- This topic has 22 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
No job is guaranteed but a steady paycheck is nice if you have a job. Since we don’t work traditional jobs, we do not have steady pay checks or “guara
[See the full post at: The Numbers: February 5-11, 2023] -
I might have missed it at times, but when is the last time yah spent money on inventory? Take care.
-
First week of January. We have a porch full of boxes we still need to photograph and list. Our helper has been working sporadically so hasn’t been working through boxes this month. We still have draft backlog to list. We definitely dont scavenge full time like we used to.
How often are you scavenging these days?
-
Okay, yeah I quit in the end of 2018, spent most the next four years in the hospital but I am coming back. From everything I got rid of in those 4 years I still have thousands of items I have to list. Well I won’t list them all! I will hire a VA and just take the pics and make the title. Then I get stupid and do an online auction the other day and ended up with 340 pieces. I think I have a serious problem with buying.
-
As you show, buying stuff is easy. We can get a easily truckload of stuff anytime we want at an auction or a series of thrift stores. These days we try to keep unlisted inventory to a minimum and stop buying when we need to catch up. Keeps us sane. Plus we seem to always find stuff on the street that we bring home for listing.
Hope you’re feeling better.
-
Yes I’m doing a different model this time. I’m buying nothing that doesn’t have at least a $20 profit margin. I don’t care if I get 50 things that I can make a dollar on that sell the same day. I’m not buying them. Everything I bought at auction or vintage toys and we know they sell well. So maybe I won’t have to have stores with 5,000 items in them this time. I’d like to have 300 items at a time and if they sit for more than 30 days I’ll put them at rock bottom. I’m not looking to make a full-time living this time, I just want to make enough to supplement my social security and partial VA disability. Good luck to yah. Hey do you ever see what’s their name? What was it? Mike and Mindy, remember when you start at the podcast they were on there too.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
I love selling stuff I find in the trash or on the curb! Made money AND kept something out of the landfill.
Yesterday I went to a sale and its finally kind of nice here in Illinois so I was standing outside waiting for it to open. Started chatting with a lady next to me and long story short, she still has her mothers house 5 years after she died and it is full! We exchanged numbers and I am definitely going to give her a call! I offered to show her how to list while I am there so hopefully it will be productive for both of us 🙂
-
-
Items in Store 2053
Items Sold 24
Total Sales $1,300.00
COGS $237.00
Total Profit $1,063.00
Average profit $44.29
Average sales price $54.17
New Listings 49
Items scavenged 16
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 26This week was a great example of how the daily listing activity helps me balance out my week. Our oldest turned 16 this week. We had her actual birthday in the middle of the week and the party on the weekend. I was able to prep ahead of time to have a listing and photo bank for both of those days. It also helps me stay balanced knowing that I’ve met the work “quota” and can relax.
I want to get to the point where I always have a minimum of 20 completed listings ready to post. I have been doing good keeping a draft bank of listings without photos, and I always make sure some of the drafts are super easy to photograph so I can quickly cherry pick 5-10 if I need to.
The problem is that it is so hard to NOT post completed listings! I mean, it is done – it should be available to purchase asap! Much like how I had to establish a $2000 minimum balance in my business checking account to avoid fees, I can get there with 20 complete bank listings as well.
Now about daily activity vs front loading on the weekend – I’m not entirely sold it is better for business. I have 2 solid weeks of sales once I established the daily activity pattern. I’ve had similar sales stretches only listing on the weekend. If I list good items, they sell. Period. Doesn’t matter if I list them all on Sunday or throughout the week.
I only sold 1 sell similar item this week, but I did sell plenty of older items such as women’s jeans.
Either way, I feel it is better for me to stay consistent and work ahead a bit with a draft bank and a (semi)reliable photo helper. We’ll see what the data says in a month or two.
-
-
Week of 2/5 – 2/11:
Total items in Store: 333
Items Sold: 18
Gross Sales: $453.50 (w/o eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $76.00 (including consignment commissions but not the original cost of family castoffs)
Highest Price Sold: $100 plus shipping (lot of 3 WWI 26th Infantry Division mess hall or club china plates)
Average Sales Price: $25.19 (not incl eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of new items listed: 17Small potatoes compared to you all, but a pretty good week for me. I’ve always had strong January sales so I just need to keep listing to keep the inventory up and the store active.
-
-
Week Ending 2/11/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $249.59
Net Sales: $203.34 (all eBay)
Total Items Sold: 12 (eBay 12 / Etsy 0)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1129
Total Items in Etsy Store: 435
Cost of Items Sold: $16.00
COGS Percent 7.87%
Highest Price Sold: $29.95 Plush Doll
Average Price Sold: $20.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 374
Longest Listed: 1926
New items listed: 32
New Listings Value $934.75Pretty slow week for sales for me. Lowest since October before the Christmas buying kicked in. No sales from Etsy was a surprise when just last week it beat out eBay. I’m consistently listing but as most of what I’m listing is still Christmas ornaments, so I’m not surprised they aren’t driving too many sales this time of year. Just have to remind myself I’m frontloading for a Christmas pay out.
