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Good week of sales for us. With all the talk of a looming recession, we’ll take it. We’re currently trying to prepare for any downturn by being as fru
[See the full post at: The Numbers: January 22-28, 2023] -
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I already posted in the link that Retro opened, but I’ll paste my numbers here as well.
That is neat news on Ryanne’s move to the nationals. Congratulations! I seem to remember that she also placed last year as well?
My husband’s car from 1999 (about a month older than our marriage) has 290k miles, and my 2007 Toyota Sienna has $270k. The Sienna is not reliable for long trips any more, so I will be buying a new car this year. I’ve been doing some research, and I did some test drives last year. We’ll keep the Sienna for local hauling and an extra car for when my husband works on his. I’ve decided that my new ride must have a third row seat for when my parents visit.
Week of Jan 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 1806 eBay, 29 Etsy
Items Sold: 20 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $11 + $149 Commission
Total Sales: $499.29 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Swap: $14.15 no fees or shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $90 Catalyst for men EDT 3.4 oz
Average price: $24.96 (not including Swap payment)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 21 -
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Total Items in Store: 553
Items Sold: 8Gross Sales: $273.09 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $168.58 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $35 + a few items ours
Highest Price Sold: $35 (Vintage flower power vinyl fabric, paid $2)
Average Price Sold:$34.14
Returns: 1 threatened
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $120 RA, $40 thrift
Number of items listed this week: 3Congrats Ryanne! You are so impressive on many fronts. Happy for your strong sales too.
Not a great week of sales for me but I didn’t list much. Finished my tax stuff and due to the strong end of the year and selling more used items I made more profit than last year even with higher fees. I wasn’t doing much at all on Ebay in the first third of 2022, so this year should be better. Have some ongoing family stuff going on…
I did go out thrifting one day last week. At one of our larger thrift stores, a random guy mentioned the prices being way too high, which I completely agree with and this chain has swung that way before. I was happy that I had sold several undervalued items from that store for good prices last month. I didn’t share that part with him but just said “you really have to know what you are doing to find things worth selling at this place.” I’m grateful to Youtube and myself for being able to still find things to make a profit on. However, Youtube is a double edged sword and I am now seeing many more University students at the thrift branching into the hard goods and not just in the clothing. Luckily I have lots of piles and we have a lot of elderly and wealthy people in our community donating. Speaking of piles, I plan to hit listing hard today and finish the recently purchased pile sitting next to me right now.
I have purchased 6 items now on Goodwillfinds.com. All came packed really well and the shipping was very reasonable. At slow times in life I hunt in there to save favorites and will wait to see if I can get them later at better prices. The first two items I bought were right after site launch and were crazy low prices. Three items I bought during their extra % off sale post-Christmas sale, and they are all now listed on Ebay. They have some really interesting items so it’s also a little bit of an education – I can quickly compare on Ebay. The trick is to search a bunch of keywords and then filter by category. The search is primitive, descriptions are sparse, and the titles posted by some of the locations are unsophisticated and anemic. I’m hoping people forget to shop there and they start discounting things. I can’t imagine that they are going to get a lot of sustained traffic from regular people at Ebay prices.
Have a great week!
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@CHristineR – Interesting to hear you are sourcing from Goodwillfinds.com. I had thoughts of doing that when I first found them, but getting into the discipline of making a regular visit to the site has eluded me. Just took another look and the pricing is pretty agressive, but I guess just like any thift store, there is usually something that slips through if you’re persistent. Good to hear the shipping is reasonable.
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I don’t expect to source a lot but I kind of think of it as education time. I’m seeing interesting items I haven’t found here then I can just toggle over to EBay and easily see comps. My last purchase was a piece of midcentury Scandinavian glass and I don’t find much if that in my area of the country.
Since the site launch, some of the locations got the message to charge more but only about 20% of my saved favorites are selling at full price so I’m hoping for mark downs. Some locations seem to be more sophisticated than others like Pacific Northwest vs. Colorado / Wisconsin.They definitely seem to be getting a healthy discount from the post office as a nonprofit.
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Scavenging is always evolving and seems to have moments of being “main stream”. Thankfully the US still has just so much waste and abundance.
Im glad people are realizing they can resell their items or buy used.
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@Jay agreed. There is plenty of stuff for everyone. I’m grateful Gen Z is into reusing things.
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eBay Store Week January 22 – 28, 2023
Total Items in Store: 1161
Items Sold: 19
Gross Sales: $616.38 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $382.02 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Goods Sold: $83.00
Highest Price Sold: $80.00 (BATES Black Safety-Toe Tactical Boots)
Average Price Sold: $32.44
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $126.00
Number of items listed this week:31Received a link from eBay for my 1099-K this morning – Taxes…Ugh. I’ll be appointing myself to getting all my numbers together. I will meet with my tax guy on February 7. I’m a recently retired small fry and I have not set up a plan to pay any taxes quarterly. Time will tell what kind of a bite I will see this year.
