Gains from selling online (besides $$$)/ Offsetting corporate job downsides

[sonia_pc]

Quick recap on me: Selling mostly vintage design items on Etsy. Full time corporate job, from and living in Portugal, 95% online sourcing. 8000 USD net profit/ 189 sold items year to date 2020. 150 listings. Started very casually selling online in 2017. Love the general mindset here at Scavenger Life.

When I started selling stuff that I had lying around the house in 2017 I wasn’t planning on reselling online to become such a meaningful and rewarding part of my life.

Besides the much appreciated extra income, here’s what I’ve been gaining from this ongoing experience, especially contrasting it with my full time corporate job:
– The ability to get to decide and take responsibility for everything in my very small business offsets the frustration with dayjob’s corporate politics and significant constraints on autonomy and decisions. I am middle management and there’s so much that I think should be done that for a number of reasons just doesn’t (different view points on strategy and down to the smallest things, lack of resources, etc, etc, etc)
– The joy of flexibility: doing as much or as little as I see fit, with no fixed deadlines or schedules other than the ones I define for myself
– Empowerment and self confidence. I think that getting results I feel good about in reselling by doing things my way, I feel more confident to stand up for my own ideas regarding other decisions
– Rewards from selling online are directly link to input of resources – be it time, money, mindless grind or thougthful work. It’s just so refreshing, comparing to the long corporate game of slowly moving up the ladder
– A sense of having a safety net and an alternative to working “for the man”. While I get plenty of satisfaction from my “day job” and do not plan to quit in the near future – I enjoy most of my work, I really appreciate my team and admire the CEO, I have good benefits and I could go on… – sometimes I feel like I really should be doing my own thing and get really disheartened with corporate life. It feels great to have an alternative – I think that if I dedicated as much time and effort to reselling as I do to my full time job I could really make a good living out of it. That’s the most wonderful thing and the closest in my adult life I have been to having F-U money. Except that I don’t 🙂 But potentially I could live a non corporate life.

I hope you find some interest in my thoughts, even though there isn’t any practical advice or information in here 🙂

[Jay]

This is a great perspective and shows how we all come to this world differently. It sounds like the corporate job gives you monetary security and professional fulfillment. But that selling online gives you some money, but really gives you a sense of adventure and a hypothetical lifeline in case you ever left your job.

I’m impressed when people have full time jobs and children but are still so committed to selling online in their very limited free time. I would think the temptation to slack would be great since you dont really need the money. Shows what kind of work ethic you naturally have.

Glad to hear Etsy continues to be a solid platform to sell on.

[sonia_pc]

Regarding Etsy as a platform and comparing it to Ebay, I initially loved their quite low fees and buyer’s politeness and willingness to pay a premium for things.

However, Etsy’s fees have been steadily going up ever since the company went public. But I find there’s also more investment that translates into traffic being generated by Etsy, so that’s kind of fair. All in (listing fees, advertising and fees over gross sales+shipping) Etsy’s fees are around 10% of my gross sales. Still significantly better than Ebay.

I totally agree that I’m not into reselling just for the money – hence my post today on all different kinds of rewards I reap from this experience 🙂 – but I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t make any money. It’s all part of the equation. And making money is hard work in my country. Average pay per month (gross) is 1300 USD and taxes are quite steep. I’m paid way above average but still… I can certainly use the money

[Lukastreasure]

I’m always intrigued when I hear of someone living and scavenging in Europe. My wife, and scavenging partner, is Belgian and we occasionally talk about moving to Belgium but wonder how the scavenging would be. We scavenge a bit on our yearly trips and find the whole culture of scavenging to be different. Yard sales and estate sales not really a big thing there. How do you find it in Portugal?

[Jay]

I’d be interested to hear as well. The times we’ve stayed in some European countries Netherlands, Ireland, Britain) and scavenged, we just didnt see the amount of waste to sort through.

