time business. We just lack the dedication to devote the hours required for the in between work.

I love my job and it pays well, which lends to the lack of eBay motivation. We don’t need the money to live on, but extra eBay cash would accelerate our debt-free plan. It seems every week my wife and I plan to get our eBay inventory organized and list, list, list. But every week it doesn’t happen. I listen to this podcast religiously, downloading every Sunday night (or Tuesday lol), which keeps the drive alive. We just have to do something different and turn our plans and ideas into actions!

Loved the discussion, especially at the end about auctions and accepting offers. I had a rare My Little Pony item that was the only one I’ve ever seen… I turned down an offer for $100 a few months ago… and it is now listed at $60 and sitting there and no one wants it. Waaah.

You never know when a buyer will refuse your counteroffer and break your heart.

I think there is a certain “shine” a new listing has…once it has been sitting a while the lustre wears off somehow, especially for collectibles.

After having great sales for Jan-Mar, April was a very slow month for me with several days of no sales. I do not know if this had any effect on sales but I’ve heard that a lot of people had either a smaller tax return this year than expected or had to actually pay additional tax because they didn’t have enough deducted in 2018.

Numbers for April 2019

Total Listings: 1006
Had 44 Sales for a total of $791.60
Cost of Items Sold: $107.33
Highest Price Sold: $60 – Expired Polaroid 52 Film
Average Price Sold: $17.99 – Average Cost: $2.44
Spent on new inventory: $80
Number of items listed: 53
Longest Listed Item Sold: Book, listed August 2015
GSP: 1 Canada, 1 England

Items in Store 1091
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $452.00
COGS $46.25
Total Profit $405.75
Average profit $31.21
Average sales price $34.77
New Listings 36

I was right to exclude the pinball sale last week. The buyer was a weird flake and I’m glad he didn’t pay. For some reason the unpaid item case never opened on its own. I’ll be closing it out tonight. Things started to settle into a routine late last week with the new baby and I was able to do some ebay work.
I stopped by a couple yard sales Saturday and at one I bought a HUGE lot of Loving Family dollhouse stuff for $40. It was a desirable dollhouse plus TWO trash bags and a large box full of dolls furniture and accessories. I’ve always done very well with the Loving Family stuff. I didn’t want this stuff sitting around so I pushed it to the front of the line and processed everything this weekend. I already have the majority listed. The hardest part with a lot like this is deciding how to break it up and list it. If you don’t start with a plan you can waste a lot of time getting stuck in research purgatory.
My plan:
1. Sort everything out and remove any non- Loving family “junk”.
2. Research pieces with part numbers to see if they are part of a set.
3. Search through lot to see if I have full sets – group sets together.
4. List separately any high dollar items.
5. Lot up remaining furniture and accessories for auction sales
6. Sort dolls into model years and search for family sets based on year or model numbers.
7. Sell valuable dolls separately, sell complete families or twin sets together.
At this point I went in already knowing a lot about Loving Family and have done bulk buys on it several times so it was pretty easy to blast through it all.
The highlight of this lot was a complete 2002 African American Family set. This is a cool set because the mother and daughter have real hair and the parents each have a baby carrier for the baby and toddler.
Once I am done the total listed value will be over $1k!

Oh and thanks for the tip ‘o the hat. Lol!
5 kids, full time job, kids are homeschooled, coach sports, and a very active ebay business.

How do I do it? That’s simple: There are alot of things that DONT get done consistently.

Being late to things is more the rule than the exception.
We have mountains of unfolded clean laundry paired with similar mountains of dirty laundry.
The house is typically a mess since the kids. Never. Leave…
Yard work…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The neighborhood garden club must hate me.
There are always dirty dishes everywhere.
All of my walls have marker/crayon/pencil marks and also dried substances of unknown origin.
My ebay area is in a barely functional state.
I can’t in good conscience ask guests to take their shoes off anymore because our floors stay dirty.
I don’t scream out in pain anymore when I step on Lego or other small sharp plastic object – I just whimper quietly and die a little more inside. Lol!

Yes, it is very stressful to constantly battle the never ending tidal wave of messes having 5 kids entails. I want to do it all but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. One day We’ll have a clean tidy house and you know what – that will be a sad, depressing day that I do NOT look forward to.

I would not trade my chaotic life with my wonderful children and wife for any other life in the world!

