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That does sound SO fun. I’m so sad that I will probably voire-dired right out of any jury selection because I’ve studied criminal justice and psychology extensively. No defense attorney would let me stay on haha!
I’m not a fan of eBay send and Fed Ex labels being “added to invoice” rather than deducted directly from PayPal, and no immediately accessible record of it to boot! I am keeping my own running tally every month to know about how much extra will be piled on to my invoice. Super inefficient and annoying; hopefully with the payment processing changes in July, this will be resolved!
June 14 – June 20
Total Items In Store: 4809
Items Sold: 50
Gross Sales (including shipping): 1236.56
Cost of Items Sold: 82.06
Highest Price Sold: $104.32 (Vintage Poodle Statue)
Average Price Sold: 24.73
Returns: 1
Sourcing Cost: $24Great episode this week (as usual!). I’m happy to report that my numbers seem to be magically back to normal this week, thank goodness! I never thought about looking at an “average day” counter… that is very interesting! Regarding returns, I technically had one completed… I’ve got several open from many weeks ago. I doubt they will actually return the items at this point, which is fine with me. I don’t count an item as sold until it’s paid for, and I don’t count it as returned until the return is actually completed. It seems like at least half the time it never even gets shipped back. No complaints about that!
I did have an exceptionally grumpy would-be buyer who was essentially pissed about the cost of international shipping for a very low dollar item. I explained the situation and this buyer unleashed his wrath on my eBay inbox; I was actually laughing at how dramatic the messages were. I felt like I may have dodged a bullet there, glad I didn’t actually have to ship anything overseas to him.
My book draft is officially done (woo hoo!) so now I’m just waiting on my cover design (perks of being married to a graphic designer)…then I guess I’ll really be slaying the self-pub dragon! In the meantime, just keep listing, listing, listing…
Y’allllllllll. This was the slowest week I have had that I can even remember. As I’m writing this today, my DAILY total is only $6 under my WEEKLY total for June 7-13. Yikes. I’m very glad that this week is *already* better than the week we just closed out! The best part is, my 30th birthday was day 1 of this ultra-slow week, and it just happened to be the only day I sold literally zero items! Happy birthday to me? You just never know. I was kind of bummed about it honestly, since the past couple of months have had so much momentum! I love the idea that maybe the delayed tax deadline will mean another wave of refund cash in people’s pockets. I’m rooting for that, for sure!
June 7 – June 13
Total Items In Store: 4709
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales (including shipping): $494.80
Cost of Items Sold: $11.03
Highest Price Sold: $64.49 (Small Weekender Luggage Bag)
Average Price Sold: $29.10
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: $80.29Even though this total is way smaller than I was hoping for, turning $11 into almost $500 never, ever gets old. Cheers, everybody–here’s to a great June 14 – June 20!
Mortifying! I can totally see why that cost you 100% of your motivation, haha! Way to snap into action though. Well done!
So, I’m going to self publish through Amazon; probably just charge $10-15 or so. I’ll be nailing that down soon, but of course there are printing costs/amazon’s cut to factor in (it’s print-on-demand), and they make that information pretty clear from the outset. It’s going to be in hard copy first, though I may toy with an ebook version and/or audiobook version at some point. We shall see!
Yes, I think to write a book you definitely have to be interested enough in doing it, or you’ll just burn out part way through. That’s so cool that your wife has included it in her book though! Writing a nonfiction book was a natural thing for me, since I’ve got a lot more relevant experience in that, but writing a novel is a whole other beast in my mind! Good for her! I certainly love reading novels, but I’m not sure whether I have one in me haha.
Oh my goodness–were you bummed about the book when that happened? I bet you’re right, that a lot of it could be adapted! I think it’s a great idea, if brushing it up and adapting it every strikes your fancy, because I really believe that the more we can share with and encourage each other, the better off we all are. We all have to find our own way, but having a bunch of examples to pull from and be inspired by certainly helps!
As for my book, it just kind of happened! A friend of mine who is always asking me about my eBay store suggested that I write a book about it, partly because it’s interesting and he (and others) are always curious about how it works etc, partly because building this store is a part of a bigger life story for me, which has its own merits… I was a therapist in full-time private practice and teaching at a university for most of my 20s.
When my friend encouraged me to write the book, I had this lightening-bolt experience of an outline hit my brain. I wrote the whole thing in a couple of weeks this past Jan/Feb, just following along, fleshing out the outline. It’s about 40k words/180ish pages.
