Scavenger Life Episode 430: Subsistence Scavenging

Hi Everyone!

My name is Anna and I was the first caller on this Podcast. I just wanted to officially say Hi to everyone! 🙂

My Ebay Store name is “Something Fantastic”. I mentioned I sell new beauty products. What I do is online arbitrage. I source from anywhere I can find great deals on beauty products, but I am mostly sourcing from Ulta. You have to be very creative and do a lot of hunting to make it work, but with their generous reward points program and free gifts with purchases you can find deals that work well. I have been able to ramp up fast by putting all my profits back into inventory.

I know Jay loves numbers. So here are some of mine:

View post on imgur.com

I love selling Beauty Products because they don’t take up a lot of space to store (and makeup and skincare is fun to me). I am a single mom of a 1 year old living on Social Security, and I am hoping to get off of it soon because of Ebay. I want to sell on Amazon but I am unsure if I can because I don’t source my items wholesale, only just from online retail.

Anyway nice to meet all of you!

Hi guys, nice day for a Sunday podcast. I was home with the kids today, and 3 feet of snow has fallen. They were throwing snowballs with neighbourkid all day. Not summertime anymore, but the living is still easy.

I had an appointment with a tax accountant on Friday. It looks like I am going ahead with an LLC based on the following considerations (not sure to what extent these apply for Americans):

-In an LLC, profit is taxed at ~15% until it is paid to the shareholders. When this happens, the shareholders pay income tax at a rate that is basically their marginal rate minus the 15% (to prevent double taxing).
-In practice, this means if I can avoid sucking all the profits out for personal use, I have a huge tax savings/deferral (~$10k with my numbers), which can then be rolled into inventory or anything else. It incentivizes growing the business, in essence.
-There are other benefits related to liability but for ebay I think these are nonstarters. If you’re gonna do it, it’s about the taxes only.
-Lots of possibilities related to income splitting with my wife, and playing with deduction timing to reduce taxes.
-Drawbacks:
-$1100 setup cost (can be less if you DIY but I don’t have time)
-$2000/yr tax accountant fees (too complicated for most to DIY)
-Have to set up separate accounts for business vs personal, with associated minor fees. However, taking money out of these accounts is as simple as a bank transfer, there’s no paperwork till tax time when you state your personal income from your LLC.
-Accountant recommended, for income splitting, that if I’m going to pay income out of the LLC to my wife as the lower-income shareholder, she may have to be able to prove her involvement in the business in an audit situation. So we’ll have to get her a basic understanding of it in case anyone quizzes her. (He said technically this is even true now, as I have it set up as a partnership).

I see it as a risk of $2000/yr accountant fees (if we do end up bleeding the business white all the time for personal use), versus an available deferral of $10k in taxes a year.

One thing I like is the idea of using the corp as a savings account, where I sock away quite a bit of cash and pay it to us when our marginal rates are low (mat leave, lost my job, etc). Basically, I can pay myself a salary when I need it and grow when I don’t.

There is one other benefit, which is that I may want to start an LLC anyway to do consulting later in my career, so this way it’s already set up.

I had a good week on ebay.

Sales: CAD$1699, 11 items, COGS: $186 –> Item profit: $1253
Expenditures: $221 –> Cashflow: $1218
Notable sales: security camera $700.

Sept. 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 2501
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales : $1101
* Above yearly average of $943
Highest Price: $150 (Bombay Co. Cherry Wood 7 in 1 Game Board Set)
Average Price: $41
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $63
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $771
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 14

I had an awesome week of sales this time around. Hopefully this means that things are picking up again going into the fourth quarter. I didn’t do a ton of listing, but I knew I wouldn’t. We had two auctions to go to plus I’m replacing a section of wall on the side of my house so my time was limited. I’m hoping to get back on the listing train this week.

The auctions were both kinda lousy. The Thursday one was two hours away and was about 90% glassware which I have no interest in. I manage to buy some box lots but there wasn’t anything that stood out. The Saturday auction was a little better but the auctioneer stopped halfway through because there weren’t enough people there to bid. I’ve never seen that happen before. I was really peeved because there was a big box of old photo slides that I would have bid on. But my score of the week came from a set of photo albums that I paid $125 for, but are filled with a few hundred original WW2 photographs. I should make bank on those.

Tomorrow I’m going to finish siding the wall and get back to listing flatware. Flatware sales have slowed down for me these last few months, but it’s still a nice little pipeline.

