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We are currently in between video jobs and visiting Jay’s sister in Chicago. Surrounded by much more activity than we’re used to with two young kids,
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 308: What Works For You?] -
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Wooo, exciting! SL podcast on my way home for the first time instead of Monday morning!
Something to look forward to!Week April 23-29
Items In Store: 857
Items Sold: 27 (11 Amazon)
Total Sales: $887.32 ($425.89 Amazon)
Avg Selling Price: $32.86 ($38.72 Amazon, $28.84 eBay)
Highest Price sold: $75 (1990s Tommy Hilfiger long sleeve tee)
Cost of Goods Sold: $129 (14.5% of my total sales)
Promoted Listings Experiment: 9 sales (56% of my eBay sales) for $215.96, $12.80 fees (5.9% of sales)
Money spent on new inventory: $85
New Listings: 13Wow. Didn’t feel this busy. Maybe because I was selling a lot of multiples on my Amazon items. Anyway, pretty pleased with the week – high volume for me, above average weekly sales, low COGS.
While I don’t have kids or anything like that, I do balance my time with eBay & my wife/family; eBay & my 50+ hr real job; eBay & life experiences. I do find eBay getting in the way every so often & vice versa. But that’s why I like selling – I can turn it off & on as I see fit. I can build up a big inventory over the course of 4-5 straight weeks of picking and let it go on autopilot (did that from mid-December through end of February) so I can enjoy the outdoors or go on a vacation.
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Items In Store: 336
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales: $276
Avg Selling Price: $30
Highest Price sold: $72 (NIP Waverly toile tablecloth. Shhh..from Target)
Cost of Goods Sold: $34 new + $18 used
Money spent on new inventory: $32 (3 items)
New Listings: 6Lol. Yup, smiling at you guys with no kids. We went to the fair and swam, etc. and I barely got anything listed this week. I got accepted to more serious vintage Facebook group. They all have Instagram pages for their businesses and fancy logos. Their Pinterest boards have thousands of followers, so that’s cool. I’ve applied to be a contributor to a few of them.
It was an ok selling week. I got frustrated with Ebay telling me to discount my new legos and tried an auction experiment. Two bids and a small loss on that. I put free shipping on the other that that hasn’t sold. They pick on those with upcs.
Just a couple of thrift stops but need to turn it around this week with my buying/listing ratio. Plan to work on a box of textiles this week and maybe some art. Life has finally calmed down and I got some good health news, so I should buckle down before the summer camp schedule hits.
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Apr. 23 – 29
Total Items in Store: 689
Items Sold: 14
Total Sales: $674
Highest Price: $250 (K R Wilson Cylinder Engine Sleeve Puller Replacer Tool Set)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $114
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $113Way better week this week! Mostly bread and butter sales but a few sales really brought my selling price average up. Went to a shitty auction at the beginning of the week. But went to the Goodwill Outlet store in Pittsburgh on Saturday and brought home some really awesome stuff to sell.
I received my first negative feedback. A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I sold a phone dialer extension and the buyer sent me a message asking me to call or email him to help him program the buttons or something. Well I ignored/forgot about it. Then I think Thursday I woke up to that negative comment saying that he tried multiple times to contact me (which wasn’t true) for help. I called eBay and I got the spiel about how it was the buyer’s opinion and that I would need to send him a feedback change request. So I did, saying that I would be happy to offer a refund. Haven’t heard back from him yet. I think maybe I’ll call eBay again tomorrow. What do you think? Is that one worth fighting? On one hand, I did ignore him when I should have at least said something. But on the other hand, he’s not paying me to provide technical support and he never even requested a refund which I would have definitely provided.
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Yep keep calling ebay, a buyer can’t leave negative feedback because you didn’t teach him how to use the item, regardless of if you ignored him or not.
If the first person doesn’t agree with you, call again and keep trying until someone helps you. You shouldn’t cop a negative feedback for that, and you’ve offered the buyer a full refund also, so you should get that feedback removed.
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Total Items in Store: 2115
Items Sold: 8
Total Sales: $202
Highest Sale: 40 (Vintage Sweater)I am aiming to hit 3000 listings by Thanksgiving, wish me luck, I’m going full tilt! I’m one of those guys with a full time job in the city, a wife and two younger kids. Sometimes I just lose sleep doing it all, but I have a goal and I stick to it.
It was a bad week for sales for me, but a great week for picking! Had a lot a sales today, so looking good. I hit up the rummage sales and estate sales and a few garage sales. I am really on a high for 3 picks I found:
1. A little of 2 hours ago I went all in (I think I heard Jay behind me saying “Go all in”) and bought over 600 pieces (mostly new in package) of Cover Girl Make up for $150. It is mostly discontinued eye shadow, lip stick, and foundation (I think that is what it is called).
The eye shadow is the majority, maybe 500+ of them. They are 8 different types going for an average of $12.50! I’m counting $6,250 total for that. The discontinued ones command a premium as much as $20 each.2. I bought a diving suit and undergarment and other equipment in a diving bag for $13. Looks like I can get between $400 – $500 for it.
3. Went “all in” on about 20 pairs of shoes for about $3 each. All of them nearly new with some decent brands.
So, one of my worst weeks that I can remember for sales, but one of the best I can remember for buys.
Mark
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Mark S: What a nice find. I would love to find something like that makeup lot you bought. Post some comments later stating how the sales on those items go.
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Brian – Yes, I will have to post about how the sales go.
I find that when I go to enough estate sales \ yard sales (I usually go to a lot of them) I can usually find a good cache around every 6 months. But yes, this was the best one so far. When I first bought them, I was counting on 600 items for around $5 each. But it has changed a lot in the last 24 hours. I found that I have at least 42 unique products worth around $8500. It doesn’t get much better than this for ebay. I will list 16 unique products first because that is about 3/4 of the total money.
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Week of Apr 23 – 30
* Total Items in Store: 753
* Items Sold: 13
* Cost of Items Sold: $41.04 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $270
* Highest Price Sold: $42 Brass Barometer
* Average Price Sold: $20.77
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20
* Number of items listed this week: about 35It was an average week for me, but very inconsistent. Sunday and Tuesday I had no sales, but Wednesday I had four. Weird.
