Home › Forums › Weekly Numbers › Scavenger Life Episode 442: How Do You Keep It Going?
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12/22/2019 at 5:11 pm #71974
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[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 442: How Do You Keep It Going?] -
12/22/2019 at 8:45 pm #71988
2019-12-15 – 2019-12-21
Total Items In Store: 3367
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: $ 120
Total Sales: $ 1260.1
Highest Price Sold: $ 225 (Vintage Baseball Equipment)
Average Price Sold: $ 45.00
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 89.51
Number of items listed: 9Gut Sales Report for the week: Great week of sales that felt like the busy season for sure. I made a lot of offers that turned into sales. Shipping started to get annoying, so I knew I was doing well.
Challenge of the week: I still have a lot of items I need to process and list.
Scavenge of the week: Picked up a vintage Made in USA like new Varsity Jacket – I really like it.
Mark S
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12/23/2019 at 12:49 am #72000
Hello hello!
Good week on ebay, spending like a drunken sailor though… also on eBay.
Sales c/w shipping income: CAD$3036, 15 sales, COGS: $164, Fees: ~$430, Shipping: $531 –> Gross profit: $2442
Expenditures: $4164 –> Cashflow: -$1558
Notable sales: key cutting machine $650, medical wall panels $300, faucet $250, oscilloscope $290.
Still going crazy buying inventory on ebay. I created a buyer account to avoid any unpleasantness. Some of it is starting to arrive and is listed, including my best haul which were some fire detectors I think should sell for a total north of $10k.I love the lifestyle though. The stuff just shows up at my house, and I list it! It’s amazing. But I am spending SO MUCH MONEY. Really need to cool it and raise the bar to like 5x-10x COGS items or else I’ll have zero working capital.
One funny thing, for the first time in my life, an out of town kijiji (craigslist) buyer put a $500 deposit on an item – my Herman Miller chairs with the desks. She just sent me a money transfer, and we’ll arrange pickup in the new year. It’s the damnedest thing. I would normally say no but people have been kicking the tires on those for months now, hopefully she will in fact follow through.
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12/23/2019 at 9:32 am #72004
Looking forward to listening this afternoon… i’m trying to list as much as possible over the holiday break.
12/15-12/21
Items in Store 810
Items sold 27
Gross Sales $586
COGS $82
Highest Price Sold $54
Average Price Sold $21.72
New Inventory Costs $255 -
12/23/2019 at 10:14 am #72007
Week Dec 15 – Dec 21, 2019
Items in store: 4573 Listings for 7495 Items
Items Sold: 130 transactions for 144 Items
Gross Sales: $8771.53
Highest Price Sold: $775 Vintage 100% Vicuña Coat…though it seems it will likely go unpaid, which is fine because the price is a significantly lower than I wanted to get.
Lowest Price Sold: $2.49….shoelaces
Average Sale Price: $60.91
Cost of Goods Sold $510, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1200
Number of new items listed this week: 55
$$ spent on new inventory this week $7
International Sales, 20%
Repeat Customers 8Didn’t get as much listed this week, but that is to be expected with numerous birthdays and holiday gatherings.
Coming up on 15 years of consistent ebay selling. I’ve seen so many changes during that span. Some days things get a little monotonous, but I have the freedom to just go do something else to clear my head. Kayaking, gardening, frisbee with the dog, hiking, thrifting, or whatever my heart desires.
- This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.
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12/23/2019 at 10:42 am #72010
Dec 15-21
Total Items in Store: 2717
Items Sold: 48
Total Sales : $1418
* ABOVE yearly average of $912
Highest Price: $175 (Satsuma Porcelain Footed Trinket Powder Incense Box)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $67
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 58Another fine week on my end. It’s so nice to finally be making some really good money what with all the Christmas time expenses and everything. I hope this trend continues for a while.
