Scavenger Life Episode 327: Dealing With Stress Traveling, In Life and On eBay

Great podcast, guys! I’m so sorry about the gasoline scare. I wouldn’t have known what to do. I prefer not traveling because it is stressful, even when you are having a good time, but sometimes it’s just worth it. You reminded me how thankful I am that I almost always travel with my husband who handles all the worries for me. I hate traveling alone. You two have a wonderful trip while you make oodles of $$$!

This seems like a very interesting topic. I hope you’re getting time off – vacation is supposed ot be relaxing!!!

Week September 10-16, 2017

Total Items in Store: 924
Items Sold: 22 (5 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $106 (13.2% of sales)
Total Sales: $802.33
Highest Price Sold: $129.99 (Chanel Precision Ultra Correction Eye Revializer NIB)
Average Price Sold: $36.47
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $60
Number of items listed this week: 20
Promoted listings test: 10 sales, $305.44 (38.1% of total sales), $16.10 fees (5.3% of sales)

Another good week. The big sale of the Chanel cosmetics I believe it the last item I had left from that high end cosmetics cache I bought earlier this year. Based on my calculations, bought the lot for $250 and sold everything for just a hair under $1100 gross. I was shooting for $1500, but I’ll take it.

Other big day was Wednesday when a buyer from Canada bought 7 records for $195 (+$40 shipping) – COGS for those particular albums was right around $15.

Picks were pretty limited, but excited about a bag of MacBook Pro cords & adaptors I got from a friend. He had gotten most from his office so had little to nothing invested in them and is in the process of changing jobs, so I told him I’d give him $30 for the bag of ’em. Turned out to have 17 total pieces, several chargers and some AV adapters. Hoping to get $350 for them.

Some other listings included some pieces my aunt gave me, that were actually my grandfather’s. My grandfather’s brother, Virgil Cantini, was a prominent artist in the greater Pittsburgh area and even got some national recognition. In the mid-century enameling collecting circles, he’s incredibly well known and highly collectible. There’s a lot of his work in my family’s homes, so not really worried about selling these few pieces.

Sept 9-15 2017

• Total Items in Store: 845
• Items Sold: 16 Total (15 eBay / 1 Bonanza )
• International 1 via GSP
• Total Sales $1540 ($1510 eBay / $30 Bonanza)
• Highest Price $480 Carver power amplifier
• Average Price Sold: $96
• Returns: 1 Polaroid camera changed mind
• Cost of Items Sold: $272
• Cost of items purchased this week $75

The Polaroid rainbow camera buyer asked to return a week after receiving it claiming they found one cheaper, that’s fine return it.
Another week went buy and just before I was to call eBay to close the return I get a return shipment notification. It arrived safe and sound.
I hope they got another real cheap as this cost them shipping and a 20% restock fee.
Maybe they just wanted to rent it.

Thank you for mentioning the link rule! I just got one today where I linked to a wiki article in case someone wanted to see the bands at this certain festival that the shirt was from. I just copied and pasted it. It took me a few minutes to understand what the hell they were talking about, but I eventually figured that the wiki article with links was causing it. I fixed it as well as possible but it’s still throwing up errors, so we’ll see.

Wonder Lister Alert!!!

I got an email from ebay yesterday stating “Immediate action required. Remove active content and/or contact information from your listings”. This was for 1968 of my 2100 listings. I don’t have any contact information in my listings and I don’t have any active content so I wondered what this could be talking about. I took a look at one of the listings they mentioned and saw the Wonder Lister logo and url and then it struck me that is what they meant.

I called ebay, they said yes, that is it. If you don’t remove the logo, all 1968 listings will be taken down 7 days from the day of the email. I said I can’t do all these by hand, so they gave me Wonder Lister’s phone number. I called them today and they confirmed. So, what I had to do was download the current version of Wonder Lister – version 2.00.25. Then you have to highlight all of your listings and then right click. Select “Remove Wonderlister Logo” and then kick it off. It takes about 3 seconds per listing.