COGS is a little high because $25 were two items we owned.
I went to an auction of mostly new items on Tuesday. They sell overstocks, refused shipments, returns, etc. I keep going, but never buying anything. They sell stuff by the piece, so if there is 100 items in a lot and the bid is $2 each, then the total is $200 plus buyer’s premium. So, I have to decide whether it is something I can sell and make good money on, then I have decide the max price I’m willing to bid and make sure that I can obtain the correct amount of cash to pay, and, lastly, I have to determine if I have enough room to store the items. So, I hesitate at bidding. I’m planning on selling low cost/low interest items at a flea market next weekend, so I’ll have more room. My goal is to make room so that I can actually buy something at the next one. These auctions happen every one to two months.
I did buy a 10 volume set at my local library’s book sale called The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia published in 1899 & 1900. Two of the books have issues and, in general, there is wear, but the pages are still in good condition. I’m working on listing them now.
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Also – Jay mentioned in a previous podcast about an “if-then” website, or something like that. It is a site where you can say IF x is listed on Craigslist and is within y miles of my home, THEN notify me via email.
What was that site? I tried to google it, but I didn’t see anything that looked right.
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Total Items in Store: 118
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales(after fees): $107.09
Cost of items sold: $18.50
Highest Price Sold: $30.00 (Speidel watch band lot)
Average Price Sold: $17.84Not my best week. But not the worst!! Had one item not work properly even though I tested it and had to cancel two orders because people didn’t pay. Rude.
I did take the day off and went thrifting 1.5 hours away to Staunton, VA to stock up on some goodies. Im doing an experiment on selling some clothing. Its not an area I am familiar with but figured it’d be good to get some consistent bread and butter items in my store. Also they are so easy to ship! GAH!!
Working on my listing this week! wanna max out my store within the next month!
Thanks guys for another great podcast. Always something relevant to what I’ve experienced during the week. I was looking forward to listening all weekend!:)
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Week of 4/23-4/29
Total Items in Store: 1,514
Items Sold: 74
Number of Items Listed This Week: 125
Total Sales: $1,929.20
Cost of Items Sold: $400.19
Highest Item Sold: $180 – HEXBUG VEX IQ Robotics Construction Kit from a Radio Shack Store Closing Sale (Veronica wins this week expanding her lead for the year 9-7).Month of April 2017
Total Items in Store: 1,507
Items Sold: 333
Number of Items Listed This Month: 349
Total Sales: $9,443.64
Cost of Items Sold: $1,943.42We finally broke through the 1,500 inventory level for the first time. And April turned out to be our biggest sale month ever.
Veronica FINALLY had a good day on Friday at the yard sales. The morning was GREAT weather, so we filled the back of our truck with inventory and also a lot of packaging (the neighborhood had their trash day on Friday, so boxes and bubble wrap was out at the same time). Yard sale season has officially started here in Colorado! Of course, then it snowed Friday afternoon and Saturday, so we just listed instead.
FYI on the SCAN sheet, since I have talked about it so much, there are some issues to watch out for. We had a person cancel an order after the label was printed, but before it was picked up. If you do that, you HAVE to pull the SCAN sheet from your bin. If the USPS scans that sheet, ALL the labels are accepted, including the one you plan to void. But if it shows as accepted (from the SCAN), you cannot void. We caught this before it was an issue, so we didn’t lose any money, we just hoped that the shipments for that day are scanned by USPS at the Distribution Center in time.
We also had one crappy day on shipping (Monday), as eBay timed out generating the labels. After 20 minutes, no labels or SCAN sheet. So we went on to other tasks, figuring that we would ship a little later in the day. Then 30 minutes later….PayPal tells us that the shipping charge went through. 21 of the 23 labels we asked for were in eBay, so we had to match up which ones went through, reprint the label (which for some reason had vastly different formatting, so we had to manually cut and tape the labels on the package since it didn’t match up with our adhesive labels), and complete the shipping. So the printing and attaching labels task, which would take 10 minutes, took me 2.5 hours. Not a good day…
Regarding how you do it all with kids, jobs, and eBay? All about disciple and schedule. Schedule your time, and keep to your schedule. And laugh whenever you can!
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RR Store Week April 23-29, 2017
Total Items in Store: 1,259
Items Sold: 32
Cost of Items Sold: $57.97
Total Sales: $1,025.72
Highest Price Sold: $119.99 (Vintage Brockway Trucks ashtray)
Average Price Sold: $32.05
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $81
Number of items listed this week: 31If I could have weeks like this every week, a lot of my financial anxiety would be relieved. Didn’t do anything different; in fact, I missed my listing goal because of all the time intensive death pile clothing. Lots of Oxy Clean soaks, steaming, and measuring. I wish I could just list records all day. So quick and easy.
Saturday I went to three estate sales, and boy did I clean up. I filled up the trunk and half the back seat, all for $81 bucks. While waiting for some face time with the boss at the first sale, one of her employees walked through the house announcing that everything was now half off. Music to my ears! I piled all my picks on the table. She eyeballed it and said “$30 for everything”. Sold! Yesterday I sold an ink cartridge from that sale for $26 bucks…almost paid for the whole haul. The sale was in a gorgeous million dollar mid century home with a spectacular view, full of high end pieces. A goldmine.
We got to the third sale during the last hour on the last day. They were desperate to get everything out, and encouraged me to make a pile, which I promptly did. Again, I got an incredible deal. I was practically giddy.
Aside from being driven to estate sales by my girl, this is a one man operation. No kids to worry about, and my girl has her own place. Not a lot of balance with work and leisure activities right now. Too busy getting my business back up where it needs to be. Weeks like this are my short term goal. But I get the fun stuff in here and there. Mexican food and margaritas for lunch, a birthday party, a moonlight walk, etc. My vacation goal for the year is to spend a weekend in Palm Springs doing as little as possible. (sigh)
*Paul*
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Store Week 4/23/17 – 4/29/17
Total items in store: 1278
Items sold: 17
Cost of items sold: $10.96
Total sales: $395.18
Highest price sold: $70.00 (Vintage Bell Motorcycle helmet)
Average price sold: $23.25
International Sales: 2
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory this week: $39.58It was very slow again last week, with mainly low priced sales. The helmet sale was kind of funny. A friend once told me to keep an eye out for old Bell helmets, so I picked it up at a yard sale for 25 cents. Some kid had very crudely painted it to look like a football helmet, so I thought surely nobody would pay much for it. It’s been kicking around the house for a few years now, and when we finally listed it, the international offers started coming in right away. I took a $70 offer since I was hungry for a decent sale. It was just funny that after years of laughing about this thing, I was suddenly countering $5o offers on it! It’s now on its way to Japan.
