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In an attempt to fill the SL void in my life, I’ve turned to Dailyrefinement’s podcast (introduced to me by some on the forums here) and find it to be an interesting replacement so far. I’ve noticed a few other people have also started listening so I thought I’d start a discussion thread on their approach. I pretty much only listen to the free 30 minute weekly excerpts he co-hosts with technsports, because I’m fascinated by Tech’s approach.
In some ways Technsports is similar to Jay and Ryanne; no prior experience, long-time ebayer, uses profits to fund other real estate/businesses, believes in the power of listing, and doesn’t come across as a guru but like a regular guy.
In other ways his approach is quite different; he’s totally happy to take on a grind and deal with “boring” items, doesn’t believe in ever skipping a day listing or deviating outside of one’s category, and has scaled to a huge level.
I think there’s a lot to be said for the consistency aspect, but I’m not sure about the grind. I will say though, looking at his and Chris Lim’s (dailyrefinement) stores have helped me loosen up about photos. I used to feel high pressure about having Etsy-like pictures but their photos and apparent success have made me rethink that. I have also decided to implement his concept of measuring tape with items instead of writing measurements in the listing (even though I think it looks weird and low-end) because he claims it massively reduced returns and time spent on creating listings. I hate listing so anything that helps me cut it down I’m willing to try.
What are your thoughts on dailyrefinement and technsports’ aproach?
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The more you can be a robot about listing, the more money you’ll make. But I think that’s the real challenge: can you be motivated each and every day for a chunk of time, especially if you’re listing items that are “boring”? This has been our struggle for over a decade.
For us, we had to be honest that “boring items” would paralyze us. That’s how we came up with Death Piles: items we know would sell, but we couldn’t get motivated to list. I guess we each have to figure out a system that you can keep up with.
I really have a lot of admiration for people like technsports who just crank day in and day out. Very dedicated.
Im also impressed that they created a community here: https://www.patreon.com/theresellerspodcast
2100 members! -
I followed their podcast and will give it a shot. I do like listening to Chris on Youtube, but the clickbait nature of his titles…ewww. I get why he does it, but it is a disservice to his high quality content.
Sometimes…you do have to just grind. I can fiddle fart around my office and accomplish very little, or I can grab a random tub of unlisted stuff, dial myself in, and just create listings. Specializing like they do makes it easier to stay in the dialed in mindset. Not everyone can pivot and maintain an efficient pace, but if you can more power to you. Me personally, I do like to do like items when I list to make it faster. I will do clothes in a batch, shoes in a batch. For random items such as collectibles, toys, games, and small electronics – I can do all those in a batch process quite efficiently as well. Now I don’t mix my main batching processes though. I guess you could say I batch by the tools I need to measure/fix/clean. I’ve also farmed out my shoe cleaning/ photography to my kids so I can concentrate purely on creating listings.
I also understand why they say scaling with an everything store is not recommended. The space requirements become very cumbersome once you get up in the thousands. I have to be pretty picky with my larger items. I try to stick with $100+ and 6 month of less turnaround sales if I’m going to commit to large items.
Now regarding clothing items, they are SUPER efficient with their space. Their boxes match their shelving perfectly. Mine…do not. I occasionally run a report on my inventory to check what my profit per Sq ft of storage is. I ran it again today since I did a pretty good inventory consolidation about 2 weeks ago. Some bins are still not close to full…but good enough.
What I found is that my bins vs the actual shelf space available per bin means my storage efficiency is only around 50-70%. Just going by bin size, it is 50% because the bins are tapered, and not as deep or tall as the shelf space. Some bins I fill over the top, such as with shoes. With those bins my efficiency is closer to 70%. My coats are stored in wardrobes with a bunch of space wasted in the bottom so my storage efficiency is only 38%. My large Misc items are not stored in bins and are about 40% storage efficient.
Here is how my Cash per Sq ft of USED storage space breaks down:
Item Type Average $/sq ft tub Used Space
Craft RA $2,397.20
Manga Books $693.37
Video Games $622.99
Clothing $377.13
Small Misc $364.53
Hats $297.46
Shoes $270.51
Large Misc $151.31
Coats $83.45Shoes and clothing averages were dragged down by some bins being only partially full.
So let’s resort the data using only the MAX values (Fullest and most valuable bins) and take efficiency into consideration by using the ACTUAL space available to calculate my price per sqft of actual space:Item Type Max $/sq ft tub Used Space Max $/SQFT Actual space
Craft RA $2,397.20 $1,164.61
Small Misc $838.38 $407.30
Manga Books $693.37 $336.85
Clothing $658.59 $319.95
Video Games $622.99 $302.66
Large Misc $514.89 $250.14
Shoes $463.94 $225.39
Hats $297.46 $144.51
Coats $87.59 $54.75The craft retail Arbitrage stuff is a single bin of small items. Takes up little space and is multi quantity items. You could definitely build a pipeline business out of this if you can find enough stuff. I can’t find enough to focus here.
