Well… full-time it is! My eBay Journey goes full throttle. New Journal

It’s been an interesting last six months. In September of 2018, I was wrapping up my sixth year managing e-commerce for a medium-sized sporting goods business. Sales had grown from about $300,000 in 2012(I started in December of that year) to a projected $1.7M in 2018 with the same two guys running it(myself and one other guy) the entire time. We were both compensated very well but did everything from the marketing right down to packaging items and shipping. It was hard work but it was really fun and fulfilling(emotionally and financially) despite the long hours during the three-month busy season. I liked my job and it was somewhat flexible. We lived a nice life. Two kids. New cars. Two or three nice vacations every year.

Then in September, I got a phone call from someone I worked with on a project several years ago. His company(a big corporate company that was the leader in my industry) was looking for a few marketing people. The pay was great and I was able to work exclusively at home with some travel mixed in. It seemed like a dream come true. So I jumped at it. Within a few weeks, I knew it was a mistake. The great things he said about this company were not true and when talking with other folks around the company I learned he was not well respected and was on a short leash. It looked like this new round of hires was pretty much a hail mary to save his own job. It was pretty stressful and I considered getting out right away. But then I realized I was working at home and making good money. Might as well try to make the best of it. My wife and I had booked a 12-day vacation for the end of March 2019 during the previous summer and we were pretty pumped for the adventure with our kids during Spring Break.

We had a great time but I received some alarming news on the second day of our trip. Two people from our five-person department were laid off. The next day I received an email to call in for an all-staff meeting the following Monday. When I called in the CEO said there were some changes that needed to be made but as of right now there are no plans for further layoffs. I felt like I had survived. We flew home on Saturday night. While I was working on Monday my boss emailed me a meeting request for the next day. It was titled “Project Catchup”. I assumed that he would call me and tell me all of the work I would be inheriting from the guys who were laid off. My assumption was incorrect. I was let go about five months after being recruited to work for this “great company”. I went from having a good paying job that I loved, to having a good paying job that I hated, to being out of work in less than six months.

I started selling baseball cards on eBay in the 1990s. This was back when people would send money orders so they didn’t have to wait for their check to clear before shipping! I sold some other odds and ends in the early 2000s. Like Jay and Ryanne, I worked in television and the money in small market TV is awful. I sold stuff just to make ends meet. As I aged and started to have a family, I moved away from eBay. But a few years ago, I started thinking about creating my own e-commerce business. I had successfully built a business for my employer and was looking for a way to do it for myself. I just needed something to sell. I heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk about buying stuff at garage sales and flipping it on eBay. I knew the eBay platform well as that was where I was selling things for my employer and I had done it in the past. I decided to give eBay a try again a few years ago.

I’m pretty sure the first garage sale flip of my new eBay adventure was a vintage program from the British Open. I know exactly where the house is where I bought it. I think I bought it for .50 and sold it for $15. I thought I had something! My wife thought I was crazy. That changed soon. It was a few weeks later and I was hitting garage sales in town with my kids. The house was old and the garage was dirty. On the table were three motorcycle helmets. I picked one up and set it back down. The guy running the sale said, “that one is a Bell”. So I picked it back up and looked inside. The tag said “Bell Helmet Long Beach California 1968”. When I saw Long Beach California and the date, I thought it had to be worth something. The guy wanted $2 each for the helmets. I offered him $5 for all three. On my way out to the car, he said, “there’s another one in the free box.” So I picked that one up too. 4 helmets for $5.

When I got home I checked the solds on the Bell. It looked like they were selling for $300 to $500. I couldn’t believe it. I literally could not believe it. I decided to put it up for auction starting at $99 on a Sunday night with the listing ending the following Sunday. The next day I received two messages. The first one said, “I’ll give you $300 right now for that helmet.” I showed it to my wife and she said, “you should take it!” The next one said, “I’ll give you $400 right now for that helmet.” Then she really got excited. But someone had already bid on the helmet and as far as I’m concerned, an auction is an auction. I don’t believe in ending them early.

Come Sunday night, my patience paid off. The helmet sold for $565. The guy who offered $300 bought that one and another one for $80. The other two brought about $30 each. But my $5 investment turned into about $700 and I was hooked. That is my best flip ever but there have been some other good ones. Like most everyone else, it’s usually a few bucks turned into $20 or $30. Our lemons are $10. But compared to margins on new consumer goods, we’re still killing it.

Over the past few years, I think my best month was about $1,000 in sales with my worst month probably around $100. Most months were $200-$300 but it was all funny money anyway. Some extra cash to splurge on the family and it was just kind of a game to me. I love computer strategy games but it seemed like I would spend hours playing them and have nothing to show for it. At least with this strategy game, I put some money in my pocket.

But that changed on April 2nd. When I got that call, I was angry. I had built a nice income and a nice life over the past five years. Now I had nothing. I used to joke with my co-worker that I wish I could go full time selling garbage(I call my eBay selling “The Garbage Business”) but my job was too good to quit. As of April 2nd, I no longer had that good job. It was go-time. On April 2nd I had 86 items listed on eBay. A long way from enough to sustain a fulltime income but a start nonetheless. I called a few people I knew and secured some freelance writing and video work. But I still want to do about $800 per week in gross sales. With freelance work and $3200 gross, we can sustain our lifestyle. My wife has a great job. I didn’t make it this month, but I didn’t expect to.

Here are my numbers for April:
Active Listings April 2: 86
Active Listings April 30: 211
Items Sold: 56 for $1414
Average Sale Price: $25.25

My goal is to hit $2,000 in sales for May with 400 listings at the end of the month.
$2,500 in sales for June with 500 listings at the end of the month
$3,000 in sales for July with 600 listings at the end of the month
I’d like to sustain about 600-800 listings. I believe I can hit my monthly sales goal at this level.

I have a different selling strategy than Jay and Ryanne. I usually take good pictures and price my items somewhere around the middle of what things are selling for. Most people take crap photos so your photos can allow you to price a little higher. If I’m unsure of the value, I usually put an item up at auction with an opening bid of a number I’d like to get for the item. Sometimes, I hit a jackpot. Sometimes, it doesn’t get bid on and I drop the price down a bit and sell it as a Buy It Now. I usually lower my Buy It Now prices a wee bit every month until the item sells. I’m not maximizing value as Jay and Ryanne do but I’m consistently turning sales with a fairly small inventory. When you’re at the stage I am, that’s important.

On a side note, on my return flight home from my vacation, I decided to make a big lifestyle change. I’m a big dude at 6’3”. On that return flight, I weighed 344 pounds. Sure, some of that was vacation weight. But I’m turning 43 this year and there are not a lot of 60-year-old dudes that weigh 344 pounds. I want to turn the page and didn’t let my layoff get in the way of this plan. Today I weighed 313 pounds. I lost 31 pounds this month. My goal is to be under 300 pounds for the first time in about seven years by the end of May. That should be doable!

I’m hoping to make this layoff the best thing to ever happen to me. But it’s super stressful. Before I started that e-commerce job I was a fulltime freelancer. I remember how much cashflow problems stressed me out. I had three days this month that I didn’t sell anything and several days that I only sold one thing. It really makes you question if you’re doing the right thing. But I’ve seen enough of the process that I believe I can do it. I’ll keep updating this. It’s going to be a bumpy but exciting ride.