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Week 23-29
Number of Active Listings: 342
Items In Store: 563
Items Sold: 4
Avg Selling Price: $27.54
Cost of Goods Sold: -$5.50
Total Sales: $110.15
Returns/Refunds: $0.00
Unpaid Items: $0.00
Highest Price: $50 for a copy of Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo. Had a double lying around.Slow week here for us. Only a few sales and more lower end items. On the plus side was a resonably good week for us in listing as we managed to get about 80 new items up since last week. Could do better, but still happy with that 🙂
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Here are our April numbers:
Total Items in Store: 886 (492 Amazon, 394 Ebay)
Items Sold: 281 (221 Amazon, 60 Ebay)
Cost of Items Sold: $3,666.46 ($2,740.87 Amazon, $925.59 Ebay)
Total Sales: $21,361.82 ($18,116.33 Amazon, $3,195.82 Ebay)
Average Price Sold: $76.02 ($81.97 Amazon, $53.26 Ebay)After a fantastic month on March, another one in April. We are well positioned to meet our 100k goal for the first 6 months of the year (we are a bit over 76k).
A few interesting things we noticed during April:
– we did not list anything on Ebay for about 2 weeks (around the Easter) and after $2600 sales first half of the month the sales grinded to almost a full stop. We had 4 days with no sales in 5 consecutive days.
– We put some focus into Ebay store and things started to sell again (so I’ll say what has been repeated here and everywhere else: KEEP YOUR STORE ACTIVE 🙂 ).
– Amazon has been fantastic so far but it’s eating almost our entire time to keep it supplied (Wife is doing resell full time. I work after work Mon-Fri for 2-3 hours and 6-8 hours on Sat-SunWhile the money coming from resell have been fantastic this year so far, we decided that Sat we’ll do nothing after sourcing and Sunday we take off entire day. By working 7 days a week it’s starting to feel like a death march now.
Regarding the question how we do it with a full-time job (me) and 2 teenagers daughters? I have no clue. We are in cruising mode at the moment. After having kids for close to 18 years, you enter in auto-pilot at one point.
Hope you get better Jay and I’ll post again next month. (We do listen every podcast tough 🙂 )
Thank you for everything you both do!
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Nice job John, great sales and ROI. Out of curiosity, what are selling on Amazon? I don’t want names or anything like that, but just in general. Are you buying from a manufacturer, RA or are you buying pallets? I am building a pipeline on Amazon by buying on ebay and sending in to Amazon.
Lee
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Mark S – congrats on that awesome make up buy! I stumbled onto skin care products by accident and am amazed at how quickly they sell! Also, if you need help with identifying any of the dive gear, I’m a diver. I’ll give you the correct terminology if you’re stuck.
My week April 24-30
Items in store: 214
Items sold: 6
COGS: $20
Sales: $263
Highest price sold: $72 Cordless drill set
Average sale: $43
Returns: 1 (The Tory Burch pumps came back. Issued a refund. The next day, eBay told me I had an eligible unpaid item case. I cancelled it, but… weird!)
Inventory: $30
Listed: 0 Bugrit.A lady had items left over from a garage sale. Her friend was one of my dance students and referred her to me. As it was a friend doing the referral, I couldn’t really refuse due to Death Pile status, so I went to pick it up. Filled the SUV to the max! 15 pairs of shoes in one box alone, so I’m not unhappy! Also, a watch in the box with a $108 price tag. It doesn’t work, so I assume it needs a new battery, but my hubs does that for me, so all good.
Listing fell off a cliff this past week. My classes and the rentals took up all my attention and I didn’t get to do anything. Also, one full day to unpack the SUV and inventory the haul. I want to get back on the listing wagon this week, but yesterday was a bust and I’m going to be out of town (again) Wednesday and Thursday. Can’t wait to get this make ready done, rent the damn house, and get back to work!
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Amatino – Yes, that was a nice make up find. See my response to Brian above.
This is what the diving suit is (not mine, but this is what it is). What are all those valves about? Also, there are some small hoses.
Why are there boots on the suit?
I have the undergarment for this, I’m assuming that is what it is called. I also have a hat that goes under the suit, is there a name for that?
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Welcome to Chicago. Hubby’s most favorite place to visit is the Aquarium. I get bored and mostly people watch when I’m there. LOL
I pulled up your solds and it was cool to be able to see exactly what you talked about in your podcast.
Yeah, I don’t know how people do it working full time, having kids and doing ebay. I closed down my studio and have 3 kids (a little bit older) and I never seem to find the time to list as much as I’d like. You have to be really disciplined to work from home. 🙂
I’ve started increasing how much I list and the sales prove that there certainly is a correlation!
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I listened to the podcast this morning, and wanted to talk about the extrapolation of a business. There are valid ways that you can calculate that if you sell 50 items for $500 profit, you can sell 100 items for $1000 profit. There are invalid ways to do it as well.
I spent 20+ years in manufacturing and cost accounting, and forecasting was 50% of my job. Before I decided to quit and move into reselling full time, this type of math is exactly what I did to prove that it can work. I had to, the mortgage payment and feeding the kids was on the line. The largest factor for accuracy is the data you are using. If you have one type of item you have sold (say just one style of iPhone case), and you sold 5 of them, extrapolating to 1000 would not make sense. To your point Jay, at some point, the market is saturated for that style of iPhone case.
But if you expand your category, your data is better. I sold men’s shirts part time on eBay for almost 2 years before I started to extrapolate the data. If I sold just Brooks Brothers shirts, my market data is too narrow and the extrapolation is not as valid (can’t source enough, market saturation, not enough demand). But if I sell 30+ brands of dress shirts for 2 years, the data is better. If I add casual shirts, and western shirts, and pants, and coats…you can see how your market is expanding and extrapolation is more valid. You are able to source the items since you have a wider net, you are getting a wider variety of buyers, and your seasonality is smoothing out.