This was a satisfactory week for me. A couple of sales over $50.00, which for me is remarkable.
This past weekend was a good one for sourcing. My wife and I hit several yard sales and one thrift store. Now I have a sizable hill of items to process.Certain thrift stores I go to have astronomical prices. Others seem to go through phases where prices are high for a month or two, and then everything seems more reasonable. I credit this to the people behind the scenes doing the actual pricing. When I see the prices are lower, I assume there is a new person doing the pricing – and hope they stick around for a while!
Ryanne, congratulations on placing so well in your competition. When you pour your heart and soul into something, it feels so good when your peers see and acknowledge that. We’re proud of you!
Hope all of you are doing well.
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@Borderrooster – Had to do a double take when you mentioned you went to yard sales, which are non-existent in our area this time of year. Then I saw you were in Ft. Myers, FL. The land of the eternal yard sales. I understand you guys had temps in the high 80s or 90s over the weekend. Looking forward to yard sales starting up here again in a few months.
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01/22/23 – 01/28/23
Total Items In ebay Store: 4656 (was 4649 last week)
Total Items In Etsy Store: 564 (was 520 last week)
Total Items listed: 5,220
ebay Items Sold: 22 items for $ 978.49 Net $ 858.49
Etsy Items Sold: 4 items for $ 150.01 Net $ 112.96Total Gross Sales: $ 1128.5 (including eBay\etsy fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $ 971.45 (minus shipping, and taxes)
Items Sold: 26 items
Highest Price Sold: $ 125 (hubcap)
Average Price Sold: $ 37.36
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 62.50Number of items listed: 31 ebay, 50 Etsy
Gut Sales Report for the week: ebay felt slow, but was better than last week. With help from Etsy, I was able to do just about $1000 in net sales.
Focus for the week : Just staying afloat.
Scavenge of the week: Got some old smurf figures and the pre-cursor gnomes. I will have to do some more research to see if there are any good ones.
Thoughts for the week: Fees and taxes sucking up a lot of my profit. Trying to minimize both of these right now.
Mark
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Fees and taxes sucking up a lot of my profit. Trying to minimize both of these right now.
How do you minimize the fees that eBay/etsy charges? And do you mean the taxes on your Federal taxes?
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They aren’t sucking up “profit”. They were never profit to start with. Your fees are 14%. It is what it is. You’re only taxed on your net profit, and if you keep good numbers you will always know about what your taxes are and can set that aside.
You have to look at taxes/fees the same way you look at COGS. They’re just part of the equation, and should not be a factor at all.
Maximize your gross sales by sourcing higher dollar items and account for and maximize all your expenses. Find ways to “deduct daily life” as much as you can.
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Retro,
As I replied to Jay, my total ebay fees are closer to 20%. That is why other sites are looking even more appealing. I will not be doing much promoting. I have stopped Etsy ads.
What “deduct daily life” things do you have in mind? I have the normal deductions, but do have more creative deductions?
Mark
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How do you do your home office deduction? For a traditional office the area has to be dedicated BUT for inventory storage it does not.
Free standing structures like sheds or garages count.
once you add up the qualified square footage you use for the business, you can deduct that percentage from a lot of home expenses.
You pay all the home expenses anyways, might as well leverage it into a deduction!for mileage, combine personal errands with actual business errands whenever possible.
-an example for me, if I have to drop off packages at the post office I do it during lunch at my day job. Then on the way back I pick up lunch if I’m eating out.combine weekend family trips with business. We take a weekend trip to Columbus a few times a year. Columbus is great for thrifting. I scavenge a couple hours each day in the morning. I can deduct the mileage and hotel costs because the trip purpose is business. You are allowed to do personal things on business trips.
I haven’t done this in the past but will start this year. if you have kids and are a sole proprietor you can pay them and write it off directly without payroll taxes, w2’s or anything!
I’ll be paying my daughter between $2-4k this year if she keeps up. That’s a major tax deduction for me and wel below income tax wages for her.
I’ve been tracking her work on a spreadsheet for a couple years so I already have the documentation in place for her pay.
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Maximize your gross sales by sourcing higher dollar items and account for and maximize all your expenses. Find ways to “deduct daily life” as much as you can.
