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Hi guys, let me introduce myself 🙂
My name is David and I live with my girlfriend in South Australia. I was working full time as a security guard but unfortunately due to some health issues I was unable to stay in work.
We just bought a house recently so without anyway to earn money with a job I started looking to make money for myself at home, more so out of necessity than anything. I got the idea because my mum used to run her own ebay store for fashion jewellery. She was wheelchair bound and I always remember how this was her way of remaining independant and earning money for herself.
I happened to inherit all of her left over jewellery stock when she passed away but up until now it was just sitting in storage. My girlfriend and I made the decision after we saw our bank account getting dangerously low from mortgage payments. We grabbed out all of mum’s old stock and collected some more junk that we could sell and started listing.
I started listening to as much information as I could and that’s how I happened to come along this website. Ended up listening to tons and tons of the podcast here trying to learn.
So I guess time for some stats of what we’ve managed to achieve so far.
We listed a couple of items towards the end of March but I’m just going to do our stats for our first Sunday – Sunday week which is from 2nd April to 9 April.
So our first week:
Number of items in store: 214
Items Sold: 14
Avg Selling Price: $20.33
Total Sales: $284
Highest Item: $99 ACDC CD. Found it on the shelf from my mum’s old collection. Most were selling on ebay for around $20 but I had the original Australian release with collector’s edition poster 🙂 Very happy with that one.Overall I’m pretty stoked so far. We had a week before that but we were still setting up the store and learning the ebay rules so I’m not going to count it for now. 🙂
My overall goal is to top $1,000 per week. Kinda what’s needed to pay the bills and I don’t have much other option. Luckily ebay has given me a path and for that I’m very grateful. I’m also very grateful to have my partner working on this with me has made things so much easier. We’ve split responsibilities to suit our strengths, just so happens we’d done this before we listened to the podcast and maybe we were channeling Jay and Ryanne before hand or something haha. I handle photography, item measurements and research and shipping. My girlfriend handles listing, book keeping and basically anything else that takes place on the actual ebay website.
For inventory we use labelled tubs depending on the item. We also assign most products a unique SKU so that we can’t get confused with any items that look similar, or where we have multiples of an item that we’ve taken separate photos for on different listings. (eg. We have some gold lustre cups we are selling separately pre-owned. Different listing for each one, all have different wear, to make sure we get the right one in shipping, they’re assigned a SKU that matches the listing, so we can grab and pack and not think too much.)
NB: Also remember whenever I talk about $ I’m talking in AUD. So probably not as impressive as it looks to you guys 😛
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Welcome! Sales are sales. Doesn’t matter what currency it’s in. I think your $4k a month goal is a good one, though we always recommend taking a careful look at your expenses. The less you have to spend each month, the less pressure you have to work.
We recorded a conversation with an Australian couple a while back:
http://www.scavengerlife.com/2013/08/ebay-scavengers-episode-40-interview.html
Doesn’t look like their store still exists, but you might relate to their experiences selling down under. -
Thanks for the welcome!
Yeh we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to cut our expenses down as much as possible. When we first moved in we had solar panels installed straight away which cut the electricity from $1,500 a quarter to $95 🙂 Big help. We also grow and preserve our own veggies to cut costs on the grocery bill.
We also bought a house out in the country a bit to make it all cheaper for us for mortgage-wise also, luckily we’re running pretty lean at the moment. Netflix get’s cancelled this month coz I setup a media centre so don’t need it anymore, cable tv went a while ago 🙂
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We spend $2400 a month just on our mortgage repayments alone 🙂 and yes, that’s a rather cheap mortgage repayment here haha. After that there’s car registrations, utilities bills, grocery bills etc. In all honesty, I could survive on less. I set that goal mainly because after taking out ebay, paypal and postage fees, that would leave me with a similar wage to before when I was working, which was just enough to keep us floating originally (we have always been fairly frugal so expenses haven’t changed a lot since then apart from travel costs to work and back)
We don’t have kids 🙂 Luckily no medical bills either, I’m not sure how it works in America but here in Australia if you’re injured while on the job, your medical bills are paid by a work cover scheme, which all employers must take part in.