So, if you use Wonder Lister, jump on this or your listings may be taken down.

Mark

Oh, I see now that this was mentioned in the 3rd paragraph attached to this podcast. It just hit home with me because of the Wonder Lister issue related to this that I would not have thought of.

Sept 10 – Sept 16, 2017
Total Items in Store: 355
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $23
Total Sales: $617.51 (excluding selling costs)
Highest Price Sold: $275 (European equestrian themed toile fabric)
Average Price Sold: $26.84
Returns: 0
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50.98
Number of items listed this week: 19

The week ended with a bang with a nice offer on some fancy fabric, and is my highest sale to date. Sales were all over the place, but a couple extra high days evened things out. I continue to notice that kid clothes are selling extra well during this back to school time, a couple items even sold the next day after listing them. I ran sale after sale this week and that seemed to help keep movement going in my small store. I’m continuing to get a better handle on what I like to sell, which are also things that I don’t mind holding onto for a long time and things that I won’t go too low on. Auctioning off for a very low price is now mainly happening if I’ve found flaws with an item after getting it home.

Love to hear about your travels Ryanne & Jay, you guys are my heroes. I love to travel too, but it also has its share of anxiety for me as well, prepping and really all throughout the trip. On a reseller video I watched awhile back, it was mentioned that there is a faction at least, of resellers who have anxiety of some kind, like it’s a common thread. That made a lot of sense to me, and I identify with that. I work best primarily on my own, and have figured out later in life, that I’ve always had some social anxiety. So reselling work actually suits me better than pretty much any job I’ve ever had. I think it’d be important for young people, people in general, to not only know what work interests them, but to also be honest and in touch with what type of work environment is the best match to their true nature (alone, w/ others, in an office, outside, casual, more professional, supervisor, not supervisor, etc..)!

RR Store Week Sept 10-16, 2017

Total Items in Store: 1368
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: $32.58
Total Sales: $642.27
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 (African Masai warrior shield)
Average Price Sold: $22.94
Returns: 1 (partial refund)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 39

J&R, thank you so much for openly talking about anxiety issues. I too deal with them. Years ago, I was a mess. But after lots of reading and self-therapy, I’m SO much better. Not 100%, but definitely a huge improvement. My goal is to fly again; I too have claustrophobia. But I’m taking steps towards that, so I know it’ll happen one day.

So, I’m officially on the new Seller Hub, and while I dig most of it, there are a few features I’m not into. Mainly, the Selling Total in the center. Why would it include the shipping fees? I know they’re considered revenue by eBay, but not by me. I was stoked to have hit my goal this week, only to find I actually missed it by over $150 bucks. Wacky, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.

Weird story: I took a Best Offer of $80 bucks for one of two African Masai warrior shields I had. An hour later, I hear the cha-ching and see African Sheild on my phone a few feet away. I figured the buyer paid for his Best Offer. Nope, it was the OTHER shield that sold for full price of $99.99. Both sold within two hours of each other to two different buyers. Crazy! And I had the perfect box to ship each one of them. But the best part? I got them both for free.

Have a great week, everyone!

*Paul*

Glad to hear you sorted out the gas problem OK. What I probably would have done is to try to siphon out the gas, pass out from inhalation of the fumes, and get taken to the local hospital.

Fairly slow week for sales, but a big one for buying.

Sales: CAD$425, 5 items
COGS: $156
Gross profit: $198
Expenditures (incl. new inventory): $374
Net profit: -$71
Hourly: 7.5 hrs, -$23/hr
Notable sales: Wedgwood china $10–>$100

My big buy this week was surplus, new-in-box wall panels for doctors offices (the kind of thing you see blood pressure cuffs etc hanging off of). I bought quantity 62 at $5 each, so spent $310. There are about 6 sold listings on eBay, all for right around $120. I think this will be a very slow moving item but if I’m right about it, it should net me at least $3k. Hope I don’t regret going ALL IN on these things, the last time I made such a buy it turned out to be a bit of a dud. But the profit on these was too good to pass up. Listed on eBay and amazon MF.