Total Listings: 232
Items Sold: 11
Gross Sales: $285.01
COGS: $26.00
Highest Price: $50.00 (ephemera)
ASP: $25.91
New Inventory Purchased:$90.99
New Listings: 18

Another great week overall, though there were lots of low-dollar ($15-$25) items. I also did a ton of listing.

As my store and sales have grown in the last few months, I’ve made several unforced errors with shipping. I finally admitted to myself that I need to tighten up my process so I can be more focused and efficient. This weekend I re-organized my work area to be more organized and ergonomic, and I’m practicing a better routine for pulling, packing, and labeling orders.

There’s a great thrift store in my neighborhood that I hit up at least once a week. I’ll go weeks without finding anything there, then hit the jackpot. This week they had a small cache of books and ephemera that were obviously another dealer’s castoffs. I spent about $70 on 13 items, which I’ll price for between $15 and $125. I got over half of them listed over the weekend, and two sold already.

Items in Store 1259
Items Sold 15
Total Sales $614.00
COGS $38.00
Total Profit $576.00
Average profit $38.40
Average sales price $40.93
New Listings 55

September is looking to be very soft for me, which is disappointing. This week was scary dead until yesterday – I had $402 in sales on Sunday. $235 of that was a single item.

The $235 item was a musical instrument called an Omnichord. I picked it up 2 weeks ago at a yard sale for $3. Sold it to a buyer in Sweden.

My kids are really becoming interested in ebay work so they can make money. My 12 year old is doing excellent with photos. Now my 9 year old sees her making cold hard cash so he wants in too! He is learning how to clean shoes.

With all this new help I want to push this fall to hit 2000 active listings. Once we hit our groove we should be able to put out 100 listings a week.

Week September 22-28, 2019

Total Items in Store: 1044
Items Sold: 14 (2 Discogs)
Cost of Items Sold: $301.49 (32.7% of sales)
Total Sales: $921.93
Highest Price Sold: $249.99 (2007 Eddie Vedder Into the Wild – Sealed)
Average Price Sold: $65.85
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $982
Number of items listed this week: 41
Promoted listings test: 4 sales, $107.98 (11.7% of total sales), $5.15 fees (4.8% of sales)

Pretty good week, low number of sales but a lot of quite high dollar pieces. Outside of my high dollar sale, also sold Dark Side of the Moon master recording for $110, Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers for $80, Alice in Chains promo for $120, and a Polaroid Land Camera for $80.

Of course with all of those high dollar sales my COGS were pretty high too, but still makin’ money.

Got a good bit listed throughout the week. Tried something new, listing 5-6 things a night after dinner instead of trying to do 20-30 things on Saturday. Worked out pretty well as I got some death boxes listed and also some really high dollar things up as well.

Listening to the Podcast and of course taking notes on ideas and things to check out later. Pirateship was interesting to me as I sell a lot of heavy pottery and stuff and it is very expensive from here in Iowa to either coasts. I currently offer a choice to my customers of Priority or Parcel select to help defray the cost so I wondered how would you include the Pirateship option so that your customer would benefit from it and thus increase the likelihood of a sale? I have looked around the forums and didn’t see anything and wondered has it works or how you actually use it.
Thank you, Theresa at Thingsbotholdandnew

Hi all,
First post here… I have been scaling up since January and the podcast has been soooo helpful. I’m selling mostly clothes on ebay. I’m hoping to go full time in the next year or so. The T.Dot and Jay numbers episodes were eye opening. Highly recommend Pirate ship for heavier objects. Here are last weeks numbers…number of items sold stayed the same but dollars went down… no big ticket items sold.
-camp mocs

Items in Store: 615
Items sold: 19
Gross Sales: $328
COGS $40
Highest Price Sold:$35
Average Price Sold: $17.26
New Inventory Costs: $291

I sold my first $100+ item on Etsy this past week! I actually wasn’t expecting to ever sell the piece I had listed (too weird and high-priced), but it sold within 3 months for full-asking price. Went overseas.

One of the nice things I’ve noticed about Etsy is no one will haggle you on price. I’ve also never had to run a sale on that platform. For Ebay, I have to send offers everyday and ignore additional pleas for discounts. Sales run 1-2x a month. Meh.

I need to get more items listed for Q4 on Etsy, but I’m listing 20-50 items a day on Ebay as it is. Can’t believe tomorrow is already October. No matter how much time you prepare for Q4 (I’ve been sourcing and listing steadily since early July), there is still not enough time.