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Actually this might make for a fun discussion for the difference between Australia and USA. Basically, our living expenses are WAY higher than you guys. You guys probably can’t imagine having to pay $3.20 for a can of coke 😛 But it’s normally offset by the fact that we have a higher wage, when I was working Security I was a minimum wage worker and was getting $19 an hour, plus penalty rates for after 6pm and weekends. On a Sunday I’d earn close to $40 an hour.
Unfortunately this means I have to sell a whole lot more to cover expenses and from what I’ve found, what people will pay for second hand items isn’t actually that different, despite the difference in currency. A lot of the time, something you’d sell in the USA for $20 on ebay, will also sell at $20 AUD in the Australian ebay. It’s a strange thing. Luckily that same principle seems to apply to us buying stock from thrift stores (we call them op shops here, stands for opportunity store). It’s probably overall a bit more expensive but not by as much as everything else.
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Yeah, when we went to Australia several times for work, we could only really afford to eat at McDonald’s and even that was expensive. But it was good to hear that the McDonald’s workers were getting paid almost $20/hr.
I guess it’s always a trade off. If people get paid more, then things are more expensive, but people can choose where they spend their money. If people get paid less, then items cost less, but people don’t have money to make choices.
Your mortgage is $2400/month! What kind of mortgage do you have? How much is your house worth? US to AUS isn’t that bad: 1:1.33.
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Haha we actually have a mortgage that’s on the lower end here in oz. Our house is worth just north of $400,000 and we were lucky enough to have a pretty hefty deposit which meant we borrowed less than $300,000. For an example, if we wanted to rent a house similar to the one we live in, we’d be looking at over $350 a week and probably closer to 400-450 realistically. We actually have one of the lowest repayments out of anyone we know, either paying their own mortgages or renting.
We live in one of the cheaper states in the country too, over in Sydney 1 bedroom units will sell for millions it’s crazy.
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Part of it comes down to the way housing investment taxes work, as well as a huge housing investment boom from our neighbouring Asian countries, especially China. Very popular place for people to buy investment properties, which drives up the prices for people just wanting a roof over their heads unfortunately.
Our house isn’t anything fancy, basic 1 story 4 bedroom 2 bath. We did manage to get quite a nice garden though 😉 We get quite a lot of American property television shows here and I’ve seen way bigger houses than ours sell for less than $200,000 over there, but I’ve also seen smaller sell for higher, so you’re right area plays a big part.
Just for funs, here’s my boy Harvey chilling out the back enjoying the sunshine
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Yes, I’ve read how the Chinese are getting their money out of China and parking it in Australia. Happens in the US as well. Got to love corruption.
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We also contend with the way tax bracketing works here and what it meant for the previous generation. We’re I guess what you’d call young (both 28). We have a thing here called negative gearing, not sure if it happens in the US. Basically the baby boomer generation was able to buy up a lot of investment properties to put on the rental market. Their taxes then made it so that any losses they made from rent they’d receive as a complete tax writeoff. So we ended up with basically an entire generation hogging all the properties and sitting on them, as there was pretty much zero risk to becoming a property investor back then.
Wouldn’t be fair to blame one thing though really, is kind of one of those perfect storms that all came together to drive prices through the roof over the last 20 years.
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Baby Boomers in the US definitely enjoyed a huge real estate boom. It’s not uncommon for people who bought city properties in the 70’s for $20k to now sell for $500k+ in some of the biggest markets.
Even in the rural areas where we live, people bought huge pieces of land for pennies on the dollar compared to now.
I often wonder in 20 years, if we’ll experience the same rise in property rates. Just doesnt seem sustainable.
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Also if you’re curious here’s our floorplan to show you what we get for that money 🙂
http://i.imgur.com/SuaIz6u.png
Of course we do our measurements in metric, if you convert to feet our total floor space is about 1,100 square feet.
