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I put this out a while back but did not really go into detail very much. Honestly it is a bit embarrassing to admit all the mistakes we made. I hope by putting this into more detail that one of you who may be thinking of going full time can learn from my mistakes.
Ok here it is…
in 2014 we had really just began to learn about selling things on ebay by listening to this very podcast and it seemed so easy to do so we started selling a few things here and there. We thought we knew enough by the end of the year to go full time. I mean why not, we buy a premium store, fill it to capacity which was 1000 listings and the money would just come.
Ok this was our very first mistake, we had no idea how much we were paying out each month on our bills, didn’t seem like too much. We never seriously even looked at our numbers nor did we even have a clue how to get those numbers. If I had to say what was our biggest mistake then it would be this. We needed a business plan, we needed to know how much our store was capable of making, taking into consideration what we were selling and what we could reasonably get our hands on and how much that would cost per week. We needed to know how far we would have to scale our store up to reach the amount of money we needed to pay our bills.
Our bills were over 3400.00 per month and much of that was unsecured credit card debt and personal loans. If I had known then how long it would have taken us to reach that kind of money selling the things we sell then there is no way we would have quit our jobs until the store was close to that level. This was our second mistake, don’t quit your jobs until your store is making what you need to support your bills. Don’t assume it will just come.
Over enthusiastic we quit our jobs, January 2015 and cashed out our 401K which had not that much, about 24,000.00 in it. With the eBay store not making very much we blew through our 401K money quickly and by the beginning of 2016 we were about out of money.
Over the course of the year in 2015 we were on a buying spree and picking up anything and everything trying to fill our store up. Terrible idea, no matter what you do, DO NOT BUY JUNK. This was our third mistake, we filled our store with dime store junk and our sales reflected that.
Our plans of self employment defeated my wife went back to work and I found contract work to do. We were starting over, 7.25 an hour at age 55. All of our credit cards and loans were behind and going to collections. This was a very dark time for us and it seemed like all was lost for a while.
We eventually started to catch a break here and there with the creditors working with us and many allowed us to pay the balances with very little of the original amounts due. Over the last 2 years I am happy to say we are debt free and starting to have an excess of money and my wife, who the company likes very much, was bumped up into a much higher paying job and full medical coverage for both of us.
Over the last 2 years I had a lot of time on my hands to really evaluate what went wrong and plan for the future. We may have taken a pretty good beating financially but we have emerged much stronger. Our bills today are a mere 1600.00 a month and that includes everything. Not too many people we know can say that.
Now my wife loves her new job and isn’t going anywhere, plus she has fantastic insurance for both of us which has medical, vision and dental. I on the other hand, am on my way back to full time ebaying and this time with a much clearer understanding on what it takes to have a successful eBay store.
So yes there is a happy ending to this story but it was extremely hard getting there and I hope you take the time you need to fully understand your own business before jumping into the fire so to speak.
Know your stores numbers, know what your average selling price is, know what your monthly replenishment cost are, know how much inventory you can even find each week, know what your monthly sell through rate is, know how much your monthly bills are, don’t buy junk, don’t quit your job until your sure you can do it.
It’s hard as an old man to say I messed up so bad but I did and we both paid the price, thank God we don’t have kids or they would have paid too.
For us we landed on our feet, financially stronger and headed toward retirement with the knowledge we are going to have a great ebay store and a fantastic retirement! Don’t make our mistakes, just take your time and do it right. Know your numbers.
Despite all we have been through, by taking the crazy chance we did, we came out immensely better for it. I would like to thank Jay and Ryanne who have been our mentors through all of this. If it were not for you guys we would have never changed our lives and would still be headed toward a rocky retirement with a sketchy future. I hope you both know how much we sincerely love you both for giving us our future here in the poorest state in the union, one we can truly enjoy.
Well that’s our story complete with all the good the bad and the ugly, I hope you take something away that helps you in your journey. Just don’t do what we did, lol.
Love yall,
Tony and Deidre -
Tony! I’m really glad to see you back. When you have an online community, it’s rare to be able to follow up with most people since our lives seem to fork off into different directions.
It’s also great to here of your journey over the past eight years. You were one of our first commenters on our podcast. Sorry to hear of your troubles, but very happy you came out on top.
