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You will always be my inspiration. When I grow up I want to be like Steven S.
Thanks for the shout! Quick notes:
– Yes, my brother’s sole source of income is Amazon.
– He sells a lot, especially this time of year: historically $100k BF-EOY in gross sales
– He works insane hours around the clock during the holiday (think 18hr days, going to Target & WalMart at 3a, getting the USPS truck to come to his house 2x per day, etc)
– Does approximately 75% merchant fulfilled, 25% FBA
– His profit margins aren’t as wide as most of ours, not buying for $1 and selling for $30; likely buying for $5 and selling for $15 or buying for $20 and selling for $60.
– He has never shared exact numbers with me, but estimate somewhere in the range of 25%-35% net profit after COGS, fees, taxes, supplies, etc.
– He sells throughout the year and while Holiday is his best time (prob 30%-40% of his gross annual sales) he does well in other seasonal (stuffed animals around VDay, candy at Easter, team items around the Super Bowl, hand held fans in the summer, etc), regional (things that you can only get in Western PA/Eastern OH), and day to day items (he showed me the label when he was sending 2 cans of Pam cooking spray down the street from me in NJ).
– He works his butt off, but also gets to golf whenever he wants at the course across the street, run/hike with his dog whenever he wants, go on cheap/free vacations with his wife & infant daughter via credit card points, and makes his own schedule and can pare back his listings at anytime if it’s becoming overwhelming (which he does do a couple times per year so as to not burn out)Week November 25 – December 1, 2018
Total Items in Store: 960
Items Sold: 32 (2 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $338 (25.0% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,353.30
Highest Price Sold: $250 (1994 Nirvana Unplugged LP https://www.ebay.com/itm/192552704391)
Average Price Sold: $42.29
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $440
Number of items listed this week: 45
Promoted listings test: 14 sales, $797.42 (58.9% of total sales), $39.88 fees (5.0% of sales)Unlike your week, I may have had my best week (or top 5) of the year. After last week’s discussion around BF/CM and us determining it doesn’t matter, I had 13 sales for $600 on Sunday night through Monday day. Maybe it does matter? 🙂
Outside of that awesome LP that was my top seller (part of me wishes I didn’t sell it), also had another big sale for the week of a lot of 8 slot cars for $155 (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192605588785). The rest of the week was moderately high priced items – 13 sales of $40-$80. COGS are a touch high because of the quality of items I was selling, but still pleased.
This weekend hit up one estate sale that was full of treasures, specifically items from Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. Looks like the owner was in the Navy during WWII, specifically in the Pacific Theater, and had high end nautical instruments that were out of my price range. Only things WWII/military I got were these two silk maps of the region that I absolutely love (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192744491120 & https://www.ebay.com/itm/202521901492); these were mandatory for many because they have to stand up to the elements – we all thing of silk as being delicate & elegant, but the material held up much better than paper in the elements. Because he was in the Pacific, looked like he then had a fascination with the region and I picked up an antique silk embroidery (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202521920901), set of 66 souvenir Chinese Opera faces (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192744542984), pai gow tiles set (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202522193457), and more.
Anyone here read Chinese that can translate the characters on the silk (Google translate hasn’t been much help)? Thanks!(https://www.ebay.com/itm/202521920901)
11/26/2018 at 7:26 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52318Probably 80% merchant fulfilled. He only does FBA if he can get a large quantity of something on clearance – he bought 500 mini handheld fans on clearance for $1 each while it was snowing in Pittsburgh last winter, shipped them in to FBA at the beginning of spring and sold them all for like $15/ea over the summer.
11/26/2018 at 7:21 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52317Also forgot to mention that his wife is a programmer, so she made him a database that organizes what he needs to buy by store & aisle. It pulls his sales from Amazon and looks like code similar to an Excel v-lookup organizes it into a shopping list: 5 toothpaste in aisle 4 of WalMart, 10 cans of Pam in aisle 6 of WalMart, 2 games in aisle 10 of Target, 20 bottles of shampoo from aisle 3 of CVS, etc. He used to do it by hand. 🙂
11/26/2018 at 7:13 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52314Amazing turn of events for you and your business! After the struggle you’ve been through, all the hard work to get back has really paid off!
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This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
11/26/2018 at 7:06 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52313Totally. I don’t think I have the space to make a living off pinball machines, but it sure is interesting if you know what you’re doing.
