Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.
Too much work, not enough podcasting!
Sorry y’all, our video job has taken over and is running full steam this week. We hope to be back next weekend with another podcast. For those who love to post numbers, here is a forum link for numbers and conversation below. Have a great week!
Sorry y’all, our video job has taken over and is running full steam this week. We hope to be back next weekend with another podcast. For those who lov [See the full post at: Too much work, not enough podcasting!]
I agree! You two deserve a week off, I was wondering how you manage to pull it off every week! My Monday commute will be a real bummer without you, but I will be looking forward to the next.
Mar 31- Apr 6 2019
Total Items in Store: 3656
Items Sold: 65
Gross Sales: $1343.56
Consignor Commission (COGS): $371.95 (27.68%)
Highest Price Sold: $131 (North Face Parka)
Average Price Sold: $20.67
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 119
Made our 1250 survival goal so happy! On top of that we
reached 2 more goals this week, especially after a really rough,
slow couple of weeks, it is really welcome.
Our two other goals we met were that we listed over our goal of $3000
in items, and second our average price sold was over $19. Ahhhh!
Items in Store 1064
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $320.50
COGS $33.00
Total Profit $287.50
Average profit $16.91
Average sales price $18.85
New Listings 36
I did sell an arcade game (Tron) for $1600 this week outside ebay, but I didn’t include it in my numbers – it skews my data.
I’m getting alot of listings up and sales are not improving. I’ve listed over 30 items a week the last two weeks, and I added a bunch of items to promoted listings. My highest item was $35. Slow sales combined with low dollar sales sucks.
I really need my ebay sales to pick up because I have several house projects I want to do this spring/summer. If I can make enough I will be able to hire out some of them to insure they get done.
You should do a search in your area for barcades or arcades in general. They are popping up all over the place!
This Tron is now available for play at the new StarCade Arcade in Roanoke Virginia. I’m happy that tons of people will get the experience of playing it now.
Hello Jay and Ryanne, some days, and this is one of them, coming to my regular job is like taking a break! Hopefully this Video gig is recharging your mind and soul, and the work translates smoothly into good times!
3/31 – 4/6/19 (Items listed are unique to each platform, no cross listing is done)
I have gone after and achieved my 6 listings a day goal plus a few, and the goal of scavenging creatively and aggressively. So this was a good week for getting processes down, time management, and shopping. Do the work, believe, try to be smart, and the $ should follow.
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 608
Number of items sold: 10
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $347.00
Cost of items sold: $31.50
Consignment payouts $5
Highest price sold: $70 – Vintage new action figure from the 80’s, Rambo line, cost $2.50
Average price sold: $34.70
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $51
Number of new items listed this week: 30
Sell through rate for the week: 1.7
Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 629
Number of items sold: 3
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $75
Cost of items sold: $1
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: $35 – acrylic 1980’s organizer new in box, paid nothing – bonus.
Average price sold: $25
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $49
Number of new items listed this week: 17
Sell through rate for the week: 0.5
Hoping you guys have a chance next week to feed the flock of scavengers that gather here. Thank you for all you have done over the years
Mar 31 – April 6
Total Items in Store: 2153
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales : $1286
* ABOVE yearly average of $904
* BELOW 2018 total week sales of $1,363
Highest Price: $179 (SubZero Refrigerator Replacement Part Louvered Grille Cover)
Average Price: $41
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $96
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $66
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 45
I had another terrific week last week. And I think the key really is just hunkering down and listing your ass off, which I’ve been doing. And I would have listed a lot more except I’d spent a couple days researching, cleaning and polishing up a huge lot of flatware.
We also hit up a tag sale over the weekend. This house where it was held was crazy! It was room after room after room of stuff. A lot of it was priced kinda high, but we were able to dig up a bunch of lower priced items that would make us a lot of cash. My scavenge of the day were these four old anatomy charts made by American Frohse. They’re huge, and in surprisingly ok condition despite being dated 1918. The human skeleton chart is my favorite.
My big sale of the week was another refrigerator part. The thing is, I’ve sold this part three times now. It’s been returned twice for size. I don’t know why people wouldn’t measure their refrigerator prior to buying. Hopefully the third time’s a charm.
Sales: CAD$1097, 8 items
COGS: $424 –> Item profit: $465
Expenditures: $1281 (mostly prepaying my new storage unit for $1015).
Cashflow: -$391
Hours: 5.5, -$102/hr
Notable sales: reel of fibre optic cable $105, this makes me happy because I have about 5 more reels and I got them all for like $5.
Week of 03/31-04/06
Total Items in Store: 3,038 (Up 56% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 129
Number of Items Sold: 93 (Up 24% YOY)
(Includes 1 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 11 Poshmark)
Weekly STR: 13% (Down 4% YOY)
Total Product Sales: $2,881 (Up 55% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $447
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $569
Cost of Items Sold: $504
Cost of Labor: $373
Highest Item Sold: $80 – Ok…believe it or not, we had 4 items at this price, so we are at a tie…
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: We tied the week and Veronica leads for the year 9-6.
