The Numbers: January 15-21, 2023

[Jay]

Our best sale this week was a lot of antique cotton flour sacks for $170. We went to a big yard sale that was closing. The flour sacks were in a garba
[See the full post at: The Numbers: January 15-21, 2023]

[ChristineR]

Total Items in Store: 528
Items Sold:  7
Gross Sales: $454.38 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $260.45 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $60
Highest Price Sold: $139 (Set of three new plates)
Average Price Sold: $56.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 2

Can’t complain about sales as I didn’t list much.  I’m working on tax stuff and hope to finish today.  Haven’t been sourcing so that’s good.  I have a bunch of better clothing of ours in my bedroom that I really want to list on Mercari and purge.  Construction will probably start finally on our bathroom so another distraction.  I always get overwhelmed trying to pick from all the cool tiles.  I find I’m better and picking and isolating for sale on Ebay and trying to bring a whole room together… Luckily the rents here are sky high so no temptation to open a booth in one of the vintage or antique malls.

@Jay I’m curious where you got so much inventory.  I always have the fantasy that you guys go into the urban area and grab up inventory to bring home and list.  I’m not exactly a farmhouse gal but I enjoy vintage feed sack graphics.  Cool sale.

[ChristineR]

I’m taking my time looking for COGS and finding that I have some brand new items hanging around that I bought years ago.  I should probably look at those listings.  Last year I did sell similar on all items listed before 2022 and started getting to make offers on some of those.

I don’t know about others who are coastal but last year when I started listing in earnest again I noticed USPS parcel post is now significantly less than priority – usually a few dollars – and most of my buyers are choosing it but my old listings don’t have it.  I need to remember that insurance doesn’t cover those items.  I don’t have many broken items each year – knock wood – but should start paying attention…

[Jay]

@Jay I’m curious where you got so much inventory.  I always have the fantasy that you guys go into the urban area and grab up inventory to bring home and list.

That’s not far off. We recently had a chance to help someone clean out their stuff. Plus we got boxes of items we found in NYC on the streets.

Thanks for the box by the way. Those pillows will look great in our rentals!

[ChristineR]

Sounds great!  You’re welcome.

[Mark S]

01/15/23 – 01/21/23

Total Items In ebay Store: 4649 (was 4643 last week)

Total Items In Etsy Store: 520 (was 500 last week)

Total Items listed: 5,169

ebay Items Sold: 19 items for $ 821.53 Net $ 703.97
Etsy Items Sold: 6 items for $ 205.25 Net $ 151.94

Total Gross Sales: $ 1026.78 (including eBay\etsy fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $ 855.91 (minus shipping, and taxes)
Items Sold: 25 items
Highest Price Sold: $ 80 (coat)
Average Price Sold: $ 34.24
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ around $250

Number of items listed: 24 ebay, 44 Etsy

Gut Sales Report for the week: ebay was about the same as last week; just average. With help from Etsy, I was able to do over $1000 in gross sales. Etsy seemed slow and it did have a low ASP. However, for Etsy, I had an average of 506 items listed for the week. I sold 6 items. So, 6 for 506 is about a 5% monthly sell thru rate. That is still more than 3 times my ebay STR.

Focus for the week : Just staying afloat. It was a busy week. I now qualify to be a Star Seller on Etsy because I meet the metrics in 5 areas. However, you can’t officially become a star seller till 90 days after your first sale. So, I will have to wait till about March 1st.

Scavenge of the week: Went to an estate sale and cleaned up. The house had some real expensive art. I focused on other items they overlooked and did quite well.

Thoughts for the week: I ordered another 100 top loading Regional A Boxes to now use for regular postage.

Mark

[BrianB]

Jay, Ryanne: what is the website where your podcasts are archived?