Also, the above are commodity items, so extrapolation can work much better (depending on brand and style), since there is a larger universe of buyers for these items, versus unique collectibles. I went for more commodity items in the business because I liked it (I stay away from Women’s Clothes as I just don’t care) and because it was a different model that what Veronica was doing, collectible items like what Jay & Ryanne do. Doing more of the same didn’t make sense for the business, as that lacked diversification and her items have a much lower sell thru rate. I wanted items with a 20%-35% sell thru rate, so that cash flow was more fluid and it is easy to store the inventory (filing cabinets are perfect for shirts).
To your comment Ryanne, you have to make the job you enjoy. You like the eclectic collectible items, so that is your main focus. With your ability to store inventory on your property, that is very feasible. But it also is reflected in your low sell thru rate (you guys are about a 4%-5% sell thru rate), which is why it takes 6000+ items to generate the revenue that you do, vs say Amazing Taste that has a 80% sell thru rate. Different businesses, different results. It is all in the business that you want. One is not better than the other, just what you want out of the business.
So for anyone that wants to forecast (which I do all the time), make sure you have a good set of prior data that you have sold first, and make sure you are using reasonable forecasting assumptions. Do what makes sense for your business. For us, I forecast our business based on inventory level, sell thru rate (which gives forecasted sales volume), average selling price (forecasted revenue), and listing activity (forecasted purchases and adjusts inventory levels). I use the last two years of data good information to base my assumptions. It hasn’t failed us yet and actuals usually surprise us to the good (better than expected). And I do this for the entire business, both my clothing and Veronica’s collectibles, and it has proven pretty reliable for us.
So it can be done, you just have to make sure that you understand your business well, use good data, and change your business when the patterns start to change.
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T-Satt – That was an excellent explanation. I forecast my business in a spreadsheet like you have stated (I just didn’t know all those fancy terms). I use the sell thru rates from the prior year for each month. I estimate how much I am going to list each month, how much each item will sell for on average etc. I love my spreadsheet model because I can literally see the future with it. I am as diverified as I can be selling just about everything. Also, keeping a larger inventory helps (2100+ right now). I update the spreadsheet at least once a month based on changing factors. I pretty much know what I will be making for the next 5 years if I keep to my listing targets and my historical sell-thru rates hold. So far, the sell-thru rates year over year are usually very close for me.
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I think its really two questions that you can ask yourself when you want to go full-time.
Question #1: “How do I guarantee I’ll be able to replace my current income?”
You need to be able to pay your monthly bills, so the spreadsheet model can give you a lot of confidence. You can focus on commodity items like different dress shirt brands which are easy to scavenge, easy to store, and easy to ship. If you choose to undercut the competition, then you can almost guarantee a certain sell through rate. As long as you’re putting up the listings each week, money comes in.Question $2: “Can I scavenge, list, and sell this stuff week after week? What makes me feel free?”
I know I would shoot myself if I had to list dress shirts day in and day out. Maybe I’d make money, but it’d be as soul sucking as any job I’ve had before. The whole purpose of selling online full time is freedom, and obviously we each define freedom differently. There’s lots of equations to get to your target each month to pay the bills. Selling a narrow range of commodity items may guarantee income, but could burn you out quickly. Selling a wide range of weird items may be difficult to predict on a spreadsheet, but can keep you interested.-
I completely agree with you. It is all in what your goals are and what life you want to lead.
Veronica likes to stay with the collectibles, although she has started to list jeans to give herself a recurring item she can find when yard sales are slow. I don’t mind the men’s clothing, as you can find some home runs in there, and I can listen to podcasts and music while I photo and list, so it doesn’t feel like work.
And because you have such a large inventory, I would guess that you could forecast your numbers on a spreadsheet. You have such a long prior data stream, as well as such a large inventory, that you could predict your months pretty closely using monthly average sales price and sell through rates. Just my guess, but if you wanted to, I’ll bet you could. I use my forecast to help forecast the income for tax planning purposes, so it helps a lot. Plus, when I see that our sell thru rate is lower than the norm or what I forecast, it gives us time to think about rotating inventory, changing pricing, etc. It is all in what you want to do!
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I haven’t gone through my numbers yet this week, but I know it was very odd. One day nothing, the next 3 or 4 sales, and then the next day nothing again.
I am one of those who has a 40 hour a week day-job, and another 10 to 20 hours a week doing freelance work. A family and bajillion related responsibilities. I have very specific goals that I am aiming for with my Ebay business. The 1st of which is getting rid of our mortgage, to then be followed up with leaving the day job.
I think it’s all about keeping those goals in mind and then being very disciplined with what I am doing. Giving up a few things now to hopefully have them more in a year or two.
That said, it’s rough. I have been working at a furious pace the past few weeks though because my wife and kid are out of the country for a few months. So I have set the goal of 1,000 listings by the time they are back at the end of July. I’m trying to be focused with it and I think I’m on pace. But I’m afraid its my storage and organizing that is falling behind – so I need to get in on that.
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Organized storage is a must! I am so much happier since I have reorganized all of my listed inventory into totes with labels and SKU’s on the listings. I can also function more efficiently when I take the time to properly put unlisted inventory in totes and organize it.
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Total Items in Store: 640
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $37
Total Sales: $320
Profit: $283
Highest Price Sold: $75 Johnston Murphy Golf Shoes
Average Price Sold: $35.50
Average Profit: $31.38Full time job, 4 kids that we homeschool, and a homeowner with a never ending honey-do list. Currently the two older kids are in rehearsal for two plays, the 4 year old plays soccer, and the baby is…well…a baby. We are literally busy every day of the week 24/7. I have to use every spare minute I have as efficiently as possible so I can preserve family time. Since January ebay has been the task that I have let slip. Before that, I let my health and sleep slip. Without health and sleep though, everything else is in danger so I made the changes I needed to make.
It is definitely not easy. A lot of things slip through the cracks. Clean house? Bwahahahahahahaha!! Not feasible with 4 children who are ALWAYS there destroying. Having small children raises the difficulty level of even the simplest task to 11. Ya just gotta man up and make things happen.