[sonia_pc]

Regarding sourcing, that’s my main challenge. I’ve made a collection of what I’ve shared here in the forum before – please find it below.

I am absolutely convinced that anyone with the adequate mindset can make a living reselling anywhere in this world. It’s all about access to stuff, some money to start with, a good eye and information assymmetry.

– I hardly have any free time to scavenge in the wild (there are some street markets with interesting stuff but a bit outside my preferred niche) and there aren’t that many opportunities here (no good thrift or charity shops). I know there are people/ businesses that buy whole estates, but I’ve never looked into that – that’s way out of my league for now – time, investment, work and space wise
– Portuguese goods that are really well made and worth selling aren’t known/ have no branding to it, but they do sell (just take longer than the ones that are easily searchable online)
– Items that people value anywhere in the planet are high priced here – people just don’t give that stuff away in massive quantities for sure!
– I live in an apartment and don’t have much free space to store or time to pack big and clunky stuff.
– So, in my case it all boils down to somewhat high value items, with an average profit margin of 50% to date. I focus mostly on mid century designer glass/ ceramic that are somewhat collectible but not really unique or high end and I source 90% online, taking advantage of ebay auctions from sellers in Germany, UK, etc that are fast movers, Scandinavian countries local online platforms where my international customer base doesn’t tread (haha), etc

I use mostly Tradera (Sweden), DBA (Denmark), Huuto (Finland), ebay.de (Germany).
You do have to be very thorough and skim through a lot of listings on your searches, as most people do know the value of things and they have already bothered to write listings, take photos, etc

Shipping from these countries is very expensive, but it costs almost the same to ship one or several items, so I usually bundle several items from the same seller to dilute shipping costs. Most people don’t accept Paypal and you have to trust that you’ll make a hefty bank transfer and you’ll get your stuff afterwards. Should you be scammed, all you would be able to do would be to leave negative feed back on the selling platform. That being said, I do trust people and the bad experiences I’ve have no real impact on the grand scheme of things.

[sonia_pc]

This is totally anedoctal, but I know a Belgian guy in his late 50’s that has recently moved to Portugal that throughout his life in Belgium sold but mostly amassed a great collection of stuff (mostly from antique dealers, local markets and estate sales – that’s what he told me). His plan is to spend the next years living off of this cache of things by selling them in a brick and mortar store in Lisbon.

He also told me that Belgium is a wonderful place for sourcing vintage and antique stuff.

I guess that goes to show that there’s stuff to make a profit from wherever you are.

[Curious Curator]

Yep. Location, location, location. I have a niece who lives in Culebra, a tiny island off of Puerto Rico. I went to visit her about 8 years ago and asked her to take me to a thrift store or resale shop. She gave me a glazed look. Puzzled, I asked her “What? What’s wrong?” She told me there aren’t that many on the main island, (and there are “none” on the island of Culebra), so she had to think of where to take me. We found one on the main island. It was just closing as we drove up, so I never got to go.

Anyhow, my niece told me that thrifting is not really big in Puerto Rico. I have another niece that lives in the Dominican Republic. Now there, you can have a dress made for $20.and a pair of shoes repaired for $2. At those prices, Who “needs” vintage?

Here in Chicago, thrifting opportunities are abundant.I have 2 thrift stores walking distance from me. Both are on the same street and one is a block away from me. The other is about 3 blocks north of that one. Also, I live next door to an apartment building. People move in/out pretty much every month. As I was throwing out trash, a tenant was moving out and placed a framed print on the ground face down. I walked up to the tenant and asked him if he was throwing the frame (I didn’t know what was on the other side of the frame). The tenant asked me if I wanted it, I could take it. So I did. Then on Monday, someone threw out nice bed rails with casters (I did not take them) and I have gotten countless really nice furniture items and household items that I could sell-but I’ve kept a lot of it.
https://imgur.com/jiMHqph
https://imgur.com/ptBRGMy

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