I’m still relatively new at selling on eBay (close to four years now with 10 months since going full time), but my answer as to what keeps me going is merely the thought of going back to that rat race of cubicles and office politics. It’s been a life-changing experience becoming my own boss and I fell in love with it. Also, just being able to post my numbers here every week has definitely kept me motivated. I keep them in a spreadsheet too so I can easily see how my business is growing. I think it would be difficult to continue doing this day to day without having any figures indicating as to how well you’re doing.
This week I’ll be venturing into unknown territory with sewing buttons. I bought a collection at an auction for $10. They’re all really neat antique picture buttons that someone must have collected for decades. I’ve got a few civil war ones too which might land me quite a bit on moola. So far I’ve listed about 20 pretty easily, and I’ve got about 400 left to go.
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12/23/2019 at 10:45 am #72011
i love buttons! they are such a weird genre to sell, but i love researching them. would love to see what you have, sounds like a good cache.
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12/26/2019 at 2:25 pm #72129
Hey Ryanne. I’ve been quickly listing these buttons all week. Other than that Civil War one, I haven’t really hit on anything great. I’ve just been sort of throwing them against the wall to see what sticks so to speak. $5-$10 auctions. I’m almost done working my way through the metal ones. Next will be the glass ones which I predict will be where I might make some money. Here’s a sample of what I’ve got. You can look through my store if you’re curious.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303416622805-
12/26/2019 at 2:36 pm #72130
why auctions? these are super longtail items.
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12/26/2019 at 2:37 pm #72131
your photos look great!
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12/26/2019 at 3:27 pm #72132
Thank you! Regarding the auctions, I’m just starting the prices at what I would reasonable list them for otherwise just in case I have something desirable that might start a minor bidding war. I’ll relist them after a week as BIN. I have no problem with long tail items, I just didn’t feel like doing a ton of research on these. Most of them seem contemporary anyway.
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12/23/2019 at 11:57 am #72017
The post office was more chaotic this morning than I have seen it during this entire holiday season. One customer yelled nonstop at the clerk, another shoved me and had an attitude about gift cards. What a time to be merry! I just walked home and picked up some donuts and got back to work.
It was refreshing this past weekend to have a lull in sales. 30 orders went out Friday, NO ORDERS WENT OUT ON SATURDAY, 15 orders went out today, 20 orders to go out tomorrow. Sales are picking up again today, so it should be a healthy amount to go out again on Thursday. When I was at the post office, my normal clerk didn’t say anything about the post office being closed tomorrow. If he had, I would’ve run home, did the 20 orders for today instead of tomorrow, and did a second ship-out today to get it all out before Christmas.
In an experiment, I spent $100 at an auction for items primarily outside of my niche. Vintage Christmas, a lot more artwork than I am used to dealing with, plates, vintage toys, etc,. I brought home roughly 13 bankers boxers worth of stuff, plus 2 additional bags of prints and artwork. I feel like I have developed my processes enough over the past 2 years for my non-niche, everything else store that I can handle working on this amount of stuff now. Last year, no, I would’ve been out of my depth. It’s fine though, overall 8 boxes of stock are outside of my niche and 5 boxes are items that will work perfectly in my main ebay store. This is also why I went from a basic to a premium store last week. I only have 330 items in my premium store, so I can easily fill the store with this bounty of stuff I just got in. Yay. I’ll try to add 10-15 items a day to each store when I have the time, plus a few items a week to Etsy to keep the store active. Luckily, I have just enough space to hold this much non-niche stuff, but it will become a crunch if this becomes more common. I’ll just see how this lot goes before I buy too much more outside of RA and thrift stores.
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12/24/2019 at 9:25 am #72053
@almasty – Good luck with the Christmas items. We do a lot of that in our store, my wife loves them, and it is a great boost in sales this time of year, though they may sit gathering dust the rest of the year. Just about 1/3 of our sales last week were ornaments. Often can get them for very little and some of them go for very large amounts. It takes time to learn the market and this might be a good one to invest in some reference books so you know the hot ones when you see them.