As always, great advice. Taxes are one piece of the puzzle to this scavenging life. But they’re relatively easy to prepare for, as long as some kind of accounting/COGS/record keeping is a part of your weekly or monthly routine. And there are so many opportunities to take appropriate deductions. Even within eBay, sales tax, shipping costs and other fees (store, scheduled listings, etc) really start to add up after a year of sales.
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But they’re relatively easy to prepare for, as long as some kind of accounting/COGS/record keeping is a part of your weekly or monthly routine.
You can always tell a new seller because they start freaking out around tax time 🙂
All those Youtube videos scream about how easy it is to make money online, but skip over the unglamorous part of keeping track of expenses and doing taxes. None of this is “free money”.
I know there’s been a huge outcry now that Venmo, CashApp, etc will be reporting income to the IRS. It was postponed in 2022 reporting, but all money people make on Venmo, etc will now be reported.
This hits all the sellers who were using Instagram to sell and thought it was tax free.
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Jay,
I found that when I added up all my ebay fees, including my store subscription, it came to 19%+, real close to 20%. Not too much I can do, except I will not do much more promoting. For Etsy, I removed the Etsy external ads. The ads charge you 15% of both the price and shipping. This is not worth it to me.
Yes, trying to minimize federal taxes. Looking for all deductions I can find. I am also looking into doing a SEP for an IRA. This will reduce my taxes, but will require a cash outlay.
Mark
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@Mark-s – Yes, those Etsy ads are a killer. I stopped all ads through them when I had a cheap, heavy item sell overseas and they charged 15% of the shipping cost. I think I ended up making about $5 on a $20 sale.
For eBay, I promote at the recommended level with a 5% max. I have sold so many items where similar items for selling for less that I have to believe the ads boost sales. Yes, they boost cost, too, but I don’t have any listings that I wouldn’t take 5% off to make the sale. 43% of my sales are promoted listings.
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For eBay, I promote at the recommended level with a 5% max. I have sold so many items where similar items for selling for less that I have to believe the ads boost sales. Yes, they boost cost, too, but I don’t have any listings that I wouldn’t take 5% off to make the sale. 43% of my sales are promoted listings.
This is such great information to think about when selling on eBay in 2023. I had never used promoted listings before last year, but I can’t even imagine how much I would have sold if I used it before that! I’ve also found about 40% of my sales are promoted listings.
I think promoting the listings is especially useful where there are similar items at the same price point. Maybe less useful for unique items, but I like to stick with one template and make minimal changes when I am listing. So I promote everything at 5%. I don’t miss the 5% and plan to play around with raising the percentage even higher for slow moving items or expensive items.
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Reposting my numbers here in the main thread:
Items in Store 2005
Items Sold 12
Total Sales $464.00
COGS $40.00
Total Profit $424.00
Average profit $35.33
Average sales price $38.67
New Listings 47
Items scavenged 11
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 16I have my systems in place. I’m only scavenging according to my requirements. I have stations in my office for “To be listed”, “Ready for cleaning”, “ready for photos”, and “inventory ready”. I actually moved everything to inventory (my slacker point traditionally). I’ve ended and sell similar 5 listings every day. I’ve posted at least 5 brand new listings every day. My daughter is doing minimum 5 items a day photographs.
Now I just have to maintain this momentum this week, and the next, and the next.
Everything is going great that I can control, but sales still suck. I’m hoping the switch flips at some point this week and sales pick up.
I countered a $300 offer on that Carhartt Jacket and it expired. I really want $340 minimum for it and I think I’ll get it eventually. Still…maybe I shouldn’t have been so greedy and just took that offer.
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I countered a $300 offer on that Carhartt Jacket and it expired. I really want $340 minimum for it and I think I’ll get it eventually. Still…maybe I shouldn’t have been so greedy and just took that offer.
One of the things I’ve been doing with sales starting to slow down, in addition to (mostly) following the same systems as you, is to accept more of these offers which are just below my target price. For me, that has often meant lowering my minimum offer settings so I actually see these offers. Or sending out 25% coupons or offers to watchers.
As I continue to reduce the number of trading cards in my eBay store, I’ve been looking at the offer history page on a lot of items. It’s revealed some interesting patterns. Biggest one is that my prices are often too high. Sometimes that first offer really is the best offer. Other times, I will hold out for an extra $10 or $20 for months when it would make more sense to take the slightly lower offer (still profit!) and list some other new items.
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Well with this item I can lower the BIN price to $300 and it will sell pretty much instantly. That factors into my greediness.
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Well with this item I can lower the BIN price to $300 and it will sell pretty much instantly. That factors into my greediness.