So, I am going to self publish on amazon. I’m not trying to get rich or famous or book speaking gigs; I just want to put my story on paper and put some useful info out there for others through a different medium; just the way the Scavenger Life helped me see a better/different way of life was possible, I want to share my own experience, too. The book is called “Miscellaneous,” because that word has come to (delightfully) characterize my inventory and my life. The book is a mix of the broad life-perspective stuff and the nuts and bolts of how I run my store and why I do things the way I do them. I always refer everyone to the Scavenger Life, of course, when they want to know more, and I definitely point the reader in this direction also, throughout the book.
I’m a project person, and I love writing and music and theater among other things… but as with any project, crossing the finish line is one of the best parts! I can’t wait to get this book wrapped and out the door haha! It’s close.
Aha! Jay, thanks for the post on how to upload photos–you guys think of everything! Ok so here is what a found–weren’t you just talking about mustache mugs recently on the podcast? And look where this one is from! I snagged it for 50 cents at thrift store. So fun!
Happy Birthday, Jay! It sounds like you enjoyed your day. My 30th was on Sunday, and it was fun and low-key, but I have to say kind of felt like a weird time to celebrate with everything going on in the world. My store felt pretty slow this past week, and I think for the first time this year, I sold zero things in a day (which happened to be my birthday ha!) but I’m not sweating it. I finally did go source some things in person this past week, which was a blast. I found a lot of people were indeed having yard sales; John and I found some great treasure at a couple of them! Also finished my own final edit of my book that’s all about my eBay adventure/transitioning out of my career, which felt great. I’ve got a couple more nit picky formatting things to do with the manuscript and I’m waiting on my cover art, but I can’t wait to wrap that project up. It’s admittedly cut into my actual eBay work-time a good bit for the last couple of weeks, but hey, thanks to eBay, I definitely have the flexibility to make room for that!
May 31 – June 6
Total Items In Store: 4684
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales (including shipping): 1004.63
Cost of Items Sold: 40.68
Highest Price Sold: 72.59 (Bettie Page Iridescent Platform Heels)
Average Price Sold: 25.75
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: 36.19I also found something so funny and serendipitous while I was sourcing this past week – If I can figure out how to upload a photo and find the appropriate forum thread, I’ll share it. Cheers, everybody!
May 24-30
Total Items In Store: 4706
Items Sold: 49
Gross Sales (including shipping): 963.64
Cost of Items Sold: 25.98
Highest Price Sold: 38 (Purple Butterfly Throw Pillow)
Average Price Sold: 19.66
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: 80.90Another awesome podcast episode this week. I find myself regularly preaching to the choir (e.g. my husband, John) about how I don’t offer free shipping because shipping does indeed cost something (lol). I personally feel that we’ve all lost track of the awesome wonder it is that we can pay someone a nominal fee to to have it transported from hundreds of miles away to our doorsteps. That’s amazing, and usually totally worth it!
It was a good week on eBay overall for my store; I also found myself selling loooots of low dollar stuff, but hey, it adds up! I didn’t have a single sale over $40! That’s pretty unusual. Hoping for some better sales this upcoming week, and hoping to start sourcing a little more like usual. My favorite thrift store is open again! Yay! I am curious about how many yard sales may be cropping up in the next couple of months. What do you guys think? More than usual perhaps, because many people have had time to clean out their homes, accumulate more than usual via online shopping, and want to make some cash? Or fewer than usual, because of people wanting to continue to be cautious?
Love that about streamlining your listing process. It’s so refreshing and motivating to find out you can tighten up the system with one or two little changes; that happens in my process occasionally too, and it feels like (and is) a huge win! Well done!
May 17-23, 2020
Total Items In Store: 4565
Items Sold: 65
Gross Sales (including shipping): 1600.13
Cost of Items Sold: 65.33
Highest Price Sold: 100.89 (1995 Atlanta Braves World Series Champion Stein)
Average Price Sold: 24.61
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: 0Thank you! It really has been a ton of work, but it’s also a huge credit to the Scavenger Life podcast! I heard your interview on the Afford Anything Podcast, was super intrigued and immediately started binging the Scavenger Life podcast back in 2017…I believe that’s what motivated me to do the 500 item experiment. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that 10x or more if I hadn’t been listening to you guys every week! It’s been 3 years of slow and steady work, and I STILL look around my garage some days and think “is it working?” It certainly is; new ways of being just take time.