New era now…in the 3,000 listing club. Sales staying strong on the dollars side, but still lower than I would like on the Sell Thru Rate. Veronica was killing it with shoes this week.
We were very happy to be able to get 129 new listings done in just 4 days as well. Processes are really coming together!
Often when I take time off, it’s to do other work, too. 😀 Get it!
Listing slowly these past 2 weeks or so, with time being spent elsewhere. Trying to maintain motivation to at least get a thing or two listed each day, even if it’s after other work, or squeezed in between things when I’d really rather be reading, need to clean, etc, etc, etc.
ASP went down last week, though my # of items sold increased. Had at least one day without sales, and one day where my only sale was a sticker, bah! Last week continued the trends of downwards earnings, though Sunday started the new week off strong with 6 sales and a few of them higher dollar ones. Hope to have stronger numbers to show next week!
03/31/19 – 04/06/19
Total Items In Store: 1084
Items Sold: 18
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $343.28
Highest Sold Price: ~$90 multi item order of 3 CB2 carpet/rug samples (great ROI on these; they were less than $1 each at a thrift store, though they’re taking forever to sell)
Average Sold Price: $19.07
Cost of Items Sold: $16.74
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $0
Number of Items listed this week: ~40
March 31 – April 6
Total Items in Store: 1277
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales : $240
Highest Price: $31 (Porter Chemcraft Chemistry Wooden Box)
Average Price: $27
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $11
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $13
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 25
Hi, I hope everyone is doing well!
Slow sales/listing my way but things have picked up for the new week! Piggybacking on Doublythumbs post, we hit up some garage sales and that tag sale he mentioned. That tag sale was interesting. Lots of high end artwork and glass. The house was dated but had lots of rooms, one of the walk-in closets had a full bathroom! Haha, crazy!
At one of the sales I found a lot of Barbie dolls. Apparently they are the 1989 The Heart Family goes to Disney Land. At the tag sale I found some vintage Calvin Klein and Levi jeans.
The same anatomy charts Doubly mentioned I have a few I’ve held on to cause I’m a sucker for Halloween-ish items… I may need to part with mine, lol.
Total Items In Store: 2897
Items Sold: 16 (15 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $ 50
Total Sales: $ 543.00
Highest Price Sold: $ 100.00 (Boots)
Average Price Sold: $ 33.94
# Items Listed: 72
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 20.67
Gut Sales Report for the week: This was a frustrating week. Sales were very slow, had serveral returns, and three shipping issues (not my fault) with the carriers. At least Bonanza has been good lately.
Challenge of the week: I was proud of myself this week. I have been stashing away stereo equipment to test at a later date and then list. Well, here we are 5 years later and here I am doing it. So I have been setting up to test and started testing. Hopefully the stereo equipment will pay off here in the Spring and Summer.
Scavenge of the week: Stopped at my first garage sale of the season. I think these people were in a time warp from 1969. I got 3 ties all from around 1969. I also picked up a lot of travel brocheres all from right around 1969. Must have been a significant year for them. There is one brochere that I really liked (there are 2 of them): Schwinn takes a trip to Disneyland 1966. All of the latest Schwinn bikes from 1966 being shown off at Disneyland. It doesn’t get much cooler than that! I like the Schwinn Fastback String-Ray with the Banana seat. This was another scrat scavenge: I just saw the vintage travel maps and brocheres and bought the whole bag for $4. Turns out this brochere alone can go for some good money.
Strategy of the week\month: Looking at my forecast, I can see this is going to be a very lean month for sales (and I have already started to see that this week). So, I am putting a hold on buying except my local thrift store and garage sales when they finally open. The only other thing I can do is list my way through this and that is what I have been doing this week. I have at least 500 items all set to be listed, so I will have no shortage of items to list. I am going to focus on getting all of my stereo equipment listed and as many other items as I can during this “slow” time.
Yep I have stopped scavenging this month. I need every penny that comes into my paypal account to pay the bills I have designated ebay to pay this month!
This is not as bad as it looks. I took time off to be with my husband. We were gone a lot of the week and I didn’t put much work in earlier. So I’m ok with the results. On the plus end we got to see first hand how beautiful Greenville, SC and Savannah GA are at this time of year. Back at work tomorrow 2 items to ship out.
Total Items in Store: 462
* Items Sold: 3
* Cost of Items Sold: $5
* Total Sales: $63.14
* Highest Price Sold: $29.99 Masters (Golf) Women’s Shirt
* Average Price Sold: $21
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
* Number of items listed this week: 5
Total Items in Store: 320
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $87.00
Cost of Items Sold: $3.00
Highest Price Sold: $35.00 (Oi of San Francisco Olive Pillow
Returns 1 ($31.00)
Avg Price Sold: $29.00
Money Spent on Inventory: $40.00
Number of Items Listed This Week: 20
We spent a lot of time with projects around the house, finishing up toting rocks into a new bed around pool, clearing out stuff in a couple of bedrooms as family may be moving in temporarily. This will put my listing on more of a tight schedule, but it is what it is and we will make the best of it!