Specific questions:
–how did you go from $3400/month in expenses to $1600/month? Was it debt repayment? Or are you in a smaller house?
–What kind of things are you buying and selling now? How have you learned not to buy and sell low cost junk? -
Specific questions:
–how did you go from $3400/month in expenses to $1600/month? Was it debt repayment? Or are you in a smaller house?
–What kind of things are you buying and selling now? How have you learned not to buy and sell low cost junk?Ok almost all of it was unsecured loans and credit cards to the tune of 1300.00 a month in unsecured debt. Once that stuff went to collections each one started writing us offering lower and lower amounts to pay them off. So we would wait till they reached a certain level like 1/3 or less than the original amount and take the deal. We did that one card at a time until they were all gone. I could not believe it.
Next we got rid of AT&T and combined our cable, telephone and internet all on Xfinity for 100.00 less than what we were paying before.
No we still have the same house, we have been here for 25 years and our house note is only 300.00 per month. We are probably going to move though, at some point to a nicer house 🙂
Deidre’s job pays for medical,dental,vision and that saves us 100.00 a month on medical insurance.
The last bit was embarrassing but it was food, we lowered our food cost by not eating out and cooking our own food. We went from 800.00 a month on food to 500.00 per month which includes 1 day of eating out each week.
We only buy clothing now, it’s what we know and it’s what we can get for cheap and sell at a good profit. I guess it’s our niche, lol. We stopped buying junk by looking everything up BEFORE purchasing on ebay SOLDS and by inspecting EVERYTHING for holes, stains, etc. So much money wasted in the past on stained clothing or clothing that had no resell value.
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You have so perfectly explained the basics of being a successful Scavenger.
Get rid of all consumer debt, bring your monthly expenses as low as you can without deprivation, and only sell items you know you can make money on.It’s a simple formula but definitely takes work to execute on a day to day basis. Look forward to hearing more as your store profits.
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Thanks Jay, I will give updates as we progress, starting over nearly from scratch, we have 178 items listed. For this month we have already passed our goals. I was shooting for a 9% sell through rate at 16.00 and hoping for 278.00 in gross sales but have already hit 11% @ 16.82 for a total of 370.00 in gross sales not including shipping. Not bad for a first month back in the saddle.
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A mistake I made was failing to anticipate all of the unexpected expenses that seemed to constantly crop up back when I was a full time ebayer: Car repairs, vet bills for the dog’s knee surgeries, various home repair bills. It seemed like it was always something! I had to put a lot of it on credit cards (something I never would have even considered back when I was comfortably off). While I was able to make at least the minimum payments towards the debt each month, the interest rates were killing me and I could not chip away at the credit card balance before another unexpected expense would pop up.
So my advice is expect the unexpected. Pay off any consumer debt & make whatever home & auto repairs that you’ve been putting off before considering quitting one’s job for FT reselling. Live frugally even before you “need” to, so you can squirrel away savings for a rainy day.
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Totally Agree Julie B, during our dark days we had the ACA ( obamacare ) health insurance and both of us needed dental work done which it didn’t cover. In Mississippi you can’t even get the expanded medicare because our state voted no on it and the only dental plans you could get covered children under 18 only. We didn’t know what to do until a neighbor told us about the family medical center in our town that had free dental care for people under a certain income.
We also had a pet that needed medical attention and none of the vets around us would take payments so we had to treat the poor baby ourselves the best we could with medicine we were able to get from friends. Luckily he survived the ordeal but yeah that can be a huge expense.
Home repair was for me not too bad since I am pretty handy with a hammer, plunger, paint brush and used to be an electrician a long time ago. I just had to buy the parts and do the work myself. Not everyone can do that stuff though.
our family helped us with some car repair and that was huge, I don’t know how we would have made it if not for family and friends.
It was not an experience I would ever want to go through again.
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Being really new to all this, I very much appreciate your post. We are taking this really slowly, building up a base before jumping in too deep – but someday we hope to get out from under all our debt, and downsize as well. For now we are really doing Ebay for vacations and to be on the learning curve while we still have regular income.
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Your detailed and in-depth story really helps others. I think it is good to share our victories as well as our missteps. We all have them in our business and our personal life, the key is to learn from our mistakes. I am happy to hear you are still working on making your ebay store a success. Thank you for sharing!