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4 kids is crazy! We stopped at 2, since we wanted to stay on man-to-man defense…didn’t want to go to zone…
I remember reading somewhere that there are the engines that we fire on in life: Work, Family, and Health. And we always seem to focus on 1, maybe two at a time, and the third is always forgotten for a while. I seem to do that all the time, one engine always neglected for a while.
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I’ve also heard these as the 3 legs of the stool that we have to maintain or we risk falling. I guess that gets back to always trying to keep things balanced, which is tough. I’ve been a bit maniacal lately, and my sleep and health have been the engine left unattended, so I’m working on getting that back in order.
It’s always nice to remember how big an effect little things can have. Whether that’s taking a walk every morning, or making sure you list at least 1 thing everyday. They add together, they snowball, and things move along faster than you expect.
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4/23 – 4/29
Total Items in store: 381
Items sold: 2
Cost of items sold: approx. $1
Total Sales: $28
Highest price sold: $20 Nashville Predators Metal lunch box
Average price sold: $14
Int’l sales: 0
Returns:0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Amazon disbursement – $1965Full time ebay goal – was March 2018; now – ????
Ebay to Amazon – 13 sales – $1815, COGS – $863, fees – $219, profit – $732
Went to the Atlanta Thrifting class with Jason Smith, it was an informative fun class. Here is my takeaway. First I have not done much thrift store shopping. I mostly shop yard sales and auctions. It was interesting to watch someone looking for items. He shared his approach, basically start with media (his favorite) and work back from there. It was also interesting to talk to other resellers. But the ultimate bottom line is you have to learn brands. If you don’t know brands, then you have to look them up, it is repetition. For example, the first time you look through jeans you might need to look up half of them, the next time a quarter, and so on. Just like everything else, it is hard work and dedication. I don’t think I am going to go full time into thrifting or even selling clothing heavy anytime soon, but it was very good information. There are few opportunities to learn this skill in person and this was close enough to drive.We have 2 young kids, I have a full time job and my wife has a part time job. I have to keep looking toward the goal, that is what keeps me motivated. I know I want to quit the day job (even though I do not hate it). I want the freedom of developing my business to the level I see fit.
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total Items in store: 415
Items sold: 20
Cost of items sold: $51
Total Sales: $358
Highest price sold: $70 (vintage Betty Crocker cookbook)Since I got back from Chicago last week, we’ve all fallen sick with something for 2 weeks! Food poisoning, ear infections, laryngitis, fevers, trips to urgent care. I’m so over this, and really ready for everyone to start feeling healthy again. I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about calling out sick for work or school, (we homeschool, too). I don’t miss that stress at all.
I don’t have an outside job, but homeschooling feels like a full time job sometimes. It’s not just the bookwork that takes up time. The lessons are the easy part! It’s making sure your kid gets enough time to hang out with other kids. I have an only child, so if I want him to have friends, (and I do), I need to get us out of the house several times a week. I am lucky, because my boy is a pretty mellow, bookish little dude, not rowdy and extroverted, and is happiest with low key activities and meetups.
I dragged myself out to an estate sale on Sunday, and picked up some items that have already sold. Someone made me an offer on a vintage Gucci purse within hours of listing it. I was tired, and decided to wait until morning to respond. They went ahead and purchased at full price, so I am extra glad I waited to respond. The purse sold for enough to cover the furniture I bought at the sale for our house.
In the negative column, I listed some vintage MacWorld magazines, but flubbed the title on it. They sold right away, and I’m waiting to hear back from the buyer to see if they still want the magazines, (title says 12 copies, listing shows 4 copies). This is what happens when you Nyquil and Ebay!
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April 23-29
Total Sales eBay $554.02
Quantity Sold 38
Avg Sale Price $14.58
Sold Items Cost $25Total Sales Craigslist $35
Quantity 1Best sale of the week was a Merkur safety razor set that I had only bought a few days prior for $40. I bought it for $5 because it came with razor blades, which I kept for myself since I would be buying them (for more than that) anyway. I had just gone through buying my own first safety razor kit a month ago, and knew how strangely expensive everything was. Sold the night I listed it – very nice to feel so quickly validated.
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Flim Store Week April 23-29, 2017
Total Items in Store: 839
Items Sold: 30
Cost of Items Sold: $252.87
Total Sales: $1,623.58
Highest Price Sold: $110 (boots)
Average Price Sold: $54.12
Returns: 2While going fulltime ebay has been challenging, I think my day to day stress has gone down significantly. Especially living in New York, being able to ride the subway on off hours is a HUGE stress reliever – not to mention doing all the life things (grocery shopping, laundry, bank, etc) during off hours instead of cramming everything after work or on the weekends is great. The one thing I’m trying to balance is time with friends who are still on the 9-6 work schedule. I make it a point to try to grab lunch with people once a week, and dinner once or twice a week. It helps maintain my sanity after being alone working all day. I’m a naturally social person, and constantly shopping alone and listing alone doesn’t sit well with me (although I am an only child and am perfectly happy by myself for long stretches of time). So I’ve been going to flea markets with friends on the weekends, killing two birds with one stone.
And tomorrow I get to shop at my friend’s workplace – she works at a big magazine publisher and every so often they do these incredible sample closet sales. Every cosmetic sample that gets sent to the magazine goes into the sample closet, and then they sell it for $1-3 an item. They only allow people to be in there for 10 minutes, but you can get back in line as many times as you want. I’ve gotten Chanel/YSL/Givenchy cosmetics for $1. It’s the best.
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Yes, working alone must be tough. I guess good thing is you can hang out in the evening with your friends knowing you can wake up anytime you want.
OR try to make friends with other people with non-traditional work schedules. I always found that NYC has a lot of people who dont work normal 9-5 jobs.
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Yep, I’m definitely the one encouraging my friends to stay out just a little later since I don’t have to wake up early!
And I saw that article about the Queens bins. The bins aren’t that full of drama, but they are hectic and grabby as they describe. I can only go once in a while and for a couple hours before I need to get out of there. They make everyone line up while they swap out the bins and in order to get decent stuff, you have to wait in that holding area for a while. It’s not pleasant, and I’m happy to pay a little more for better quality of goods and quality of life.