[Jay]

https://www.youtube.com/@ScavengerLife/videos

[BrianB]

Jay: I listened, again, to the last podcast. Ryanne mentioned: https://archive.org/search?query=Scavenger+Life

[Jay]

There’s that too.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 1970
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $288.00
COGS $66.00
Total Profit $222.00
Average profit $17.08
Average sales price $22.15
New Listings 32
Items scavenged 9
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 9

Ooof, those numbers are rough. Hopefully that’s the last of the bad numbers though!

I got my new listing systems up and running this weekend and hit it hard. We got 32 items listed and I already have 25 items ready for photos this week.

I have labeled bins for my daughter to use:

• Needs Cleaned
• Photo Ready
• Inventory Ready

Every day she just has to photograph 5 items after her school and chores are done.

I will create 5 drafts every morning before work.

The goal is to put up at least 5 new listings and “sell similar” my oldest 5 listings every day this week and every week thereafter.

 

A neat tool on iphones I wasn’t previously aware of was ‘shared albums’ in photos app. I set up shared albums on both of our phones and created a shared “ebay” album on her phone. She takes the photos on her phone and adds them to that shared folder. I get a notification once she adds them and I can go in and download them to my phone. Then I message her so she can delete them.

So now we’re off to the races.

J&R, you might want to consider shared albums for your photo helper!

 

I’ve also settled into using my new scavenging rules which forces me to only buy quick sale/high value items. Any new purchased items go directly on my new “to be listed” shelf, which I did empty this weekend.

This new listing system combined with my new scavenging rule set really has me feeling reinvigorated. I can’t wait to start reaping the rewards with higher sales volume!

[Jay]

It would be very cool if you have a reliable in-house helper!

[craig rex]

I will create 5 drafts every morning before work.

The goal is to put up at least 5 new listings and “sell similar” my oldest 5 listings every day this week and every week thereafter.

This is great practical advice for a seller with any size store and really it’s the updated version of list every day. Now of course the question is how do you stick to it? But sell similar is so quick, and if you have pictures ready, a few new listings each day should only take a few minutes.

A neat tool on iphones I wasn’t previously aware of was ‘shared albums’ in photos app. I set up shared albums on both of our phones and created a shared “ebay” album on her phone.

I just learned yesterday how to transfer files from my phone to my computer using a USB. Previously I would take the pictures, save to Google drive, download from the computer, maybe even rename the files. With the trading cards which I scan front and back, I used to scan one by one and now I do six at a time and crop the photos. It would be ideal to do things in the most optimized way from the start, but sometimes it takes a while to change a process or learn a new way of doing this. But those time saving tricks really add up…

[Borderrooster]

eBay Store Week January 15 – 21, 2023

Total Items in Store: 1,161
Items Sold: 19
Gross Sales: $607.92 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $397.35 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Goods Sold: $62.00
Highest Price Sold: $200.00 ( Lot of 5 New Old Stock, Out of Print Books )
Average Price Sold: $32.00
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $109.00
Number of items listed this week: 39

I am seeing my numbers moving up across the board with one exception. Gross and Net numbers are up. Average Price Sold is up. But what is down is quantity of items sold (down by 1).
There were lots of sales in my area this past weekend. Temperatures in the upper 70s and sunny skies. I scored a bunch of kitchen knives at one sale, and some new coin collectors supplies at an estate sale.
I am still trying to learn the Quality over Quantity lesson. I bought many items for $1.00 or less that each may sell for $10.00. I didn’t find any “home-runs” this weekend. If I am going to be sitting on an item for weeks, months or years – better it’s a $1.00 item than a $35.00 item.
What are your thoughts?

 

[Jay]

Your instincts are correct. As fun as it it is to scavenge, we’d rather walk away with nothing than with items that might take two years to sell for $10.

We just had to learn the value of items and have discipline. We learned through slogging through listing $10 items and realizing we were going to burn out if we didnt scavenge more intelligently.

[Retro Treasures WV]

As long as you are listing the items for sale and have adequate storage, then that is just a part of your strategy.

If you are building death piles of $10 long tail items and you don’t have a sound storage or listing strategy then you should readjust.