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WhoooHooo ! I hit 200 items today 🙂 Yep that felt pretty good. I am trying to raise the number of items listed by 100 per month. In order to do that I have put in place some realistic and achievable daily task.
For Feb 2019 Daily I have to …
- Photograph, Measure and List 6 items
- Prep the next 6 items for the next day
I do this 5 days a week and 1 day per week is spent sourcing. I take 1 day off completely.
As my sales per month increase so will my items per day. By October of this year I will have to list 10 items per day(5 days a week) in order to keep up with the amount of items sold and increase my inventory by 100 items for each month. Since this is progressive it allows me the time to get used to the ever increasing daily goals.
If I am able to reach my goals each month then by December of this year I should reach about 1300 listings. By July of 2020, I will reach the end goal of 2000 listings and can fall back to a maintenance pace of 8 items per day.
Of course the end goal is based on a projected .08 STR and APS of $15.00. If the STR or APS falls or rises then it may take more or less than the 2000 listings to meet our needs. I won’t know for sure until I get closer to the end of this year.
For January we had a STR of .12 and APS of 16.75 with an ending gross of $402.00 (no shipping included) which is great since I was shooting for $240.00 gross. Bah but it’s Jan so I am not hanging my hat on that very seasonal month as any kind of indicator.
As of today for Feb 2019 we have sold 8 items for $175.00. I have a projected goal of $340.00 gross ( no shipping ) with a .08 STR and APS of $15.00 and Total of 284 listings by the end of the month.
I guess that about it for now, I will try to update this again after the 1st of March to let yall know how I’m doing.
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Well let’s face it, it’s not easy getting old, lol. I am 57 going on 58 this year and good grief it seems like it is getting harder and harder to get over a cold. I got sick around the middle of the month in Feb and took me about 10 days to get to where I could list again. Nonetheless here are my numbers.
ok from my last post in the middle of Feb, I said ”
I have a projected goal of $340.00 gross ( no shipping ) with a .08 STR and APS of $15.00 and Total of 284 listings by the end of the month.
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Here is what actually happened
We finished the month with 225 listings and we sold 17 items for a total of $335.00 (shipping not included). This gave us a .08 STR and a APS of 19.71
Well it’s not fun getting sick but I am fine now and it’s time to get to getting so there ya go. To be honest I am not at all dissatisfied with the results, I did manage to push through some difficult days and despite getting sick we kept a decent if not impressive STR and APS so all in all I am quite happy.
My question is how will my APS and STR look in 6 months? Well I seriously can’t wait to answer that. Hope your all having great sales ! I will try to keep this updated every month so you can watch my progress. I hope this log will help to motivate someone else in their struggle.
CYA !
Tony -
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Tony:
“Know your stores numbers, know what your average selling price is, know what your monthly replenishment cost are, know how much inventory you can even find each week, know what your monthly sell through rate is, know how much your monthly bills are, don’t buy junk, don’t quit your job until your sure you can do it.”
Best paragraph I have seen on this forum. Glad to see you on the rebound here!
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Just passed our monthly STR goal of 8%. We are currently sitting at 9% STR ( this will only increase from here) and our current APS is 19.10 ( this will fluctuate until the last day of the month) and so the goal was 8% STR and 18.00 APS, I hope we can at least meet the APS but you never know until it’s all over.
I have to hit 300 active this month to hit our yearly goal, 50 to go. I need a motivation drug, lol
Later
Tony -
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As I write this I am a little embarrassed that I did not make my listings goal of 300 this month but that was due to incredible sales in March. I did manage to hit 275 as of today but that 25 short will have to be made up next month so my work will get much more serious in April or it’s going to be way too hard to catch up.
Part of the problem was crap was selling as fast as I could list it in some cases. A few times I had offers within an hour of listing the thing. Not a bad problem to have but kept me from reaching that 300 easily, I should have made a harder effort but at my age it’s not that easy to double down anymore. I can understand the grey goat’s frustration at keeping up the listings and I am 5 years younger than he is.