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Hello: I thought I would post this feel good article about an item purchased at Goodwill. Link.
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And here’s another article about Goodwill Outlets in NYC: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/nyregion/competitive-shopping-at-goodwill-grabbing-bargains-by-the-pound.html
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Suggestion: It would be awesome if when a person calls with a question that has been asked, answered, talked about a thousand times on your podcast if you could give them a summarized answer and let them know they really need to go in and listen to ALL the podcasts to fully learn all there is to learn. Most of us have been here since the beginning and I feel like the beginners should really have to start at the beginning like we all did. Example: Global Shipping. Thank you! Have a great visit in Chicago – we are about 45 minutes west of there.
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Here’s a thought. I did something similiar only not as labor intensive. I saw a newbie question not long ago on How to ship a hat. Talk about a topic that has had hundreds of answer’s and many are pretty much the same answer. I suggested to use the “Search” box on the “Home Page”. This is a GREAT FEATURE and one of the reasons J&R went to the Forum Format. Just type in how to ship hats and Bingo! tons of answers. Sort of like our own ScavengerLife mini Google within the Forums.
By doing this we can cut down on the SL use of bandwidth, save J&R some costs 🙂 and also save the seasoned members some time retyping the same old answers to those very frequent questions.
Guess it relates to the old adage.. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time”!! So use the Search Function-Field first and see what you get. I use it a lot when I don’t remember what everyone here has said BUT I KNOW it has been discussed before.
Just a thought….
mike at mdc galleries in Atlanta
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I hear you. we don’t want to be repetitive, but often a lot of what we talk about is repetitive. We bought something, we sold something, we shipped something.
We’ll do a better job os screening out newbie calls. Unfortunately these are often the only calls we get. Call in with you more experienced questions!
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Thanks for doing a show even while you were on the road. My week isn’t the same without a SL episode to listen to.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1680
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales: $762
Cost of Items Sold: $159.12
Average Price Sold: $30.49
Average Cost of Item: $6.36
Highest Price Item Sold: $165 Polaris pool cleaner
Number of items listed this week: 60
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 230
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 154
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 97
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.49%
# of Hats Sold: 17 (68% of sales)My biggest sale of the week (pool cleaner) was a bad buy so I didn’t make a lot on that one (and had to store it all winter).
My favorite sale of the week (and a BOLO for everyone) was a Microsoft Trackball / Mouse Explorer 1.0. I picked up a couple of trackball mice on a hunch and i paid a couple of dollars for each. Maybe I’d heard about them being worthwhile from a podcast. This Microsoft one sold for $119.95. The other one is a Logitech trackball which is listed and hasn’t sold for $12.95. Watch out for Microsoft trackballs.
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Ebay Numbers for month of April
Total Listings: 765
Items Sold: 51
Cost of Items Sold: $173
Total Sales: $1069
Highest Price Sold: $100 Computer Memory Card / $45 Light Fixture Chain
Average Price Sold: $20.96
International Sales: 3 GSP
Spent on new inventory: $526.17
Number of items listed: 66I spent more than I planed on new inventory. It is hard to pass up great deals. I spent $215 on a catch of Tattoo Parlor Flash Cards, most of which date to the 1970s. Then Sunday at an estate sale close to my house, I spent $150 on fabric, a stack of needlepoint kits and a lot of vintage strategy games along with other cool stuff.
Last Saturday I sold at a local swap meet and did pretty good, a total of $500 in sales, $120 of which was for a rug that I found on the street when driving to FedEx to SmartPost a package.
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I keep telling myself to stop shopping, but you never know what you’ll find. For instance, this past weekend I told myself I wouldn’t shop. Went to a goodwill so my wife could look at the clothes for herself. There sat this beautiful Casio weighted key digital keyboard. Complete with stand and pedal. They only wanted $20 because the power supply was missing the generic AC side of the cable so it was untested. I keep a pile of those cables at home for instances such as this.
Got it home and it works perfectly. It sells for $500 with the stand on ebay! I think the kids have claimed it though.As a bonus, the pedal and adapter was in a box with some wireless headphones and a remote. I asked if it all went together and they said yes. The headphones and remote go to a Chevy SUV entertainment center and are brand new. They sell for 70-80. Woot!
I also found a vintage Nike Wool/Leather varsity jacket that day. I’ll be listing that for $400!So in closing, fate has determined I shall never stop shopping. I’d miss out on my best finds!
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Mark S – sorry about the delayed reply. I was the headless chicken impersonator yesterday.
There are two types of dive suits: a wet suit (what everyone thinks about when they think about scuba diving) and a dry suit, which you have. A wet suit gets wet. You wear a swimsuit underneath it, get thoroughly wet through during your dive, and the water forms an insulating layer between your body and the suit. This layer is warmed by your body heat and keeps you (moderately) warm as you dive.
A dry suit keeps you completely dry. Think James Bond. It is used mainly for commercial divers who work for long periods or very deep underwater, where the insulation of a wet suit is dissipated too quickly and the diver would develop hypothermia. The dry suit is therefore fitted with all sorts of seals, to keep water out, and as many integrated parts as possible. Integrated is the key word here! If it is integrated, i.e. built into the suit, then there is less chance of developing a leak in the suit. Most suits come with integrated gloves and boots, but you do get some with those separate (unusual.) Some suits come with integrated hoods too, while others have non-integrated hoods, about 50-50 either way. That “hat” you’re referring to is called a hood. Some hoods just cover the head, others come down the neck, like a balaclava, and some have a sort of flange that covers the shoulders and top of the torso.
The dry suit keeps you dry, but it doesn’t keep you warm. Most divers wear undergarments to keep them warm, usually called thermal undersuits. These range from fleece, or wool, to thinsulate. The better the product, the more value. Think mountain climbing. Better gear, more expensive.
Now, about those valves. There is a minimum of two: an inflation valve, where air or gas is pumped into the suit during descent; and an exhaust valve where air or gas is expelled during ascent. Valves may be at the wrist or the shoulder, and may be manual or automatic.
Suits may also have clamps around the neck for the helmet.