Once your knowledge base grows to the point you can pick out ALL the low hanging fruit at any sale, you have to have some checks/balances to keep from buying too much.

I’ve created a set of rules for scavenging this year that I have to follow in order to meet my goals.

1. Items <$50,  90 day STR = 100% or greater
2. Items $50-100, 90 Day STR = 50% or greater
3. Items $100+, No STR requirement

I still get the enjoyment of scavenging, but without the addition to death piles. It takes a bit of adjustment, but it becomes normal to pass on even $30-40 items I would have bought once upon a time.

[craig rex]

If you are building death piles of $10 long tail items and you don’t have a sound storage or listing strategy then you should readjust.

Once your knowledge base grows to the point you can pick out ALL the low hanging fruit at any sale, you have to have some checks/balances to keep from buying too much.

Quoted for emphasis. I can say from experience it’s not fun to build a mess of death piles of $10 long tail items. Well, buying the stuff is fine but figuring out to organize, sell it, what to do with all of it, and then some stuff that’s “worth” $10 may actually never sell unless you cut the price to $7 or $4 or even $2.

I’ve created a set of rules for scavenging this year that I have to follow in order to meet my goals.

1. Items <$50,  90 day STR = 100% or greater
2. Items $50-100, 90 Day STR = 50% or greater
3. Items $100+, No STR requirement

I love this and have basically applied it to my own store. I will probably relax the requirements slightly as I rebuild my store inventory from a few hundred to maybe 1000 (?) over the spring and summer, but I think it’s a good set of organizing principles to follow if any of the following apply to your eBay store:

1. You’re limited by space in terms of inventory storage.
2. Another platform works well for some of the items you sell.
3. You don’t “need” the extra eBay income that comes from the cycle of scavenging and listing and shipping and repeat.

#1 has always been a big factor for me. I’m sure in a couple years once I have moved past the city-adjacent/small apartment life, my scavenging habits will change.

#2 has been eye-opening for myself, @mark-s and I’m sure some others. Granting that eBay has some tremendous strengths that other platforms don’t and I couldn’t imagine not selling on eBay. But that doesn’t mean my eBay store has to have thousands and thousands of items, either.

#3 is the dream for most of us. Like maybe when eBay sales build up enough to afford you the opportunity to open an airbnb or 2 & a coffee shop? Or once those things become a larger source of income than eBay. But at whatever level you’re selling, especially if eBay is your main source of income or you want to do it full-time, there’s always the question of what owning your time really means.

[craig rex]

If I am going to be sitting on an item for weeks, months or years – better it’s a $1.00 item than a $35.00 item.
What are your thoughts?

This has always been my frame of reference, but the most important piece that hasn’t already been mentioned is that it has to be an item that I’m interested in listing. At least for me, it can be very easy to go “eh I only paid $1 I’ll list something else today” and then put off listing the $1 item for months at a time. Especially if it has low sell through rate or it’s not something I personally find interesting/valuable. Except it’s very easy to accumulate lots of $1 items as we all know.

Those purchases are vital to becoming a full time seller because they build up your inventory, your sales and you gain a lot of knowledge by buying and selling these “worthless” items, but clearly organized and labeled storage is so important. No use tearing your hair out over finding that $1 item which you sold for $7 after eight months of listing.

[Sharyn]

Week was all right. It would be better if the majority of my items weren’t consignment. I agreed to do this for my neighbor who is a friend, but, when I’m done, that’s it. I’ll take small things here and there, but this downsizing/whole house thing is for the birds.

My daughter helped me with photography last week, so I have helper costs in my numbers. She actually helped me during the summer maybe 6 or so years ago. Her photos are coming out a bit dark, but they are good enough and I was able to get a large number of listings created.

I thought I’d mention something I did for a customer last week that might help other sellers. I listed a candle specifically for a repeat customer who is a fan of Donna Karan candles and perfume. I listed a candle where we had agreed to a price of $30. I wanted to make sure no one else tried to buy it, so I listed it at $300 with make offer. Then I told her to make an offer of $30 and I would accept it. Putting someone’s username in a listing certainly helps, but doesn’t prevent someone else from swooping in.

