Your Flip Ratio

[AdventureE]

With all of the ebay changes and some sellers incorporating free returns, have any of you changed your flip ratio? If you buy an item, do expect to get 3, 4, 5 or more times the amount you bought the item for or are you more focused on the item itself or both?

[T-Satt]

We like to see a 5X return on the purchase cost of the item. However:

1) If we can’t get at LEAST $10 net profit, we don’t do it. So the low end would be buy at $2 and sell at $12. We won’t do buy at $1 and sell for $10, unless it is multi-quantity.

2) We go to 3x or even 2x if the item is yielding high dollar profit. So we have done a buy at $50 to sell for $100 if it is an easy listing in terms of time. We have done buy at $20 and sell at $60.

Mostly we don’t think in terms of a multiple. We look at what we can sell it for, what the purchase price is, and is it worth the time to list and ship.

[aperture]

@T-Satt, I totally get where you are coming from. There are things out there that are too much pain for small gain, and I have been learning to avoid them. For me clothing is moderately hard to photograph and measure and list. $10 is not a good return for that work, even if I no money invested.

As a relatively new seller, I do value the opportunity to build feedback and sales momentum that comes from selling low $ items. The trick is to have low investment of all three areas: money spent, time spent in listing and storage space. Patches are a nice fit for this space. I acquired a bunch of them (~50) for $2 (and the labor to remove them from a jacket). Each is ~2-minute listing and sell for $7 to $10. I have gotten regular sales from them, and I appreciate that they may be lifting the rest of my store up in eBay search. Thanks, Daniel

[T-Satt]

aperture: Plus, easy to store and ship!

[AdventureE]

Thank you for sharing. It is helpful to see other seller’s perspectives on flip ratios.

[Mike]

I am a firm believer in you make your money when you buy. I tried to get at a minimum 10x my money. I would say about 95% of my items have made that ratio.

I love the buy for $5.00 and sell for $150. Who wouldn’t!

I have been reevaluating my ratio on higher priced items. I have been working on 5x my money for high priced items. Buy for $40 and sell for $200.

I don’t shy away from lower priced items. If I can buy for $0.10 and sell for $12.99, I will do it. Home runs and singles. About $8.00 is my lowest price I will list something. Below that and it goes to the donate pile.

I love the auctions where you get 5 box lots for $3.00! When no one wants it I start looking. Oh the gems I have found. I have never lost money on those type of buys.

[AdventureE]

Thanks Mike.
That is very helpful.

[bcfol440]

I sold some $9 items this week as I was learning a new segment (old matchbooks paid .25 for per on avg). Part of it was for “fun” as I enjoyed researching the vintage places! I am ok with small profits on new segments or simply things that are part entertaining for me to list/ research for a short amount of time.

[AdventureE]

Good points bcfol440. I do find being able to list something that is fun or that I am interested in helps make the listing go alot faster. Thanks for your input.

[ChristineK]

I don’t know that I have any set ratio, but I try to buy as cheaply as possible (like a dollar or less per item) and then go from there. I mostly sell hats which I get from the goodwill bins for ~$.25 each and sell for around $11-$15 each on average. I do free shipping which works out to around $3 per hat. It’s still a very good return in my opinion even though it’s a lot of low dollar sales as opposed to fewer high-dollar sales.

[Author]

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