Oh, regarding the bundled listings. I think it’s about search rankings. We all know cheaper items get seen more, especially if buyers sort by price, but if items are expensive because they’re a lot of N, eBay needs a way to rank a $100 listing for 10 t-shirts the same as a $10 listing for 1 t-shirt. So you should definitely make sure to fill this part in or you’ll lose views (I speculate).

Hi Jay and Ryanne, Just listened to your podcast and really appreciate your candidness about stress/anxiety issues. It was just what I needed today as I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to build up my eBay store. I’m at about 500 items and trying to gear up for the big selling season while still doing my other paying “job” (I have an established freelance writing business working from home), which is also in a busy period. My husband is helping me now but he has a full time job as well.
Anyway, it can feel very stressful and an outsider would probably wonder why I’m doing this when I could just go on doing what I’ve been doing for years and make a reasonable income. But I’m obsessed with making this work, and I actually really enjoy buying and reselling vintage stuff. My goal is similar to yours – to have a sustainable business that might fund other ventures (such as real estate), so we can live comfortably on our own terms. Thanks for all your extremely helpful advice and for inspiring me to keep going! — Janet

Total Items in Store: 951
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: $54
Total Sales: $544.80
Profit: $490.80
Highest Price Sold: $40 Pendleton Sweater
Average Price Sold: $23.69
Average Profit: $21.33

Pretty good week with some peaks and valleys. I had one day where I was getting bombarded with offers and sales over a couple hour period. Ended up selling over $250 that day. I wish they could all be like that.

I’m struggling to get back in the groove after getting back from vacation. Didn’t do anything for ebay other than ship last week, and finally got some work done yesterday morning. My two oldest kids started baseball/softball this year and that is taking up pretty much all of our evening and weekend time. I’ve converted my back yard into a baseball training center basically. Using my scavenger mentality I’ve been able to source a bunch of baseball training equipment for cheap. We’re testing it all out to see what we like and don’t like, then I’ll sell off the extras. In the end I’ll have tons of nice equipment and a net $0 investment or better.

That’s the beauty of this business – you can combine your business with your hobbies and pleasures and make money at the same time. In the past I was big into arcade/pinball collecting and I have a garage full of awesome machines. While I never kept a running total or anything, I know I have no money in them from all the flipping and selling I did along the way.

Total Items in Store: 396
Items Sold: 11
Cost of Items Sold: $25 used + $24 new
Total Sales: $302
Highest Price Sold: $76 (One used rare Anthropologie dessert plate; thrifted GW for $1.99, sold in 1 day)
Average Price Sold: $27
Number of items listed this week: 35!

I caught a welcome break from my contract work last week and listed some vintage and used piles, thus the lower average price and COGS. Hopefully today I will cross the 400 mark for the first time. I’m getting less picky about my photography and trying to gain listing speed. I still feel like I’m slowish on the spectrum. I’m a bit annoyed because I have to remove the internal custom Ebay store link insert that I’ve been using in my description because it is now outlawed like external links. Already having to clean out my listing recommendations daily.

Ah, stress. I know it all to well, but I think it also makes me a great Ebay seller. Having a let down like that is really good for you and you are free to do it after the reno is complete. You didn’t have much of a breath before this big trip and fortunate that you didn’t start the trip with the video work. I hope you are enjoying reflecting on your amazing recent accomplishments while you are vacationing. I just started a small adult singing class last week and even thought I am outgoing one on one, I have an extreme fear of public speaking and singing. I originally felt like it was time to push myself out of the comfort zone but then I was like why the *&@! am I doing this to myself??? LOL

I love your talk about how to deal with stress. I completely agree. One running theme that I get from all of the books and podcasts that I consume about successful people, is that they learn to deal with stress. In fact, many of them make sure that they are uncomfortable each day. Working out, fasting, taking a cold shower, learning a new skill, all are easy things to at least stress the body or mind a little bit each day. That builds that muscle so that you can be better prepared when larger stress actions take place.