Week of Jan 15 – 21
Total Items in Store: 1807 eBay, 29 Etsy
Items Sold: 15 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $112 Commission
Cost of helper: $56
Total Sales: $347.36 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $75 women’s Columbia winter coat NWT
Average price: $23.16
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 39

[Jay]

Im glad you’ve been able to help your neighbor and hope its been profitable. But yeah, consignment is never a good game to play. Always feels like we’re working for someone else.

[Lukastreasure]

Week Ending 1/21/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $761.27
Net Sales: $652.94
Total Items Sold 20
Total Items in eBay Store: 1092
Items Sold eBay: 16 ($451.17)
Total Items in Etsy Store: 374
Items Sold Etsy: 4 ($201.77)
Cost of Items Sold: $94.29
Highest Price Sold: $250.00
Average Price Sold: $38.06
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $110.00

Average Days Listed: 407
Longest Listed: 1464
New items listed: 30
$ Amount New Listings $886.50

An above average sales week which is nice to see during this time of year.  Had one really nice sale in an antique Bible for $250.  Didn’t feel like a great sale though as I originally thought it would sell for greater than $1000.  Irrational exuberance, I guess.  It had some detailed genealogy records going back to the 1700s and I thought someone would pay up for those, but after sitting for 2.5 years I decided to recoup my $60 investment.

Had two sales this week that sold on both Etsy and eBay causing me to cancel one sale on each platform.  Both items sold on each platform within a 2-hour window.  One sale was due to me not configuring Sixbit properly and the second was due to my computer going  to sleep.  That is one issue with Sixbit is that your computer must be up and connected to the internet for it to work for the auto-cancellation.

Exceeded my 20 listings goal this week by a good margin, but missed my $1000 worth of listings goal by $113.

[Jay]

Sometimes you have to shoot for the stars. We recently sold an antique glass pitcher that we listed for $2500. After a year, we took $600. It happens.

[ice_queen]

Hi everyone.

It’s literally been years since I was here, I’ve been pretty head down working on my reselling business. I am now in almost entirely clothing b/c its the easiest thing for me to source and store at this point.

I rented an office space for 2 years and am now finally at home after building a backyard office. Anyway, here is my numbers for the week of the 15-21.

 

Total Items in Store: 3913

Items Sold: 31 on poshmark, 30 on ebay 61 total
Gross Sales: $1917.55 (including platform fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,530.25 (minus platform fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $106.75
Cost of helpers: $285
Highest Price Sold: $250 (Taylor swift sweater)
Average Price Sold: $25.09
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $195
Number of items listed this week: 75

[Jay]

Welsome back! You may just be selling clothes but you’re making incredible money. You must have a really good eye when it comes to the clothes people want….and able to find them for cheap.

Are you just going to to thrift stores?

[ice_queen]

Hey Jay, thanks. I think of y’all often. We are looking into purchasing our retirement property in the next 10 years and keep bouncing between Maine and Va b/c of cost of property. We now run a small STR in our converted school bus motor home on our property in Oregon. Ebay has allowed that. And my husband runs a small etsy shop making wooden toys and household products. And he drives for food delivery apps in the evenings. ALL of this is made possible by reselling…we own our time and we are flexible to be available for our growing kids and their changing needs.

Back to your question. Mostly the bins these days…I think I do have a good eye. I have teens now, so I’m pretty aware of “what the kids are wearing” and that helps a lot. I’m also willing to take low dollar sales to move stuff out when its time has run it’s course. Which is still tricky for me after so many years of list it and forget it.

 

[Jay]

Nice. Smart scavengers realize that “the lifestyle” is all about a bunch of small decisions and habits that combine to create a life that gives you your time. It’s never “do this one thing” like you see blasted in the get-rich-quick pitches.

[craig rex]

I’m also willing to take low dollar sales to move stuff out when its time has run it’s course. Which is still tricky for me after so many years of list it and forget it.