Four of my sales were actually just one sale. A customer asked me to give them a discount for buying 4 ornaments, so I cancelled the listings and lotted them into one for the sale. That same customer came back yesterday and asked for the same deal for six more listings, but they will show on next week’s report. Says she’ll be back next month for more. Nice to have a repeat customer.
I’ve been going through my old listings and trying to relist as new 10 listings per day. Hasn’t generated a lot of sales but did have 2 listings that have been up for over 3 years sell within 24 hours after relisting this week. Even without it generating many sales, it is a good exercise just to remind myself how things have changed. On many of these older listings I’m taking the price down considerably since many are items that don’t have a lot of comps and I shot high initially. Even though all my listings have best offer, I think many buyers are intimidated by the offer system. I’m rechecking comps on some since eBay is providing better data.
-
 Even though all my listings have best offer, I think many buyers are intimidated by the offer system. I’m rechecking comps on some since eBay is providing better data.
For items that have stuff competition with clear prices (especially collectibles), I think most buyers skip over “make offer”.
“Make offer” works best for us when our item is better quality, or we provide more photos, than the competition.
-
-
Total items in Store:Â 674
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $232.85 (w/o eBay fees, shipping, or taxes), Net $147.81
Cost of Items Sold: $25
Highest Price Sold: $72 (New Rejuvenation door knocker)
Average Sales Price: $38.81
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $9
Number of new items listed: 8The usual slow February numbers, not helped by my lack of serious listing. Today should be a good day listing for a change. Congrats to those of you having strong February numbers! This is always the worst month for me, even worse than summer.
In the last couple of weeks I did a small amount of online RA. The prices are still not low enough generally speaking. No thrifting so no adding to the pile at least.
This morning there is an article in the Wall Street Journal about owing taxes selling on Ebay and how more and more Americans have a side hustle. I’d link but seeing a paywall.
-
This morning there is an article in the Wall Street Journal about owing taxes selling on eBay and how more and more Americans have a side hustle.
It does seem to be more normal to sell things on the side, or offer services for money. Whats surprising all these new people is that you have to pay taxes on this income. If these side hustles become businesses.
-
-
I’ve been noticing a recent trend that many of my buyers are on the west coast, and they’ve been paying up for shipping, sometimes about the same price of the item itself. It has happened in the past, but I’ve had maybe five or so since the beginning of the year.
My numbers are good because I sold a number of higher priced items.
Week of Feb 5 – 11
Total Items in Store: 1802 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $15.50 + $179 Commission
Total Sales: $566.50 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $170 Donna Karan CHAOS Eau De Perfume Spray 1.7 fl oz
Average price: $47.08
Returns: 1 (refunded for damage)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0 (although I spent $68 on lamp parts for current and future repairs)
Number of items listed this week: 8 -
I am at the store size, at least for now, where I have a few days every week with maybe 1 sale at most, and no offers. It can be a bit disorienting at times but a few $100+ sales can really prop up those weekly numbers, never mind a $300+ sale like I had this week. But I have to remind myself that this isn’t all a matter of luck or variance or the eBay gods smiling down at me or cursing me to poverty. A lot of hard work went into building my store to where it is today. I have developed a good sense for $20 items that will sell fairly quickly and $200 items that will sell close to full price, and that is what keeps my numbers where they were this week.
2/5/2023 to 2/11/2023
Total items in store: 416 BIN/BO, 0 auction, 416 total
Items sold: 20 (13 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer, 16 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1506.40 (down 54% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1034.81 (down 56% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $75.32 (up 67% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $295.46— Trey Lance 2021 Panini Select cosmic prizm rookie card
These cosmic prizm packs were only available on Panini’s website for about an hour a few weeks ago. You could purchase them using Panini Rewards Points, which have their own value as a pseudo-currency, and as you might guess I’ve built up a large cache of these points over the last few years. These packs “cost” the equivalent of about $100. Inside the packs are four beautiful cosmic prizms, one from each “level” of the 300 card set. The sealed packs sell for $300 pretty reliably, but I thought, let’s take a chance and open it up. I was lucky to pull a few nice players, the best being this rookie card of the 49ers young quarterback Trey Lance. He hasn’t played much due to injuries, but he was a 1st round draft pick and the 49ers are a very talented team on offense, so his nicer cards still sell for high prices. I might regret this sale around a year from now if the 49ers have a successful season next year with Lance as the QB, but I’m fine getting off the hype train now.
Lowest price sold (net): $14.97— Roger Federer 2007 Ace authentic tennis jersey card
The cool thing about having a small store is you don’t have to have sales below $10 if you don’t want them. I try to only list $20 and up items at this point. I continued to work my way through a cache of about 20 of these Federer jersey cards with one more sale. Sell one, scan another, click sell similar and change the pictures, wait til someone sends an offer of $15 or above, and repeat the cycle. If only things could always be so simple. It’s a nice way to sell.
-
eBay Store Week Feb. 5 – 11, 2023
Total Items in Store: 1187
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $429.54 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $252.34 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Goods Sold: $67.00
Highest Price Sold: $49.95 (Harley-Davidson Orange Disc Brake Lock)
Average Price Sold: $35.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: 23
Number of items listed this week: 20
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.