My best advice, unless you KNOW, is to list it as “requires service” or “service history unknown.” The person who buys it will therefore be responsible for getting or doing a service, checking o-rings and valve operation and such. What you can test is anything that opens and closes, look at seams for loose or unraveling sections, and any areas of wear on the suit, like knees, ass, or elbows. Those are issues that a diver will be concerned with. The diver needs to know that s/he can get into it (zipper working?), and seams or worn areas may affect whether or not the suit is waterproof. Don’t mess with the valves or anything like that. The diver must take that responsibility. It’s his life on the line.
Think of it this way: I’ve dived to 47m/154′, which is about the equivalent of 10 stories. Go to the 10th floor of a building and look down. See the ground? That’s where I’d be if you were in the boat on the surface. A commercial diver operates at depths 2-3 times that much. They will be VERY careful about their gear. Check as much as you can, admit to your ignorance of the rest, and add in to your listing warnings about service.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you need anything else.
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Ryanne,
When I travel, I change all the handling times to the day after I return. I enter the return date as the day I want to ship. Then I put the store on vacation, but I leave all the listings visible. Then I change the message to read, “We are away but still selling treasures and accepting offers. We will ship your item on __________. Let us know if you have a question.”Then I just leave it. I agree that eBay should make it easier, but this works for me.
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From past podcasts, Jay and Ryanne do not put their store on vacation mode because it prevents sales during that time and the visibility of listings is slow to come back.
lbt606 is saying that that doesn’t happen. He/she is able to continue selling while in vacation mode.
I’m confused now. Is there a better way?
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When you put your store on vacation, you have the option to hide your listings from view. If so, buyers can’t find your listings. If you leave your listings visible, your buyers see your listings with a message stating you are gone and when you will return.
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Unless they’ve updated Vacation Settings, here’s the problem. The buyer is told you will be returning on x date, but your handling time will remain the same.
So if you have one day handling time, but your vacation settings say you’ll ship in a week, then all your packages will be considered late by eBay. If a buyer complains about the late shipping, eBay will not back you up.
This is why we ignore vacation settings and just change handling time. That’s all eBay cares about.
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My store is so small, I’m going to do a monthly post – for both March and April.
Total items in store now: 94. It’s stayed hovering just below 100 for most of the past two months. I have listed about as many as I’ve sold, finding time between my job and my family obligations.March:
Items Sold: 35
Cost of Items Sold: About $240
Total Sales: $2,967.42
Highest Price Sold: $1200 – furniture (paid $60)
Average Price Sold: $84.78April:
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: About $185
Total Sales: $1398.84
Highest Price Sold: $250 – rare leather notebook (paid $3)
Average Price Sold: $49.96I’ve gotten lucky with a few high dollar items, added to a bunch of bread and butter items. I’m hoping to keep up my average of about 1 sale per day, but the summer is coming, so it’s time to buy buy buy and list list list as I can find the time. But 65 items and $4,366 is a great result. My profit is about $3,000 over two months, and I’m surprised and grateful.
I have had a couple of returns not counted in the numbers above; one item lost in shipping; and probably 2 or 3 international sales (some through third-party shippers).
I have a full-time job, but it’s comforting to know that I could probably swing a basic living selling full time on eBay if I had to.
Thanks, everyone – I learn from you all every day.
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In terms of. “How do you do it” in reference to raising a family, my wife and I have 1 child a daughter. My wife and I work full time and I have this side job with eBay. My sister and her husband have 5 boys. I have no idea how people with multiple kids function. My daughter has something going on every night, sports, band, other school events. My sister doesn’t sell on eBay, but now that 1 son is in college and the others are not babies she did take on a full time job. It is amazing.
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My numbers for the week of 4/23/17:
Total Items in Store: 105
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $513
Total Sales: $28.50 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $165 (Collectible Disney Snowglobe)
Average Price Sold: $28.50
Returns: 0When I started having babies, I left my job as a Purchasing Agent to stay home with the kids, a decision I will never regret even though I liked my work. We have 3 kids and learned how to live on one income by being frugal…it’s my nature anyways, I find being thrifty to be pretty fun and rewarding.
When my youngest went to Preschool, I filled in my 2.5 hours three times a week with eBay. I would source with my son in a stroller (he still hates garage sales to this day!) and as soon as I dropped him off on school days, it would be back to the house to list. Back then I remember thinking if I could just make an extra $100 a week, that would be such a help to our family finances! It went better than expected. Once he went to first grade, I actually had some real time to make eBay a successful part time thing. Now my kids are 4th-10th graders and what makes eBay such a great fit with a family is the flexibility. What makes it hard is the older they get, the more expensive they get. So there is always that question in the back of my mind. That pull in two different directions. If I go back to work full time, we will be able to set aside alot more for College and Retirement. If I go bigger with eBay it’s kind of a question mark how much more I could actually do with limited space and interrupted time. I really enjoyed reading the comments above by T-Satt. Sell through rates have always been a focus for me. I measure my success by a high sell through and not a high number of items in inventory. I think it comes from my Purchasing background to see high inventory as a negative. Basically as tied up money. But wondering if 100 items brings 2K in sales, then would that really translate to 200 bringing in 4K. I know I could source the product, I’m just wondering if the sales would really follow the equation.
Oh, one other thing. I found my best eBay find to date. A vintage Herman Miller fiberglass shell chair! Found it on a local Facebook group for $20. Hoping to get $650 for it. Rayanne can you suggest the best way to ship something like this? The legs are epoxy’d on and I would not want to remove them. Any advise would be appreciated.-
Beth, I completely agree with your thinking on inventory. High inventory is not always a good thing. Inventory is as you say, invested capital. You were in purchasing, I was in accounting, but we would get along great!
For items that are mostly a commodity (for me, that is men’s clothing), lower inventory and high turnover is a smarter route (in my opinion). If tastes change, different products come out that change buyer behavior, prices change, etc., you don’t want to be sitting on inventory that you can’t sell. In these areas, sell through rate and profit per hour of work are the key metrics to me. This is why I track daily and analyze weekly these types of metrics.