Hello! My name is Rick, ( not Ricker, can not edit my profile name dammit lol), and I have been a casual part time seller on eBay for just under 14 years..Early this year, I decided to make this a full time endeavor, and just went full time 2 weeks ago! I sell 100% clothing & footwear only and have a business model of a very high ASP with less inventory, and it has been working out perfectly for my lifestyle. Enough about me, this post is my feedback on Pirateship and how it has been the best business decision that I have made thus far..

I began using Pirateship on the 1st of May, 2019 so have 5 months of experience with the platform..Here are some of my thoughts:

1- Most importantly (and often missed) is that as soon as you sign up, you MUST IMMEDIATELY SEND THEM A MESSAGE IN THEIR MESSAGE BOX ASKING THEM TO ADD YOU TO THEIR “SIMPLE EXPORT RATE PROGRAM”…Their customer service is impeccable, and they will do this instantaneously…this must be done, or you will not get the global shipping discount rates for USPS International 1st Class..

2-Pirateship will generally only save you the most on USPS International 1st class, and on USPS domestic priority..If you are using USPS flat rate boxes, eBay will be less expensive..If you are shipping domestic 1st class, eBay will often be the same price…they also offer a service called “box in a bag”, which I have never used so can not attest to the potential savings..

3- The type of domestic USPS Priority that is exclusive to Pirateship is called USPS Cubic Priority…what differentiates this method from eBay, is that on a poly mailer, you only need to include two dimensions, rather than 3…just the length & the width of the mailer, and never the girth..

4- When using the cubic priority poly mailer method, your poly mailer must be sealed as it would naturally seal, and you can not use the poly mailer as a wrapper, and then tape over the mailer with normal tape..For example, about 80% of my footwear will fit into a 12 x 15 poly mailer, and seal perfectly..for larger sized footwear, you will need a larger mailer, I use a 17 x 11..

5-If you are concerned about sending footwear in poly bags because it does not offer protection, that would be unjustified..For years, I only used USPS shoe boxes, which adds another 5 ounces to your shipping weight, often putting you over the next price threshold for priority..I bubble wrap my shoes, and then double poly bag them into the 12 x 15 bags, and still have perfect feedback..I have also used this method for 1st class International for both high end footwear, and sport coats without issue..

6- The savings are the best part of Pirateship, I mean I am making so much more money on every sale, that it is just mind blowing! I reside on the West Coast of Florida, and the largest % of my shoe sale s go to California..The most that I pay for a pair of shoes to California, under 4 pounds priority, is , ready for this???????? $8.92!!!! With my top rated seller discount on eBay, it would still cost me around $14.50 or more..now with International first class, the savings is also crazy! I have best offer on my listings, and the 1st thing that I do upon receiving a decent offer, is to click on the user’s id to see which country they reside in..I will often accept offers based on the seller’s Country, as on my last sale to Canada, I made over $15.00 additional profit on the shipping, so this is a huge benefit..

7- International sales for me have literally exploded in huge multiples since I got rid of GSP and upgraded my business policies to International 1st class only..In the past, I rarely got International sales, and when I did, they were to an APO, or to a Canadian buyer asking me to ship a different method..I do realize that getting rid of GSP is controversial for some, and especially for those that sell a lot of hard goods, but you could still offer both, ,and are also able to purchase Insurance on Pirateship which still comes out way cheaper after your discounts…

So I have hopefully shed some proverbial light upon the platform, and will share now with you my average costs using the platform…Keep in mind that I sell 100% clothing & footwear, ,and the majority of my items are under 4 pounds, and I only offer priority domestically or domestic 1st class, and only International 1st class for the rest of the mundo..I hope that this helps shed some light over what the buzz is all about, thanks for reading..

Avg. Domestic
$8.54

Avg. International
$16.95

1. California – 20% – 9 shipments – $8.53 avg

Week of 09/22-09/28
Total Items in Store: 3,353 (Up 24% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 52
Number of Items Sold: 96 (Up 3% YOY)
(Includes 2 Etsy, 8 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 15% (Down 2% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,701 (Up 8% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $81
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $114
Cost of Items Sold: $526
Cost of Labor: $0
Highest Item Sold: $60 – Calvin Klein Sport Coat
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 22-18.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,892
# Sold: 65
STR: 15%
ASP: $25.74

Shoes
# Listed: 878
# Sold: 21
STR: 10%
ASP: $33.39

Hard Goods
# Listed: 583
# Sold: 10
STR: 7%
ASP: $32.71

EBay
# Listed: 3,353
# Sold: 86
STR: 11%
ASP: $27.10

Etsy
# Listed: 214
# Sold: 2
STR: 4%
ASP: $18.94

Poshmark
# Listed: 925
# Sold: 8
STR: 4%
ASP: $41.63

Low listing week since the photographer was gone, and we spent some time on other projects as well as getting the clothing studio back into operation (and I’m out of practice!). But 2 items already sold, so it was worth it to have going again.