Totals for the MONTH of April 2019. I am mainly a mens clothes seller, free shipping, free returns, 1% promoted listings, no best offer, good till cancelled.
Listings/items at end of month = 3610 / 4104 Total listed value $86141
Items sold = 273 up 32% YOY
$ sold = $7206 up 40% YOY
ASP = $26.40 up 6% YOY
Monthly sell through rate 7.6% (still low but moving up a bit)

Expenses
Postage = $1413.75 (19.6% of gross)
Ebay fees = $937.27 (13.0% of gross) (includes Promoted listing fees of 75 sales totaling $1894.68 ($19.20-8.33 credit = $10.87) 27.5% of items sold/ 26.3% of $ sold) and return labels
COGS = $749.42 (10.1% of gross)
Returns = $327.43 (4.5% of gross)
PP Fees = 284.99 (4.0% of gross)
Total operating expenses = $3712.86 (51.5% of gross)
Total operating profit (my name for it – does not include expenses such as mileage, shipping supplies, depreciation, etc …) $3493.14

Notable sales:
Vtg 50’s Original Clicker Lakeland Car Coat Jacket 40 Brown Wool Talon Zipper (buy price $1.05, Sold 160.00)
Brooks Brothers Mens Seersucker Suit 100% Cotton Blue White Stripe 44R 38W 30L (buy Price $14.00, sold for 129.99)
Vtg GE General Electric Deluxe Toaster Oven Toast-R-Oven T-93B w/ Manual / Racks (buy price $5.30, sold for 129.99

Sales breakdown by price range:
$100+ =3
80-100 = 2
60-80 = 3
40-60 = 17
30-40 = 24
20-30 = 76
10-20 = 168

YTD Items Sold = 1066 (+41% YOY
YTD Gross = $29,144 (+55% YOY)
YTD Net = $14,698.14

Total Items in Store: 1919
Items Sold:30 (Ebay 21 Poshmark 6 Etsy 3)
Total Sales: $943
Highest Price Sold: $149 (Leather Trench)
Returns: 0
Money Spent Inventory This Week: $75

We had a good week. We have been trying to not buy new inventory but we couldn’t resist hitting a couple annual church sales.
The three Etsy sales were all sold to a guy who is a runway designer for Coach! He bought a super cool spy looking trench coat, a vintage windbreaker, and vintage blouse.
I helped a cousin set up her Ebay store a few weeks ago and she is doing great! She is the best “student” because she will go search the internet for answers to her questions before coming to me. 🙂 Her goal is to add $500 a month to help pay off bills. I tried to help my mom set up her store but she isn’t interested in doing that much work. Lol.
Hope everyone is having a great week! Yard Sale season is on!

April 21-27
Total Items in Store: 2256
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales : $1,010
* ABOVE yearly average of $896
* BELOW 2018 total week sales of $1,673
Highest Price: $200 (Antique Dodge 40 Slide Set Bench Vise)
Average Price: $37
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $62
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $435.00
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 38

Great description of the in between work in this week’s podcast. When I started selling on eBay three years ago, I did it as a hobby simply to make a little extra cash. But I soon fell in love with the work, even the in between tasks of photographing, editing, listing and storing. But make no mistake about it… it is work! That’s the reason why you’ve got to sort of flip the switch in your head once you decide to make the commitment to make this more than a hobby. This is no longer hobby work for me. True, I can still have fun just like anyone can have fun at their job. But I had to learn to find discipline on a day to day basis.

I had a great week of sales this week. Weird how polar opposite my weeks have been lately. I made a few notable sales including a very heavy bench vise that I was so glad to get out of my inventory. I had one return for a clock key that didn’t fit. No biggie, those things sell consistently so I’ll just put it back on the market.

This week I decided to put eBay on the back burner in order to focus on the list of projects that I’ve been making for myself. I’ve checked a few off already. Now I’m attempting to install a security camera outside of our house. The initial setup took me about four hours last night, but at least it’s working now. Now to run the wire from our garage to the basement…fun!

Selling online is mostly in between work, the fun of scavenging is maybe 20% of the time…

Week of Apr 21 – 27
* Total Items in Store: 1361, eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 9 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $24.25 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $160.80
* Highest Price Sold: $24 Technical book on airplane performance
* Average Price Sold: $17.87
* Returns: 1 + refund on damaged glass
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 20

Pretty crappy week. Not much to say about it. My township did have their freecycling day on Saturday. I brought extra stuff from auction lots that I didn’t want plus I added in some items that I took out of my inventory.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Sharyn.

Just finished my 4th month selling on ebay. I have done pretty well I think but need to continue to find time to scavenge. I do a good job at getting all my items posted quickly once I get them. March was a great month for me but I expect to me near the $500 dollar range in sales. My goal is to sell around $1000 a month and that is good with me having full time job and young children.

April 1 to April 30th

DunnSell Ebay Sales Report

The average price sold is: $23.37

The total money received is: $561.01

Max Item Sold For : $54.00 (Monster Energy Ken Block t-shirt sold 4/30/19)

Items in store is 291 end of April.

Month and Sales
Jan $376
Feb $310
Mar $838
Apr $561

I am usually a Buy It Now with Best Offer unless I know for certain it is a sought after Collectible. (I had a $4 Yo-Yo sell for $160!) However after having a Designer Watch (Tommy Bahama) sell 30 minutes after posting for full price, I tried a Watch auction. Now I really hope now the Winner doesn’t pay (2 days so far) because they are getting a New in Box (battery replaced) $135.00 MSRP Watch for $20.50! I don’t know if ebay still does Reserve pricing because I don’t use that feature – I feel that if you need to have a Reserve Price, just do Buy It Now….