Yeah, this is such a huge thing with the market for trading cards and I’m sure lots of other collectibles too. With certain items, there is a pretty standard market value where someone, maybe a flipper or maybe a collector, is going to snap up that listing almost immediately. I hate to sell at that price point when I know I can hold out for a little bit more, but there will always be more stuff to buy and sell. Sometimes the extra $100 or whatever is what I actually want that week. The key is finding a good use for that money.
I will be curious to see how quickly yours sells. With 13 watchers and yours being the only large among all the active listings, I would probably hold out if I was you as well. I will be curious if your eventual buyer comes from promoted listings. My experience has been that items with a lot of watchers usually sell through promoted listings. Probably because seeing an item with 15 watchers kicks people’s FOMO into high gear.
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Reposting my numbers here, also:
Week Ending 1/28/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $599.50
Net Sales: $478.99
Total Items Sold 15
Total Items in eBay Store: 1105
Items Sold eBay: 13 ($448,25)
Total Items in Etsy Store: 390
Items Sold Etsy: 2 ($30.74)
Cost of Items Sold: $31.23
Highest Price Sold: $199.95 Antique Napkin Rings
Average Price Sold: $39.97
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 352.67
Longest Listed: 996 2.73
New items listed: 25
New Listings Value $1,516.67Still working my way through the huge lot of Christmas ornaments that we won at auction in November. Takes some persistence and determination to get through them all. Paid about $400 for the lot and I’m about a 1/3 of the way through with 159 listings with a total list price of $5300 and sales of $1635. It’s always amazing to me what people will pay up for and that collectors will buy Christmas all year long. Should be setting ourselves up for great sales next season.
If you haven’t already come across them, Cracker Box ornament kits sell really well. This company started out in the late 70’s making push pin, bead and sequin ornament kits and is still in business. The finished ornaments also sell really well, but it takes some research to tell if what you have is actually Cracker Box versus the many, many other companies making kits. We were fortunate to come across an estate sale last year that had several old catalogs and I’ve been using them to look up and confirm. It’s time consuming and I can spend 30 minutes or more per ornament on research sometimes, but each one I can confirm adds $30-$50 to the asking price.
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Week of 1/22 – 1/28:
Total items in Store: 332
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $294.43 (w/o eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $41.25 (including consignment commissions but not the original cost of family castoffs)
Highest Price Sold: $110.00 plus shipping (a pair of my son’s Nike sneakers)
Average Sales Price: $29.44 (not incl eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of new items listed: 23I had my first experience selling an eBay authenticated pair of sneakers. The option appeared automatically upon listing, and defaulted to a free label for me to ship to the authentication center in Las Vegas (of course, the perfect place for it) by FedEx Ground (unfortunately, so I had to drive to drop off) and the buyer paid a flat $14.95 for the shipping and the authentication. It was nice to recoup almost what my son paid for them new but I got a direct, personal experience of how much more effort eBay is putting into selling sneakers compared to everything else I normally sell, which did not make me very happy.
I got a lot of items listed last week but most of them were lower value smalls from my death piles. I need to try to start digging out some higher value items.
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It was nice to recoup almost what my son paid for them new but I got a direct, personal experience of how much more effort eBay is putting into selling sneakers compared to everything else I normally sell, which did not make me very happy.
I occasionally ship to the authentication center for trading cards, which is in Florida, and I have had a good experience every time. I’m really glad that eBay has created these programs. It makes those $100+ sales much less stressful from the selling end and while there’s an additional step before the buyer gets their items, I think that’s worth it for the extra peace of mind.
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This was one of my slowest weeks ever, but I planned it this way by removing 300 listings from my store to sell at auction. Those sales will be in next week’s numbers. As always with auctions, most of my listings didn’t sell. Granting that I set my minimum bid to the absolute minimum bid I would sell for. I would recommend this to anyone who tries auctions. Bidding wars still happen, but they are rare. Don’t go with a $0.99 auction and end up disappointed.
To be honest, I’m thrilled with these numbers considering the size of my inventory. Both my high and low sales were from non trading card items and they were both listings that I created within the previous week. Still sports-adjacent stuff (a graded photo and a leather bound book) but it’s nice to branch out and see quick sales that also made me a nice profit. I’m hopeful that will continue as I further expand the types of items I sell. But I have plenty of nice trading card listings to sustain me as well. It will take a while to get it all listed, but that’s a good challenge to have.
1/22/2023 to 1/28/2023
Total items in store: 358
Items sold: 15 (8 via best offer, 3 via seller initiated offer, 7 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1056.12 (down 76% from one year ago)
Net sales: $682.86 (down 79% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $70.41 (up 14% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $189.57 — Karl Malone rookie type 1 photo PSA authentic
Lowest price sold (net): $11.83— Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris Easton Press
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