Week of 9/10-9/16
Total Items in Store: 1,743
Number of Items Listed: 115
Number of Items Sold: 82
Weekly STR: 20%
Total Product Sales: $2,007.15
Cost of Items Sold: $430.13
Gross Profit for Week: $1,385.06
Highest Item Sold: $79.86 – Rare Polo Ralph Lauren 881 BLEECKER #2 Jockey Shirt
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 21-15.

Our eBay Concierge program started, and two calls in, I really like it. The number for eBay Customer Service for us is the same, but since we were invited in (since we went to eBay Open), we are funneled to the Concierge group. Both people were very knowledgeable, and were able to work on issues right there as much as they could, and for the first time ever, I actually got a message from them a few days later when the issue was resolved. Eventually, all eBay sellers will get the Concierge treatment, and it is a great direction for them to take.

We are getting ready for the Nebraska Junk Jaunt, hitting the road on Thursday. We have our process set to be able to remote in to our home computer now (loving that!), and we are looking forward to filling up our truck with lots of dusty gold!

Store Week 9/10/17 – 9/16/17
Total items in store: 1528
Items sold: 20
Cost of items sold: $17.79
Total sales: $744.87
Highest price sold: $180.00 (Filson bag)
Average price sold: $37.24
International Sales: 1
Returns: 0 (1 started)
Money spent on new inventory this week: $53.25

As usual, my “trouble” sales are all happening at once. A few unpaid items, 2 canceled orders, and a return started. Sheesh! But it was a good week regardless. They don’t get to me like they did a while back …guess I’m growing as a scavenger!

I sold some waxed paper Coke cups (1980s or 90s?) to an LA set designer , so that was cool. A weird thing to buy, but I knew that someone wanted them! (And they only took a week or so to sell!)

Sept. 10-16
Total Items in Store: 578
Items Sold: 6 (yikes!)
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $290
Highest Price: $100 (W. & L.E. Gurley WW2 Era Metal Compass)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $314

Not a great week for me at all! Six items sold. That’s a bummer. But at least a few were higher dollar amount items which brought my profit up a little bit. Oh well. As much as I can’t wait to go full time with this business, I’m glad I have my day-job paycheck to fall back on with weeks like this.

I think the topic of this week’s podcast is an important one. As unpleasant as it is, stress and anxiety is something we all have to deal with one way or another. And we all deal with it differently. Myself for example, I tend to shut up inside myself and I’ll sort of shut down until I find a way to deal with it. And my best way of dealing with stress is to write a list of causes and solutions. When it’s broken down visually like that, my brain isn’t so convoluted and I’ll begin to unwind myself. But of course there are other types of stress that aren’t so easy to deal with. Death in the family, natural disasters, unexpected medical bills, etc. With these examples, a simple list isn’t going to work. That’s why a good partnership is almost necessary during difficult time. Even if it’s just a comfort knowing that you’re not in it alone. I don’t think I would have been able to get back up after the flood if it wasn’t for my partner. And having someone there for you, not just someone to talk to but to truly help lift you up when you’re down, is so wonderful.

But stress isn’t all bad. Just like the physical stress of doing manual labor will build calluses on our hands and feet, mental stress builds them on our mind. It hurts a lot at first, but if you invite it in enough, we become more and more immune to its adverse effects. It will even get to a point where you can easily look past the negative stress and focus on the positive outcomes. But like too much manual labor may turn our hands ugly, too much stress may make us bitter and jaded. That is why we must “moisturize our minds!” Vacations, relaxing hobbies, deep friendships, exercise…taking a little break from the stress, whether it’s a daily jog, or a yearly big vacation, is so relieving!