Same with Manga books. That’s a single bin from a lucky yard sale score. Very long tail at the prices I’ve listed at. You could build a business out of it though by buying low selling high.
My big 5 categories by volume and ease of sourcing are: Shoes, Video Games, Small Miscellaneous, Clothing, and large miscellaneous. I do have alot of Large miscellaneous, but as you will see I get crushed on storage efficiency. I have ALOT of space dedicated to those items.
Item Type Max $/SQFT Actual space Average $/sq ft tub Used Space
Small Misc $407.30 $364.53
Clothing $319.95 $377.13
Video Games $302.66 $622.99
Large Misc $250.14 $151.31
Shoes $225.39 $270.51So based off of my data, I really should focus on small miscellaneous toys, electronics, & collectibles. Follow that up with clothing and video games. These are the most storage efficient items which means I can fit alot of value of inventory in a smaller space.
Small miscellaneous can be very efficient as you can fit smaller items in the cracks/crevices created by the bigger items.
The daily refinement guys have proven a highly efficient clothing store is great, but you can do the same thing with small miscellaneous.
As for shoes…well… I just really like selling shoes! One thing I should look into is buying or making better storage boxes for them so I can fully use the space to increase my $/sqft average. I don’t want to exit that category. I am much more picky now with what I buy so I may naturally reduce the amount of shoes I sell.
And regarding coats. I REALLY need to get out of that field. They are super long tail & take up a TON of space. $54/ sq ft and VERY seasonal sales. Ugh… Time to have a blowout sale and convert that space to shelving for more clothing and misc items!
Whew, that really took a HARD turn into detailed tangent territory!
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“Whew, that really took a HARD turn into detailed tangent territory!”
Actually, that’s an excellent tangent to do down for anyone with limited space for inventory. When I went back to college in the late ’80’s after my first Army stint I took a computer programming class where we had to write a simple program. (To fit on a 3.5″ disc, IIRC, if you can imagine. I don’t recall what the language was.) One of my scavenging income sources at the time was from buying small to medium sized English furniture from a weekly auction (gate-leg tables, dressers, drop-front desks, bar cabinets, etc.) and taking it to a certain flea market where it sold really well. So for the class I wrote a program to calculate the best loading of my van using its available internal volume and the average volume and sales price for each type of piece. There were other factors to think about of course but it was still helpful in picking out which pieces to take on a given day from what I had available in my garage.
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@jay It’s a really good question; I’m not sure what technsports’ end goal is even though he says he “wants the option to take a 50 year vacation” because it seems as though he’s already there. He seems to make tons of money and has rentals in addition to a brick and mortar, ebay, and a lawn care business but still has this mindset of “being hungry”. Perhaps it’s sheer habit at this point.
As for dailyrefinement I can understand his grind because he’s only been 6 figures maybe the last two years and he has a new baby (ebay his his full time job).
I agree ebay is a means to an end unless I figure out a way to source 80% of the time (the fun part, ha!)
@retro-treasures-wv I got a laugh out of you cringing over his clickbait titles because I feel the exact same way! Why the clickbait titles?? It lowers credibility in my mind. Thanks for sharing your detailed calculation! I never thought about looking at storage efficiency in that way, but I guess it makes sense. Funny you mentioned getting rid of men’s jackets; I just took a plunge on some men’s jackets (trying out something different) so here’s hoping I don’t end up kicking myself for it haha. -
So I listened to Episode 60 this morning. Technsports made a bold statement that “pricing high and waiting for offers is dead”. His reasoning and discussion was pretty detailed. Basically, due to left hand navigation and the rise of item specifics your price is likely to get you omitted from search results due to filters.
There is also a drive towards feed based interfaces on ebay to be more like poshmark and depop.
Now keep in mind, they are heavily tilted towards clothing and maybe all this is not as relevant to specialized hard goods and other items that are still highly likely to be search based sales with few search results.
Overall an eye opening discussion that definitely makes me think about my clothing strategy as I gear up to attack my clothing backlog.
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His statement has always been true IMHO for clothes and commodity items. If you’re one of 1000 of the same item in search, you have to compete on price, free shipping, etc.
Our “list and forget” only works when you’re one of 100, or one of 10 items in a search. Weird, vintage items. People who sell cheap get taken out of search quick with no one to replace. Also, quality matters for weird vintage items.
We interviewed a clothing seller way back when who sold clothes. She cranked. She sold 30-40 pieces a day, but her average gross selling price might have been $12. The definition of a grind for us. The more she sells, then more she has to always be sourcing cheap clothing to list.
Do you know what the average selling price is for Technsports? I always wonder what the equation is between COGS, paying helpers, storage/office costs.
Retro, I think you have a great system. You’re a one person operator. Large inventory. Low overhead. Make between $600-$1500/week. Could you grow this without spending more time/money on operations?