My original goal was to hit 500 listings by May, that might be extended until June. We will see how it goes when the family moves in. Some evenings I can list for hours and some evenings I struggle to even get one listing done.
Clearly, I am at a hobby seller status, and if this is going to be a thing that will actually provide a stable income, I will need to reorganize my priorities.
* Total Items in Store: 269 eBay, 55 Mercari
* Items Sold: 4 Ebay, 2 Mercari
* Cost of Items Sold: $20, no free shipping, about half of the items ours
* Total Sales: $460 Ebay, $24 Mercari
* Highest Price Sold: $399 Set of retired Mattel Disney Villans Dolls (Mine)
* Average Price Sold: $115 Ebay, $12 Mercari
* Returns: 0, 1 cracked glass item buyer allowed to keep ($34 loss)
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 0
R&J hope you get a bit of time off at the end of the week to enjoy. It’s so amazing that you have hardly missed any episodes. Save travels.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong with my big sale to an Asian country middleman place. Most of those I’ve had go well but I did have some scammy one and for some reason I have a bad feeling about this transaction. The rest of the week was pretty poor once again. Had kind of a threatening email too on a cracked item mentioning feedback, but after I refunded got “rock solid seller” feedback. Before I could block they bought a similar item in my store. I packed the crap out of it and hope it gets delivered safely tomorrow!
Finished my bookkeeping, taxes, but will continue to be distracted by preparing to renovate my dad’s new condo. Luckily most of that action will be in summer when Ebay sales are already slower usually.
I hear that there is a lot of tv chatter about a recession despite fairly good economic measurements and again, we are in the minority paying a lot more in taxes this year under the new law, so I’m pleased some of you scavengers are still having pretty good numbers despite all of that.
Hope it is a fun job! 🙂 Here are my numbers for the week. Not great.
Mar 31 – Apr 6
Total items in store: Etsy 394 // Ebay 590
Items Sold: Etsy 5 // Ebay 19
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $5.39 // Ebay $74.53
Total Sales: Etsy $44.25 // Ebay $276.79 ((Total = $321.04))
Highest Price Sold: $25 Cashmere sweater
Average Price Sold: $12.35
Returns: 1 for fit
Number of items listed this week: 16 (at $197.60)
Quick Numbers, just another typical week for me. I have been very busy at home. I Hope the video job is going well.
My Store Week March 31-April 6, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1047
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $347.56
Cost of Items Sold: $44.21
Highest Price Sold: $58.49 (Women’s Suit)
Average Price Sold: $26.74
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 14
I had one Bonanza sale this week, my first in quite a while.. a best offer. After sending this guy a new with tags $70 fleece for a steal, he emailed me that the item was stained all over and that he thought it was black. (Pictures were a hunter green, but not black and this item was in no way stained – it was brand new.) I told him to send it back. (I hope he doesn’t!) I am seeing an increase in clothing buyers complaining about items after they receive them for the dumbest reasons and to me it feels like many have been conditioned to throwing a bunch of imaginary “problems” back to see if they can receive partial, or full! refunds and intend to keep the items. Is anyone else seeing an increase in this type of behavior?
I have seen a huge increase in returns, and INADS as well. I have had three buyers return a different item than I had sent them. I do insist they return the items. I am getting to the point now where I need to consider changing my “free returns policy”.
Hello,
First time posting my weekly sales & would like to get it right. Can someone clarify if we are posting our total top line revenue for the week (product sales & shipping revenue) or just product sales. Thank you!
I’m late to the party but here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2860
Items Sold: 35
Total Sales: $752
Cost of Items Sold: $93
Average Price Sold: $21.47
Average Cost of Item: $2.66
Highest Price Item Sold: $49.95 Entex 1/16 Scale Model Kit 1913 Model T Van
Number of items listed this week: 73
YTD Sales: $12063
YTD sales compared to this time last year: -5%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 372
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 212
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 162
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.22%
Hats sold this week: 22 (62% of sales) worth $385.19 (51% of sales $)
This was a pretty typical week, sales-wise. I didn’t have any high value sales so that kept my overall number lower than it’s been recently. No complaints though.
I’m still lagging slightly behind last year. I’m putting as much time as I have available into my ebay biz so I don’t see things changing much unless I try and source different items online.
The company I work at for my day job is having their IPO tomorrow so that’s pretty exciting. I’ve been there several years and I got a lot of cheaply-priced options when I joined. We’re all supposed to try and be in the office by 6:15am (pacific time) to see the opening bell being rung at the New York Stock Exchange by my company.
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