Hi….this is my first time contributing the conversation! I’ve followed you guys for at least 3 plus years and LOVE your podcast and website. I wanted to share my numbers with you, cause I had a great 10 day span. (Great for me anyway!) My goal is to get to an average of $1400 per week. I also wanted to see if anyone else knows about the baby OSHKOSH overalls craze?! I listed a pink 24 Month Oshkosh overalls and I had over 12 people (alot of them from Oregon?!) send me offers. I finally settled at $35….but I think I sold it for too cheap! There are some of them going for $200 plus!! Not sure what the deal is with them!?

April 18 to April 28th sold apx $1210
Items in Ebay Store 2995
Highest item sold …. Antique dress form $325
# Items sold …. 34
Avg price sold ….35

Thanks for the podcast this week. Monday wasn’t the same without you. I checked the forums several times on Monday wondering where you were.

Here are my numbers for last week
Total Items in Store: 2972
Items Sold: 44
Total Sales: $1151
Cost of Items Sold: $148
Average Price Sold: $26.15
Average Cost of Item: $3.37
Highest Price Item Sold: $119.95 Suzuki QChord QC1
Number of items listed this week: 90
YTD Sales: $14949
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +1%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 377
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 183
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 96
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.48%
Hats sold this week: 26 (59% of sales) worth $493.61 (42% of sales $)

I had a very good week last week. I suspect this week will end up being much quieter but we’ll see.

I didn’t see anything in the Seller Update that impacts me in any way. Maybe that’s a good thing and I should be grateful.

Your comments about the in-between work and YouTube are spot on. Nobody shows the hours/days that have to be put into listing stuff. That’s definitely the hard work.

Hope everyone has a great week!

items sold: 33
Sales: $1,007 (i don’t include shipping revenue)
average selling price: $30.51
cost of goods: $125.40
returns: 1 requested (sounds flaky, 50-50 they keep item)
purchases: $332.79
store listings: 981
inventory $ risk: $3727
listed this week: 45
ebay hours: 31
what’s on my mind: Not much.

Great podcast. The “in between work” indeed. My sniping sometimes introduces me to those new sellers who are obviously struggling to keep up on the in between work. Unfortunately I may contribute to their demise as it often seems they’ve gone out of business when I go back to see what else I might get from them for dirt cheap.

Noteworthy, I thought, about the new seller update: it appears that many new subcategories will be added in the Business & Industrial and Restaurant & Food Service categories in June. I would have to assume that is to accommodate a significant increase in listings in those categories. I guess I still have not wrapped my head around the concept that the commercial world has really taken to the land of used shoes for B2B trade, despite reading Simplicio’s many useful contributions to the forum illustrating that. Home Improvement and Food & Beverage are expanding, too.

Message we received today…

Good Morning,

These shoes are not going to work for me so I am going to resell them. You took such good pictures of them, may I copy and use your pictures for my ad?

That was a first. At least she asked!

April Monthly Numbers
39 sales (lowest # of sales in the past year)

$ sold (minus shipping): $1130 (not as bad as Feb but still not good)

Per sale average: $28.98 (2nd highest month ever because of a couple high dollar items, see below)

cost per item average: $4.59 (about average for me)

Biggest Sales: I got an offer from a seller for $150 for the covered vegetable dish that is discussed in this “What is it” thread here. It was the same person I mentioned who offered me $100 a month earlier.

Also sold a Sirius radio Sportster Replay device that allows you to pause/resume live radio in your car. It was an open box unused item at Goodwill for $20, but comps were in the $75 and up range. I listed it for $95 and sold it in less than 48 hours.

My third highest item of the month is really for Jay. I bought 11 boxes of vintage chalk for $4.00 at a independent thrift near my full time gig, and sold them in a week for $50! Yay to vintage chalk, pencils and markers!

Also as a bonus, all of these high dollar items I’ve already received positive feedback on which is great. No breakage or returnage!

Items in store peak for month: 850, If I can list 10 items a weekend I feel good right now. Can’t wait until summer when I can tackle some death piles.

Returns/Refunds : 0. That was a bright spot.

Customer issues: 0. Also fortunate.

Sourcing: Mostly thrift stores, some good possibilities including a few items that I bought for less than $5 and will be listing for $150+. Did some eBay sourcing and might 3x or 4x that sale once I piece out the items (Playing Card Decks). I hope all of those purchases pan out. Pretty much not buying anything I can’t make $20 profit on unless it is an easy new in box item, or a group of items. And I’m seeing this strategy pay off in my item sold average going up a bit the past two months.