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12/23/2019 at 1:31 pm #72022
Total Items in Store: 297 Ebay, 45 Mercari
Items Sold: 7 Ebay, 2 Mercari
Total Sales : $247 Ebay, $21 Mercari
Highest Price: $60 BO Vintage Atomic Platter, paid $2
Average Price: $35 Ebay, $10 Mercari
Returns: 0 – USPS paid asap on last week’s claim, including shipping reimbursement.
Cost of Goods Sold: $52 Ebay, $4 Mercari
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $7
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 14 Ebay, 2 MercariThanks for the Sunday podcast. It is truly amazing how you do manage to keep everything going. I’m glad you were able to find employees with high standards where you are located.
Mercari cooled off this week. I never did shut off my stores. My husband had surgery so not a great listing week.
I’ve not been buying much at all for RA this year, but the vintage items did quite well this month with good ROI. I probably only have about $800 left in brand new inventory. I grabbed a death pile box and found some of the items were scratched up. Kind of second guessing myself on making myself list all of the piles, but I’ll keep plowing through I think with few exceptions. I have a list of what might be good to list during different months of the year, so will try to keep that in mind going forward. Garage is looking good. Not many loose unlisted items any longer.
Happy holidays to the trash elves. Goal for 2020 – keep after the piles.
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12/23/2019 at 1:44 pm #72024
Thanks for the podcast. I’ve found in the last few years, that I really like variety in my work – eBay can provide a lot of that variety with the different tasks that need doing, but I’m enjoying a schedule right now that includes other work as well. This time last year eBay was about 80% of a full time job for me, now it’s at about 40-50%. I really like that I can ramp that up or down based on what’s happening in my life.
Numbers are still down from last year, and from where I’d prefer them to be of course, but my COGS have also been super low this year, so I’m pleased overall with earnings vs $ and effort put into eBay. I’ve been thinking some about how I might change my selling ways on eBay in 2020 – to help deal with space constraints in my home, and move towards higher dollar sales. I’ve been a sell-anything-that-sells person in the past, and know I’ll continue that to an extent, but have also been giving some thought to focusing or specializing in a few areas/items in the future. Stay tuned – we’ll see if that comes to fruition. It will depend on numerous factors that will shake out in 2020, only some of which are in my control.
12/15/19 – 12/21/19
Total Items In Store: 814
Items Sold: 13
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $402.32 – $16.77 commission sale (jeans)
Highest Sold Price: $150 – Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi Router & Satellite (got for free!)
Average Sold Price: $30.95
Cost of Items Sold: $17.10 (lots of items given to me for free, yay!)
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $0
Number of Items listed last week: 20 -
12/23/2019 at 1:44 pm #72025
Week of Dec 15 – 21
* Total Items in Store: 1499 eBay, 35 Etsy
* Items Sold: 23 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $19.65 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $443.88 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $65 Franz Violet Vase
* Average Price Sold: $19.30
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 30Since you guys are living it up in NY and picking out stuff from people’s garbage, I thought I’d mention that, this week, I sold three Christmas ornaments that I pulled out of someone’s post yard sale garbage for $24.
All my sales ended yesterday. I’ll be putting on extended handling tomorrow before I make my PO run. I’ll just be enjoying the rest of the year, and then starting everything back up on the 2nd. Happy Holidays, everyone!
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12/23/2019 at 6:13 pm #72028
i love that we all define “living it up” as pulling stuff out of the garbage. yes!
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12/23/2019 at 3:01 pm #72026
Thank you again for the podcast.