Store keeps humming…

I recently received an email from eBay saying that they were changing my default shipping time to 1-day since I consistently ship within that timeframe. This would only affect listings that I would start from fresh, which I never do. However, I have business policies set, so the point is mute from the getgo. I’m the only one working my business, so I don’t need the stress of 1-day shipping.

Week of Sept 22 – 28
* Total Items in Store: 1464 eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 21
* Cost of Items Sold: $19.85 + $2 Commission
* Total Sales: $310.22
* Highest Price Sold: $25.46 tie between set of wine tumblers & NWT Tommy Bahama pants
* Average Price Sold: $14.77
* Returns: 1
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $23
* Number of items listed this week: 32

On Thursday, I went to an auction where they had more than a whole room set up to sell off someone’s collection of bar related items. Initially, the bids were close to eBay prices, so I waited. I find that prices go down after a time with large collections. People buy what they want, and then they slow down or go home.

I initially bought three box lots of pitchers together for $10. I wanted electrical lights, mirrors, trays, etc., but those were selling higher, and the pitchers were going very cheap. Then, people stopped bidding on them. They put together what was essentially eight box lots, and I finally gave in for another $10. It was such a large lot that people actually clapped!

I now have about 100 pitchers with logos from different brands of scotch, whiskey, gin, and whatever alcohol companies to wash and photograph. (I think a few are bottles or mugs). I’m sure that many will be in the $10 to $15 range, but there will be a few that will go for $20 and up. Long tail items for sure, but the $23 (including premium) investment should net me at least $1000 (might take years though).

Totals for the MONTH of September 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 = 4189 / 4710 Total listed value $102,064
Items sold = 345 up 0% YOY
$ sold = $9164 Up 0% YOY
ASP = $26.56 Up 8% YOY
Monthly sell through rate 8.2%

Expenses
Postage = $1,889 (20.6% of gross)
Ebay fees = $1,046 (13.0% of gross) (includes Promoted listing fees of 79 sales totaling $1967 ($19.67-8.33 credit = $11.34) 22.9% of items sold/ 21.5% of $ sold) and return labels
COGS = $935 (10.1% of gross)
Returns = $356(3.9% of gross)
PP Fees = 367 (4.0% of gross)

Total operating expenses = $4593 (50.1% of gross)
Total operating profit (my name for it – does not include expenses such as mileage, shipping supplies, depreciation, etc …) $4571

Notable sales:
Lot of 26 Dress Shirts Brooks Brothers Ralph Lauren LL Bean(buy price $63.70, sold for $358.62)
Lot of 3 Selena Quintanilla Full Set of 15 Official 1999 Q-Productions Stickers Tejano (buy Price 33 cents each set – got over 60 sets!!!, sold 3 sets for $128.97)
USGI Mens Leather Boots ICWB Belleville Gore-Tex Lined Black Sz 10.5 W 10.5W FS!(buy price $12.99, Sold for $99.99)
Stuart McGuire Shell Cordovan Plain Toe Blucher Burgundy Leather Oxfords 10 D (buy price $3, sold $99.99)

Sales breakdown by price range:
$100+ 2
80-100 = 3
60-80 = 16
40-60 = 31
30-40 = 40
20-30 = 115
10-20 = 138

YTD Items Sold = 2523 (+17% YOY)
YTD Gross = $64,584 (+21% YOY)
YTD Net = $32,634

Love my $5 Dyno printer! It is an old one so it only prints the long labels (2.75 x7?) but is speeding up my shipping!

Store: steve-list
Numbers for Sept. 2019

Total Listings: 1053
Had 45 Sales for a total of $886.11
Cost of Items Sold: $103.48
Highest Price Sold: tie – $50 B. Picart Engraving / $50 Peen Fishing Reel
Average Price Sold: $19.69 – Average Cost: $2.29
Spent on new inventory: $137
Number of items listed: 52
Longest Listed Item Sold: Listed August 2016 – Graphic Novel
International Sales: 2 GSP France/Malaysia & 1 non GSP to England
Issues: 1 return and 2 cancellations

My numbers are about the same as last month. Scavenge of the month, a Peugeot 301 bike (probably keep) and 229 various sealed VHS tapes (mostly in 4, 6 and 10 packs) for $20.

