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I’ve have been self-employed now for nearly 16 years doing installations and managing my own small crew. I’ve done all the payroll, taxes, loans, and every single job from the ground up in this business. I do not really consider myself employable after spending 16 of my 38 years making the rules and setting my own schedule. I need to own my time. We’ve had a lot of changes since a buyout a couple years ago and they’ve had profound negative effects. 3 years ago we had 20 technicians and I thought we would break a million gross. Over the last year we’ve changed contracts, were all terminated for a week, and I had to let 11 guys go only to be pressured to hire and grow just a couple weeks later. After terminating all those guys, we are now finding it impossible to hire back up to that level and so my pay was cut around 70%. I have to start from scratch for the 2nd time in a year.
I’ve been on Ebay almost since the beginning, but used it to find inexpensive items for work or to blow out unused equipment as quickly as possible–usually way under priced. We have a LOT of waste in the business and some people scrap metal, but I always felt that was a waste of time. I donated and recycled as much as I could until about 3 months ago decided to try listing some of the “garbage.” I found that I was able to make several hundred dollars each month selling items that were otherwise destined for landfills. I found Scavenger life and have listened to about 250 podcasts in 60 days. I do a lot of driving and no longer listen to the radio.
Because of all the advice in the forums and on the podcast, I’ve been able to gross $6,000 in just over 2 months. Listings are up to 400, but my personal goal is to start listing 100 items per week. I cannot start something without going all-in, so I have huge death piles already and a lot of money sitting in boxes waiting to be listed. I bought a lot of the wrong items early on and learned a lot. No more board games and coffee mugs! I have found a couple of items that I consider home runs like imported Chinese silver, and a special edition accordion from 1926. I’ve learned that I do not enjoy measuring clothes and prefer hard goods, but that does not keep me from picking it up. I am enjoying shoes, but have not gotten to listing any of the Florsheim or Allen Edmonds that I constantly find.
I love the podcasts because there is no video. I can spend 3-4 hours driving around doing my job and get an education. The research aspect is a lot of fun and will be what keeps me interested long-term. I believe in multiple streams of income and enjoy most of what I do, but if I do it well there is a lot of time left for Ebay and I can literally scavenge all day long. I definitely have a lot of freedom to jump into this full time without as much risk that others have had to take.
Thank you for the podcasts and info, and I look forward to participating here.
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Welcome, Steve. You are obviously a high energy person, putting that to good use already. And thinking about and implementing best practices as you learn by doing. I’m a part time eBayer also from way back and scavenger, retired otherwise, but I do enjoy hearing from folks like you on the forum who are ramping up and sharing your thinking and processes. When research and treasure hunting are the most fun for people, listing can suffer. The discipline you’re already showing in listing will serve you well.
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Probably $1000 in waste, the rest has been scavenged. It’s been very easy to collect from yard sales, estate sales, and now I’ve been to a couple auctions. The waste sales have really slowed quite a bit because the competition lowered the price. I don’t feel the need to do the same because they all sell eventually.
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