12/15 – 12/21/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 838
Number of items sold: 9
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $214.50
Cost of items sold: $18.50
Highest price sold: $45 – crude hand painted vintage bongo drums – paid $5
Average price sold: $23.90
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 4
Sell through rate for the week: 1.1
Number International sales: 1Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 634
Number of items sold: 8
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $178.50
Cost of items sold: $10
Highest price sold: $31 – Fantasma Universal Monster SC book, paid $1
Average price sold: $22.31
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 4
Sell through rate for the week: 1.2
Number International sales: 1 -
12/23/2019 at 6:44 pm #72032
Since I’m on vacation from my day job this week I had the luxury of listening to the show while listing on eBay this week (rather than listing during my long commute).
I enjoyed your end-of-year look-back. We often over-estimate what we can do in an hour and underestimate what we can do in a year. You’ve certainly had lots of changes. On the other hand, my eBay world is almost identical to how I started the year. I’m constrained by time and it’s not practical to make significant changes till I retire.
I had a relatively quiet week. No big (or even medium-sized) sales at all so my numbers were down a bit from this time last year.
Total Items in Store: 3456
Items Sold: 36
Total Sales: $630.68
Cost of Items Sold: $77
Average Price Sold: $17.52
Average Cost of Item: $2.14
Highest Price Item Sold: $39.95 Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Number of items listed this week: 45 worth approx. $1335
YTD Sales: $49014
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 442
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 291
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 234
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.04%
Hats sold this week: 25 (69% of sales) worth $402.18 (63% of sales $)I’d love to break the 50K sales mark but it seems extremely unlikely since this coming week is likely to be fairly quiet. I’d need 1K in sales to get there.
I hope everyone enjoys their holidays and gets to spend some peaceful, non-working time with friends and family.
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12/24/2019 at 9:40 am #72055
What keeps me going is that every day is something different. I get bored easily and having something new to research, buy and list each day keeps me in the game. Back in my work days, it felt too much like the Dunkin Donuts guy, “Time to make the donuts” each morning. I’m constantly learning something new. It’s work, but it rarely feels like work.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Week Ending 12/21/2009
Total Items in Store: 1208
Items Sold: 36
Gross Sales: $1,691.44
Cost of Items Sold: $135.00
Highest Price Sold: $175.00 (Dogtivity Nativity Set)
Average Price Sold: $39.00
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $960.00
New items listed: 31
Sold via promoted listings: 15
Promoted Percentage: 41.67%
Average Days Listed: 242 days
Longest Listed: 963 daysBeen selling a lot of Christmas. Biggest sale of the week was a Dogtivity nativity set. Keep an eye out for them if you see them.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Complete-Big-Sky-Carvers-Dogtivity-I-and-II-Canine-Dog-Nativity-Set-with-Boxes/133273371431
Basically it is a nativity with dogs as the characters. The company that made them is no longer in business and they don’t show up often. We listed two sets together for $400, but someone wanted the smaller part of the set enough to pay $175, so we broke the set apart and relisted the other half for $300. We then listed a 3rd smaller set for $150 and took an offer the next morning from the same buyer for $100. -
12/26/2019 at 7:57 am #72112
Items in Store 1399
Items Sold 35
Total Sales $1,079.00
COGS $117.00
Total Profit $962.00
Average profit $27.49
Average sales price $30.83
New Listings 78I started listing that huge video game lot last week and it has been selling quite well already. I’ve already sold 10 things for $175, so I’ve made back half my money already. I haven’t even listed the GOOD stuff yet – this was the junky low dollar items that I put my nose down and grinded through listing/photographing. It’s a pipeline – just a steady stream of $5-10 sales. I’ll take it!
In other news, if you live within a couple hour drive of Columbus Ohio I HIGHLY recommend you make a trip to the Columbus Zoo for their Christmas lights. This year they are over 3 MILLION lights. The power company sponsors it all – it is truly a site to behold. The entire zoo is covered in awesome lights.
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12/29/2019 at 7:11 am #72222
What keeps us going is a real enjoyment of the sourcing process. Also, the pavlovian reinforcement of seeing the ebay notifications when things sell. Parts of selling are of course tedious, frustrating, irritating etc but comparing all the less than great parts to our full time jobs, selling wins easily every time!
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