Posting my monthly numbers for September. I’m a part-time UK Etsy seller, I’ve converted my numbers from GBP to USD.
 
SEPTEMBER 2019
Total items in store: 1275
Total sold: 49 (29 UK, 10 USA, 6 Europe, 4 rest of world)
Total sales: $1,795 (excludes shipping)
Average selling price: $36
Money spent on new inventory: $243
New items listed: 75
 
A good month for us. I’ve ignored the Etsy free shipping nonsense, and carried on charging for postage and packaging. I don’t think our sales have suffered. Our highest priced order in September was 3 mirrors ($360) – with the American buyer paying $122 to have them shipped.
I’ve got a big backlog of unlisted stuff to get through. There’s a way to go of slow and sporadic growth till we reach a ‘steady state’.
I’ve also been wondering what my numbers would look like if all my stock was listed on Ebay rather than Etsy.

Wow, that pirate ship tip is for real.

Just checked out the cubic price and the caller was spot on.

I wonder if this isn’t competitive woth UPS Simple Rate roll-out?

Whoever it was that left that message….good job outta you.

Regarding promoted listings; I have a basic store and I am supposed to get a $30 quarterly credit on promoted listings. You really have to keep on top of Ebay as I just found out. They did not give me two quarters worth of credits. I had to call in to get that taken care of. So you have to keep on top of them on credits of any kind. Also it seems like the 10% discount applied to final value fees for top rated sellers comes out to about 5% in reality.

As far as is the Promoted listing fee worth it. I’m like Jay, I’m not sure. I just try to keep it at around $30 a quarter and if I start going over that I pause all my promoted listings.

Another solid month, 2nd best this year. I finished the summer having listed just under 400 items and I’m pretty pleased with that.

Total Listings in store: ~875
Items Sold: 62
Net Sales: $2008 (2nd month ever over $2K!)
Highest Price: $130 (FreeStylin’ BMX Magazine Nike cross promo book, bought for $7 at Goodwill)
per sale avg: $32.38
Returns: Got the one return back, and had to give a partial refund as person who said there was a piece missing in an item – did get positive feedback from that buyer though so that was good.

Went thrift store hopping this weekend and got a bunch of cool things, no home runs, but a lot of doubles and triples! Those pay the bills also now I have to find time to list them.

Hope everyone’s store is warming up and the weather gets cold and we hit holiday season!

thanks for the warm welcome! @t-satt Yea I have ton of t-shirts and shorts… been trying to beef up my sweater/ outerwear for q4. Last week was oddly slow. Sales have been cranking so far this week.

Hi @t-satt – What am I doing wrong when calculating STR?

I thought the formula was Sold/total items? Using your weekly post: 96/3353 = 2.9% What am I missing? Thanks!

Sorry I’m late….it’s been one of those weeks.

Week Sept 22-28, 2019

Items in store: 4446 Listings for 6343 Items
Items Sold: 85 transactions for 98 Items
Gross Sales: $5870.80
Highest Price Sold: $230 …. Florsheim Shell Cordovan wingtips
Lowest Price Sold: $7.50….Tie
Average Sale Price: $59.90
Cost of Goods Sold $339, Plus consignment payout, roughly $840
Number of new items listed this week: 74 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $747
Repeat Customers: 11
International: 29%

Scavenges of the week.
Florsheim Shell Cordovan Wingtips, $9, sold for $230 in under 12 hours.
Burberry Norfolk Jacket. $6
Brooks Brothers Black Fleece Sport Coat. $6
Schott “Cycle Rider” leather jacket. $25
NWT Massimo Dutti Lambskin Leather jacket $10

Just barely missed my $30K gross sales goal for September by $721. On the other hand I did beat my prior record month by $160.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.

Sales: 10, 9 Ebay, 1 Poshmark
Total $: $366 before fees and some shipping
Cost of Goods: Approx. $20. Many items were from low cost lots
Highlights: I sold an unopened Lexmark laser printer cartridge over $100, cleared about $80 after shipping. I had received an offer about two weeks ago, and we couldn’t come to a middle ground. Glad I knew the comps and held out.
I sold some more baseball hats and more autographed books. Most sales have been from offers, but a couple were straight Buy It Now purchases.
Sourcing: None. I have too much to list.
Listing: A couple of music boxes and a few coats. I also cross-posted a few items from Poshmark to eBay.

We got some bad news about one of the family cars, so I’m trying to stay focused on listing and making deals.