Other items that are more vintage and collectible will tend to be longer tail items, so the sell through isn’t as good, but the profit can be worth the wait. Jay and Ryanne make a lot of money in this area, but the invested capital is higher, due to the lower sell thru rate. Time invested in listing and shipping isn’t as much of a factor here (though the time to properly pack is a definite thing to consider if something is worth your time).
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Have I really just come across another person as analytical about their eBay business as me? Yes, I’m sure we’d get along great! We are in the minority. I have noticed that many eBay sellers equate large inventory with success. Meanwhile I much prefer my emptying shelves and get a little anxious feeling when my inventory level creeps up instead of down.
PS – Nice storage system. I will look into Easy Auction Tracker if I outgrow my current numbering system in the future.-
I wish we didn’t need a large inventory, but the reality of our scavenging demands that we be patient for items to sell. I wish we had a 30% sell through rate!
We can usually only find two out of three of qualities:
–Cheap and high profit, but not quick selling.
–Quick selling and high profit, but expensive to buy.
–Quick selling and cheap to buy, but low profit.Those sellers who can find cheap inventory that sells quick and makes them high profit are amazing.
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Amen. But it does matter on what you buy. I’m willing to sit on the right items if the profit is there. We sold a $600 Bogner Ski suit last year, and we had to have the patience to wait for almost a year to get that profit. But when selling certain shirts, holding out for $5 more dollars doesn’t always make sense.
I look at this business as trying to feed both halves of the brain. The right side says “this is cool and will sell!”, the left side says “let’s prove that, and how long to wait for that profit “? Being an accountant, the left side of me is much stronger, which is why Veronica does the collectible stuff… 🙂
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“I am so much happier since I have reorganized all of my listed inventory into totes with labels and SKU’s on the listings. I can also function more efficiently when I take the time to properly put unlisted inventory in totes and organize it.” Retro and T-Satt any pictures possible? This sounds intriguing, and I am visual.
Lot’s of family things=slow sales again this week. I won’t complain because I am thoroughly enjoying having my son here before he permanently moves out next week.
Homeschooling is definitely a job, with some great benefits. The kid that’s leaving next week? Pulled him out of school after a 5th grade where they kept the adhd kid in from recess 90% of the time. I had him move, squirm, and pay attention at the same time. Was it a success? He’s officially graduated, walks this month and he’s been accepted into grad school for fall.
Sold: 3 items
High: Orvis women’s 2 pc shorts/top $28
Low: Felt Cowboy hat. Thought it was adult when bought it, but it’s a kid’s hat $9-
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We use the SKU field in eBay to do two things. 1) it links up with our Easy Auctions Tracker spreadsheet to track what has sold and what is still in inventory. If you need an easy solution for $50/year to track your inventory, this is it. 2) We add the location of the item to the end of the EAT inventory number. So if I put a casual shirt into drawer C10, the SKU may read 6379-C10, 6379 for the EAT number and C10 for the location. Go to drawer C10, find the shirt, ship it.
Veronica now also does this for non-clothing items, numbering her racks 1, 2, 3, etc. We could add shelf to the location later (Rack 2 shelf 3 would be location 23) but for now, the rack is sufficient.
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I have my moments…not many of them…but I do have them.
Filing cabinets came to me for shirts when I was working in accounting before I went full time eBay. I keep my eye out at yard sales and try to pick them up cheap. Already in their inner plastic and ready to ship. Very efficient storage solution.
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Thanks for sharing this T-Satt. Really great to see how you are organizing. Gives me lots of ideas to work in the space I have. The filing cabinets are a great idea.
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Thanks. I’m looking for efficient use of space as well as quick retrieval when it is time to ship. I know I could ship a shirt in under two minutes with this process, getting me back to listing quicker. And if my boys need to ship, or an employee if we need one, they can ship quickly too.
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April 23 – April 22
Total Items in Store: 572
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $11.00
Total Sales: $348.33
Highest Price Sold: $50.00 Robotech Perfect Collection CD
Average Price Sold: $20.50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $37.50
Number of items listed this week: 38This week felt strange with a day of nothing followed by a day of 5 sales followed by a day of nothing and then more sales. Happy that all together it was a pretty good week.
I’m also gradually transforming my basement into a storage space and somewhat of an office. Last summer I had repaired parts of the basement and waterproofed – and now its like another room in the house. Very happy about that. I have added a lot of shelving (nice metal shelving that I paid $20 for at a closing office down the street), a few filing cabinets (used for book storage), a table I made myself to use for shipping and packing.
Still debating and calculating how I want everything set up, but I love reading about everyone’s systems here on the forums.
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I just went to the “Manage all Orders” eBay page, and they’ve added a bunch of functionality. One change is now a buyer’s message appears above their item. I know a number of people here have complained that any message that the buyer might leave is buried deep in an email. Often it is missed.
I noticed that a buyer from last week had left me a message that I never noticed. Thankfully, he was only asking that I leave a tracking #, which happens automatically anyway, so no big deal.
They also added other information (or made it more visual) such the date you need to ship by in order to be within your handling time, and then the shipping date once you’ve shipped it.
All-in-all, I think it is good.
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T-SATT, how do you track inventory in EAT? I’ve pulled my sales, but can’t figure how to pull in my listed, not sold.
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We use the Inventory tab for everything purchased. When it is listed, we highlight the cell in green. With the link via the SKU, when an item sells, it moves from inventory to sold on the Inventory tab. The total at the top of the Inventory tab shows the total dollars in inventory not yet sold.
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Belated numbers for April 23-29
Total items in store. 799
Items sold. 21
Total sales. $366.22
Average sale. $17.44
COGS. $13.06
Returns. 0
$ spent on new inventory. $51.10
# of new items listed. 18
Highest sale. $165 men’s vintage onyx & diamond ringHaven’t done my numbers for the past week yet, but I know they aren’t going to be nearly as good. Last week life interfered with my eBay time, so I’m not expecting much. I need to find a way to do eBay while I’m sitting in doctors waiting areas instead of playing Candy Crush!
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T-Satt, thanks. Sorry I wasn’t clear. I meant how do you get all your listings into the inventory tab? Do you manually input them all yourself, or can you get EAT to pull them from your eBay listings?
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T-Satt I really appreciate the pictures. Gives me a few ideas. Also like the SKU idea. Seller here with lots of imagination, no analytics. Thanks
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