Nonetheless I am pushing forward. I had to take a couple of days off to prepare my taxes for the accountant but I just finished so next month is a clean slate and a new opportunity to shine. I am so happy with how we did this month but I know not everyone had such a good month so I am reluctant to jump up and down too much on here, just seems impolite I guess.
This will be my last entry for a while, I can’t really see any benefit in just restating the same info month after month so I will report back if anything changes. The numbers are insane for us, no time in our stores history have we managed to do so well in a single month. Taking our time and looking things up before buying them and only buying things we KNOW we can sell has really paid off.
Here is how we did
For the Month of March
Started with 225 listing and ended with 275 ( yeah I know )
We sold 37 Items and Grossed $943.00 with shipping included
Without shipping we grossed $718.00
That gave us a 15% STR and an APS of $19.43
On top of this we sold $450.00 in hard goods ( 2 old Atari 2600’s NIB ) locally giving us a whopping $1168.00 in sales for the month.I am so pleased with our progress this go round, happy happy. The future is looking bright 🙂
I was looking for a 8% STR and got 15%, unreal.
For April I am still just trying to hit 8% STR and $15.00 APS, keeping it real
Listing goal for April is 400, oh yes I will do it 🙂
Budget for new products in April has increased to 60.00 per week and Max purchase price is holding @ $3.00 per item unless it’s something really special.I can’t think of anything else to report, just that everything is going great. I will check back with this journal in a few months unless there is a drastic change to give an update, I’m thinking quarterly.
Love you guys, gotta go listen to the podcast now 🙂
Tony
#ICANTBELIEVETHISISREAL-
Love it Tony!
And that is the best reason to not be at the inventory level you want…because of sales!
I forecast based on inventory levels, but in the end, I focus on the number of new listings per week (that is something I can control). We seem to notice that when we are hitting our listing goals…we sell more… 🙂
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Hey Tony, if you like that one here is another philosophy to contemplate-
Ebay is a fickle mistress I’ve concluded, sometimes responding like crazy to my attention (listing), and at other times no matter how hard I try… no love at all…
Makes me wanna two time ebay for etsy and crosslist. I’m on a mac so finding a viable cross listing tool is not working out. I may have to cheat on apple too. hehe- -
Putting things on hold (sort of) for a very couple months. We are the perfect epitome of Murphy’s Law.
So we have this new life and we are just starting to make headway into the world of resale and are pretty much on a shoestring. Looking back it was obvious what we should have done but well then again time travel isn’t possible yet. Our finances lay in ruins a few months ago and we have slowly picked ourselves up and started making decent money again but we made a mistake, we never put up any emergency money.
We no longer have credit cards so there is no “just put it on the card option”. Anyway, we have these two cats and last week one of them got really sick. None of the vets around us will take payments so we needed cash. Fortunately we had just enough, about $150.00 to take the boy in and get him treated.
We didn’t know until today if the treatment would work or if he would need additional treatment which would be much more money, like $400.00, bloodwork, x-rays, the works. Thank God it worked and looks like he is on the mend but we still have a cash problem so we are putting the brakes on our spending for 8 weeks in which time we will be able to put up enough cash to handle any future emergencies.
Yeah I ain’t gonna lie, it hurts to have to stop pushing hard but we have to do what we have to do so we no longer have the threat of not being able to get our babies treated due to lack of onhand cash. I will still be able to do whatever the sales on ebay allow me to do which will still put us in a forward moving position but at a much much slower pace for the next 2 months anyway,
So August everything will go back to normal and we will be able to purchase and list over 100 items a month once again. It’s a set back but in my mind well worth it for the peace of mind that comes with having an emergency fund. #alwayshaveanemergencyfund
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Our oldest cat just died a couple weeks ago. We feel for you. Hopefully your cat will bounce back.
Yes, an emergency fund is good to have, but it sounds like you just got out of the “no debt” phase, so don’t be too hard on yourselves.
You might want to take a little more time to scavenge in non-traditional places. We find church thrifts that sell clothes by the bag. Or yard sales where $5 will go a long way.
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I’m really sorry to hear about your cat Jay, these little guys are like children to us so I know how you feel, we have lost 2 already over the last couple of years and it’s always hard.
Yeah we will be looking for cheaper alternatives for sure. The dream is still alive and well, just taking a slow ride for a couple months.
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