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I got into commodity clothes when the local goodwill chain had a 99 cent tag sale. When that went away, my cloths buying dropped to almost nil.
I tend to only buy unique clothes now with a good sell through rate. I’m not paying $5 an item for generic clothing. I don’t wanna play that game. I was willing when it was a $1 though.so the current space I take up is about as big as I want to get. I want my eBay room clean and efficient with space to process new inventory. I want my two storage spaces to be as efficient as possible.
I can list everything I have in the backlog over the next year on my own. Then I want to reach that “reseller Nirvana” point and maintain what I have. So basically, source 30-40 items average a week, list 30-40 items average a week, and sell 30-40 items a week. I can do that myself part time no problem.
I know buying 30-40 items a week will be absolutely no problem and won’t take any more time really. I don’t buy that many now by choice.I already have all the infrastructure I need so no more spending for that size business. I just hire my kids to do some things to spend less time myself, but I can do it all myself.
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I had two observations about his storage.
1. Not sure why he is buying shelving that costs about $500 a unit. This one at Sams Club costs about $70 and is very sturdy – each shelf holds 800 lbs. for a 4,000-lb. total capacity. I have some and they are not hard to set up. They are not as big as his, but just buy more. The size is 24″ x 48″ x 72″.
2. What about mice? If he ever got a mouse in his storage unit, they would easily tear through the plastic and destroy a lot of items. That is one reason I like snap tight storage bins. I don’t think I have ever had one get into my storage unit, but it is possible.
Mark
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Forgot to include the link to the shelving unit:
https://www.samsclub.com/p/5-shelf-storage-rack-boltless/prod19280016
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I actually got turned onto Daily Refinement about 6 months ago and while I have zero interest in doing clothing like him I will say there is some good advice in there if you are serious about building a big eBay business. His advice about building up a bank of drafts and posting a consistent number of listings every day has worked great for my store. We used to spend all week getting a big lot of listings ready to go all at once. We would have decent sales for a few days and then things start to slow down. Now we follow his daily model and have nice consistent sales all week. We still sell more on weekends of course but it’s always nice to see stuff selling consistently day in a day out.
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I just listened to the first part of Daily Refinement’s “Scaling…w/burnout Mel” episode and I swear he was referencing the episode where @Jay and @Ryanne talk about selling cups of coffee from their partner’s food truck event where they were realizing the volume you had to do in order to bring in a certain amount of sales. Anyone else think he’s a DL Scavenger Life listener or is it just coincidence? Around the 8:30 mark here.
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I’ve listened to a good amount of his stuff and I’d say its pretty likely that he has heard of this community. He used to be what he calls an “everything” seller before he decided to focus on just clothing and seems pretty in tune to the reseller community so my guess is he’s listened to Jay and Ryanne a few times. I’m not a big fan of his coaching “club” that you have to pay a monthly fee for but I do enjoy his perspectives as a more volume focused reseller.
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His philosophy isn’t for me but I get it. Grind through $8 clothes, sell them, get the money back, do it again and again. Not for me. I’m somewhere in the middle between fast flip and list & forget leaning more towards list & forget because that’s what really changed my store for the better.
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And someone in our group made a good point about “list and forget”. If you have any kind of good taste/eye, then 20% of each 100 items will likely sell quickly. Then 50% will sell within a year. Then 30% is the loooooong tail that might take 2+ years to sell.
So as long as you’re listing consistently, things will always sell. And if you build up enough long tail items, it’s a pipeline of cash of random items that’s selling.
Its really all about the equation on time you want to spend VS risk you want to take VS profit you need to make to pay then bills.
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I don’t know if one of my ancestors was a market trader, but my brain keeps on telling me to pile it high and sell it cheap. I’m sharing a table with a friend at this place at Easter, and I’m already getting pushback from her about this philosophy.
But… “list and forget” won’t work in a two-day event, and when I went to a fair at this place last year vendors’ stock was high-priced, boring, and not selling. I suspect the organisers don’t care about sales volume, as the vendors are basically the entertainment for the paying visitors.
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But… “list and forget” won’t work in a two-day event, and when I went to a fair at this place last year vendors’ stock was high-priced, boring, and not selling.
Very good point, “List and forget” only works because of the internet and global shipping which allows an item to be always for sale to every single person on the planet.
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Because I just love creating spreadsheets for ebay stuff, I created this chart to analyze the age of my inventory and how much is still listed vs how many listings I made during that year.
I started my detailed spreadsheet in the 2nd half of 2018 when I really started getting serious about growing, so I don’t have all the data before then.
So as you can see, I’ve already sold about 30% of what I’ve listed this year. I still have about 40% of what I listed last year, then 20% each are left from 2020 and 2019.
Out of my approx 1800 listing store , I only have 133 listings left from prior to 2019. Not bad!
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