I see that I’m kinda rambling on here, but it’s a subject I’ve had to deal with heavily these past couple of months. We both reached a very low point in our lives with the flood. But that which does not kill us only makes us stronger. And we’ve got a vacation to Savannah in a few weeks to look forward to.

Week of Sept 3 – 9
* Total Items in Store: 1038
* Items Sold: 13
* Cost of Items Sold: $42.26 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $460.50
* Highest Price Sold: $79 Cinderella Deluxe Video Edition
* Average Price Sold: $35.42
* Returns: 0 (1 cancel)
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $13
* Number of items listed this week: 52

When I first met my husband, he almost never wanted to go on trips because of the stress. He eventually got the hang of it. I’m glad that you guys were able to work through the problem.

I had a great week. I had 7 less sales than last week, but made about $40 more. The average price was up about $15!

I just want to mention something I’ve noticed about GoDaddy. On the summary page, left-hand side, sometimes I see a message about repeat customers. If I happen to see the message, I’ll click on the link and see the customer’s name and the items they’ve bought from me. This is not about customers who bought more than one item in a single day, rather, these are purchases with weeks or months in between. If I see that before I’ve left feedback (because I usually leave feedback when I see the item is delivered), I will make sure to thank them for the repeat business. This has happened only a few times, but, so far, the buyer always leaves feedback. In one case, the buyer left feedback for both the new and the old purchases after seeing my message.

Storytime: Back in the 90s, my wife and I traveled around Europe for 2 summers in an old VW camper van (and I worked in England during the winter). Early in the first summer we were in Spain few a few weeks and at one point our old van was having mechanical trouble and overheating. We went into a VW dealer in a little Spanish town and had one of those horrible conversations where neither side could understand the other. (Even in countries where English is often spoken, mechanics usually don’t). Anyway, the mechanics agreed to take a look but we had to sleep in their parking lot overnight because they couldn’t see it till the following day. We killed the next day in town as well waiting to get the van and finally picked it up at the end of the second day. It was getting dark as we drove out of town but we need gas so I stopped on the gas station on the edge of town and filled up. We left the gas station and drove about 100 yards before the engine start sounding rough and huge plumes of black smoke started coming out of the exhaust. The van spluttered and died outside a milk factory. I quickly realized what I might had done …. Sure enough, I’d filled up with gazole which I had assumed was gasoline but which was actually diesel fuel. It was the most miserable point in our entire trip. The next day we had to go back to the mechanics and tell them we were idiots and plead for more help. I was mortified with embarrassment.

Anyway, here are my numbers for this week:

Items Sold: 53
Total Sales: $991
Cost of Items Sold: $137.19
Average Price Sold: $18.69
Average Cost of Item: $2.59
Highest Price Item Sold: $75 Objectivist Newsletter – Vols 1-3 – 1st printing
Number of items listed this week: 32
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 265
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 124
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 74
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.69%
# of Hats Sold: 41 (77% of sales)

I had a busy week. Primarily because I ran a 20%-off sale on all my hats. That generated a lot of sales. The most I’ve ever had in one week in fact.

Here is a cool clock I found at a thrift store. It is marked “Beltz West Germany” and “Westminster-Whittington Quartz”. It plays one of twelve different children’s songs/lullabies on the hour. Which is more accurate to describe it: mid-century modern, 70s, or something else?

https://imgur.com/gXrJoqz

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Denny E..

Hi Guys! I hope you are having a fantastic trip! Your photos look amazing!
I haven’t posted in a while. I took a couple of months this summer to get some house projects done and do some family travel. Despite not listing a single new thing for 2 months, the summer sales kept rolling steadily in. It was unexpected as usually I experience the summer slowdown but I’ve heard you report you didn’t ever get really hit with it either. That makes me hopeful that eBay is making positive strides as a platform.
So I started listing again at about mid-August. Unfortunately I was one of those sellers who was getting my new listings showing in the International Sellers section at the very bottom of search results. 🙁 It really affected my sales for a couple of weeks. And I kind of missed the window of opportunity on some back to school backpacks I listed. Bummer. The issue seems to have been fixed and the sales followed. Here are last weeks numbers:

My numbers for the week of 9/10/17:
Total Items in Store: 74
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $47
Total Sales: $378 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $58.49 (Dino Train Lot)
Average Price Sold: $27
Returns: 0

What stresses me out? It is the shear number of changes that eBay makes. It makes me uneasy to really go for it and go bigger. It makes me uneasy with the platform that they can’t seem to stop tweaking. I have kept selling on eBay as a side thing for years. I think about going All-In with it all the time. Spring/Summer/Fall Seller Updates…I feel like I continue to adapt to each change. During the summer I took time to take a link out of my description (it was a link to my store…within the eBay site. It should not have shown as active content but it did and I had to take it out of each and every listing one by one because bulk editing did not work.) But it’s rather easy with my small number of listings. For larger sellers, what a headache! The newest Update came out yesterday. I really feel for the sellers who have watermarks on all their photos.
Ebay has been through some big growing pains and I feel like it has come out the other end better than it was in alot of ways. But the process has definitely stressed me out at times.

J&R, hope you are having a great time.. Driving in countries where the signs are not in English is something I will not do while on vacation.. too much stress.. we were in Italy last year and I would not have had any fun if I was driving. We took the train and taxis and I was able to have a glass or two of wine while we explored Rome and Florence. Going back next year..going to go to Venice..no cars….Hope I don’t fall in the canal.. Brian

Really looking forward to listening to this podcast topic. I’m a bit behind and need to catch up!

September 10th (September 11th – Sep 16th 2017 = vacation)
Total items in store: Etsy ~500 // Ebay ~500 (Items not crossposted I list different types of things on Etsy and Ebay)
Items Sold: Etsy 1 // Ebay 5
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $2.29 // Ebay $24.80
Total Sales: Etsy $4.85 // Ebay $127.95
Highest Price Sold: NWT Women’s USA Soccer Jersey $45
Average Price Sold: $22.13
Returns: 0, but I mailed a package to a customer’s old address (they messaged me with the new address). I was just in such a hurry to get things together for my vacation that I forgot about their message. It came back to my house and I mailed it to their new address. The customer was very gracious and patient.
Number of items listed this week: 0

Out of town for vacation starting on Tuesday. These stats are just for the one day the shop was open. On other vacations I have left the shop open and extended handling time, but this time I just closed the shop so there was no extra stress. I had already had enough stress from the hurricane (and I was just visiting Florida, I felt very bad for the people who live there).

Hey, haven’t listened to you guys in a couple years, gave up on selling used (scavenged) stuff long ago.. Did Ryanne just say Jay doesn’t drive? 🙂 Why? Does he have a drivers license? How does he survive living in the country without being about to dive anywhere?

Yep, I don’t like unhappy customers or getting returns. Just selling new items from suppliers. Make much less profit, but I can sleep at night..

Edit

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Steven S.

Hi Jay and Ryanne, enjoyed your comments about stress on the podcast today. One reason I really like your advice is that you’re practical and action-oriented about problem solving. The tone of eBay and other forums can be quite negative with everyone agreeing with each other about how unfairly they’re being treated or how miserable their lives as sellers are. (as you mentioned, they probably have other underlying issues they’re not dealing with). I just want to figure out the best way to do things and move on.

On another topic, a caller to your show recently mentioned that eBay has a FaceBook page where you can ask questions. I tried it and was able to message back and forth with an eBay rep via the messaging function on FB. They didn’t end up resolving my problem but they were responsive and gave some advice. So, it could be a way to talk to eBay without waiting on hold — probably wouldn’t work for very complicated issues but seems ok if you had a policy or procedure related question. Just passing it along.
Have a great rest of your vacation!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by CTVintage.

I swear you guys always seem to talk about things that I am thinking about at the moment I’m thinking about it. Its like you are reading my mind. This was helpful. Thank you.

Wendy