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Oh damn, I feel like a total idiot… this whole time I was saying my mortgage was $2,400 a month I had my maths wrong.. it’s $1,200… quite a DRAMATIC difference hey! haha. You’ll have to forgive me, I can be a scatterbrain sometimes 😛
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That does change the equation! Our mortgage is about $1200/month too because we put ourselves on a 15 year pay off.
So if you spend $4k a month, and $1200 is the mortgage. Where does the other $2800 go?
You absolutely do not need to share this info, but these are the scavengerlife equations I love to delve into.
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Haha. No this is good, this is what I need to do and haven’t done yet. The truth is I don’t need $4,000 per month. Was just a nice pipe dream goal 🙂 But I should take the time to see what i actually do NEED rather than want….So quick breakdown of approx costs per month
Mortgage: $1,200
Car Registration: $180
Water: $100
Electricity: $30
Gas: $10
Phone: $60
Fuel: $140
Insurances: $200 (includes health, mortgage protect).
Groceries: $300Which brings me to about $2,200, so nowhere near the $4,000 per month mark. That’s also assuming we lived every single week like we’re broke (baked beans for dinner anyone? :P)
Now I’m not sure what the ebay fees are over there, but so far from what we’ve sold, we’re finding that about 20-25% of our gross is going towards ebay fees and that’s without starting to delve into paypal fees, tax costs or stock costs. I figure if we earn $1,000 gross we’re only going to see around $750-800, or $3000-3200 per month.
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Now we’re talking. It’s great you now know you’re must-make costs. Then after this it’s all gravy.
Since we work from home, we cook 99.9% of our meals. We cook luxurious, delicious (and easy) meals for cheap. We buy food in bulk when it’s on sale, then just eat on it for months. For instance, I bought 50 packages of frozen spinach for 25-cents each. Throw it in the freezer. Yum.
In the US, eBay fees are 10%. There are listings fees as well, unless you pay for a store subscription. http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html
Papypal fees are about 2.5%. I imagination its the same for Australia.Where do you scavenge? Obviously the price you pay for stuff will vary depending on where you’re buying. If you have the time to really scavenge deep, you can usually find stuff cheaper. People with little time often pay more for items.
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Ah that’s interesting those fees do sound very similar. Slight differences but nothing noteworthy, we pay slightly higher insertion and get slightly lower final value fees.
We also cook most of our meals. Most of the time we cook in bulk and freeze portions. We have a chest freezer we keep all our cooked meals in. It’s good when we’re too busy working and want to just microwave an easy meal. We also preserve our own fruits and veg. We have a dryer and we dehydrate fruit like apple. We also always have leafy greans growing so we never pay for salad ingredients. For anyone living frugal thats my tip, grow a pot of lettuce or chard and never buy salad leaves again.
We’ve only just begun but our main places to scavenge are thrift stores (op shops) or yard sales (garage sales). We can normally find some really nice clothing if we take the time. I picked up 4 italian suit jackets, 6 nice pairs of womens jeans, a pikachu backpack and a cool Santa Maria glass with this cool effect that makes it look shattered for $12 all up just a couple of days ago 🙂 It can be harder to find the deals as the bigger stores will actually price quite high, but the smaller op shops in more rural communities or run by churches or local schools, tend to have high quality donations. Yard sales are always good because most of the time people are just trying to avoid having to pay to get their rubbish removed (it can cost $100 to dump a trailer of rubbish!) so normally you can talk them down to a couple of bucks for a box of stuff.
We don’t have the history here though, our nation isn’t that old so coming across cool historical antiques is more rare here. Still very possible to find lots and lots of good stuff
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Guarding filing cabinets? haha
Just went for a trip, nothing amazing but found some cool knick knacks and handmade clay stuff. Also found a cool old liqueur decanter bottle from a local distillery. Only spent $6.50 all up and got 6 different items, so I’m pretty happy.
Also found a cool metal engraved shot glass, not sure what it’s made out of, looks like brass or copper.
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