@ice-queen This is so important, I think, with eBay in 2023 compared to when the podcast started. Fortunately we have so many more options for how to move older inventory than we used to. Do you have a preferred method for how you move old inventory?

I like ending old listings over a few months and use sell similar to relist them. Sometimes this leads to an immediate sale, sometimes it takes a few weeks and sometimes it doesn’t sell even after I sell similar and lower the price. But it gives these old items a “new” item number which I think gets them in front of more eyes, and it forces me to reengage with the listings. Usually I find that my price is too high or I can mess with keywords in my title and maybe get a sale that way.

I’ve had decent success with sending coupons to watchers and running markdown sales. I like to go 25% or even higher on old items. I think that’s the number where buyers really start to think “oh, this is a decent deal, maybe I should jump on it before someone else does.” My experience with buying on eBay has also taught me that some sellers are very stingy with discounts, so I like to think that giving a decent coupon or discount helps me stand out in a sea of a million sellers.

I also run auctions since I mostly sell in the collectibles categories. I recommend doing them if you sell in a niche where they are appropriate. You get free auction listings in collectibles every month with a store, may as well use them. I usually run a batch of auctions at the end of every month.

But auctions are very fickle. So make sure you set your minimum bid at the lowest you are willing to accept. My experience is that if your starting bids are a reasonable approximation of an item’s “value” on a good day, then about 10% to 15% of your listings will sell. Most will only get one bid. But you will get a few buyers who buy multiple items to combine shipping or look through your buy it now listings to add on to their purchase or buy from you again a few weeks later. Treat these buyers well, even if it means losing a few bucks on shipping or throwing in a little freebie. Selling to repeat buyers is (again, my experience) much lower stress than a sale to a new customer, and I’ve found they’re often so grateful to be dealing with a human being who recognizes them as a customer rather than a faceless corporation sending them a doodad and a packing slip.

Welcome back to the forums and I hope you keep posting.

[dwashnc]

That’s a pretty nice week.  I wonder how to get 25 bins of items that quickly.

[craig rex]

This week’s sales were nothing remarkable, but also pretty solid for a store that’s run significantly than 1000 items for a few months now. When I started selling full-time about 15 months ago, my recipe for sales was 40, 50, 60 and sometimes more sales in a week, every single week, to get to $2000 in gross sales. This covered my bills and new inventory purchases and it also kept me in a constant cycle of buying and selling and listing and shipping.

Now that I am selling most of my trading cards on another platform which automates a lot of the work, I am content to hit $1500 in sales each week on eBay and there are a lot of different ways to get there. But mostly my formula has been a handful of $100+ sales (this week I had four) mixed in with $25 and under sales that I have multiple quantities (easy to relist) plus whatever else happens to go out the door that week. I’ve developed a better eye for what will sell quickly, and I have a little more free time and money each week. It’s fun to see these changes affect my sales and my life.

I have a batch of 500 auctions ending this upcoming Sunday and Monday, as I continue to tighten up my inventory, so the few weeks after that will be interesting. I’ll only have 200ish items in my store by this time next Tuesday! Some of the unsold auctions will get relisted and I have plenty of trading cards ready to list, too, but it is extremely rare that I ever list more than 10 items in a day. I really went full tilt with these auctions, basically cleaning out any trading card inventory older than 50 days. Usually when I list 500 auctions I expect to sell about 50, but I am thinking that number will be higher than that this time around. My lowest minimum bids are $10 and $15 so it’s not a fire sale. It will be fun to see how it goes and then build the store inventory back up from there.

1/15/2023 to 1/21/2023

Total items in store: 710

Items sold: 27 (11 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 13 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $1698.36 (down 27% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1193.17 (down 27% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $60.66 (up 35% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $147.04 — Marcus Rashford 2016-17 Panini Select auto jersey ##/149

Lowest price sold (net): $13.10— Dave Bancroft 2012 National Treasures bat card ##/99

[Author]

Posts