11/26/2018 at 7:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52312Yes, this time of year he works insane hours – I bet @simplicio’s estimate of 12hr days is actually an understatement in December. I know he does a good bit of his shopping overnight – like 3a WalMart trips to avoid traffic. He has a very good relationship with his USPS carrier and they know to send a morning van pickup and an afternoon van pickup because of the volume. I’ll see if I can get him to send a picture of his garage (where he puts all the packages ready for USPS, then just opens the door to load into the van they send).
All this being said he still does love it because he actually reaps all the rewards of working for himself. And the hours aren’t like this throughout the year, may only sell 10 things on a normal day in the summer. He lives across the street from a country club, so he golfs every day the weather is nice. He gets to go on runs with his dog everyday. And he has a airline miles credit card that he charges everything to and then takes his family on a vacation in miles. Not a bad life if you can make it work.
11/26/2018 at 12:38 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52286Absolutely. His profit margin isn’t nearly what any of ours are – he’s not buying something for $1 and reselling for $30. He’s more likely buying something for $5 and selling for $10 or buying for $20 and selling for $40 and relying on the volume. While I don’t know his exact numbers, he’s given me some ballpark numbers in the past of 30%-35% of his gross sales are net profit after COGS, fees, taxes, etc. Not bad at all to make $30k in a month – and this helps save, budget, and fund the rest of the year which are not even close to this.
11/26/2018 at 10:48 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52269Amazing pinball find! Will be monitoring that for sure.
As for your daughter’s account – my only concern would be putting her on a platform like Poshmark or Mercari that you yourself don’t fully understand. Also, would it be disheartening to someone starting out on a platform that might have lower volume?
11/26/2018 at 9:32 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52257Just started listening to the show, but I don’t think that BF, SBS, or CM matter to sellers like us of quirky collectibles or vintage items. However, for retailers, it absolutely still matters – I work on the marketing team for a Fortune 100 brand & top 5 ad spender in the country, and BF-CM is STILL the #1 micro period of sales, revenue, and website traffic for the year. BY FAR. To me, it really doesn’t make much sense considering the “sales” are just marginally better than any other time during the year, but it’s an embedded behavior for consumers that this is when you shop and buy things for yourself & others.
Taking it down to someone who may be closer/similar to us as a seller, my brother does mostly RA on Amazon full time – I’ve mentioned him once or twice in the forum. He’s a one man show (sometimes his wife helps out) so he’s by no means an enterprise seller – and he historically has $100k+ in gross sales BF-NYE. This year, he had 58 sales TDay into BF so he had to leave our family gathering earlier than anticipated to go home to pack & ship.
Week Nov 18-24, 2018
Total Items in Store: 965
Items Sold: 18 (2 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $110 (19.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $569.92
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 (2) (George Michael Faith LP https://www.ebay.com/itm/192659909627 & The Police Synchronicity LP https://www.ebay.com/itm/202324645516)
Average Price Sold: $31.66
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $260
Number of items listed this week: 32
Promoted listings test: 9 sales, $238.97 (41.9% of total sales), $11.95 fees (5.0% of sales)About average week for me for the year. Nothing crazy or super high dollar sold, but at the same time nothing low dollar sold either. More than half of my sales were over $30, but nothing was higher than $50. Assuming a lot of gift purchases since there were a lot of 0 feedback guest buyers were around and everything hovered around the same price.
With Weds before TDay off from the office job, plus Saturday without much to do, got a good bit listed. Most listings were for bread & butter items $20-$30 and quite a few records, but highlights include this sealed 1969 Rolling Stones Let it Bleed LP (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192735927210).
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This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
That Big Lebowski sweater is so popular, Pendleton is making it again: https://bit.ly/2zd8k80
Was yours vintage or newer?
I learned about a year ago that 50s-70s locks are quite well made and are easy sells for good prices. Especially when you can get old, dirty, greasy ones for $1 (and they’re more desirable). https://ebay.to/2qVOpG2
Fun quick podcast today, welcome back! Can’t wait to hear next week if sales have picked up for more people. I’ve have back to back above average weeks, but nothing has gone crazy yet.
Week November 11-17, 2018
Total Items in Store: 950
Items Sold: 20 (3 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $160 (20% of sales)
Total Sales: $778.99
Highest Price Sold: $90 (1965 Midge Barbie https://www.ebay.com/itm/202075710702)
Average Price Sold: $38.95
Returns: 0 (1 item not received that I’m dealing with)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 8 sales, $287.83 (36.9% of total sales), $15.83 fees (5.5% of sales)Above average sales volume, average price, appropriate COGS range and Sunday also kicked off next week’s numbers with a solid 5 sales. Similar to you, I sometimes wonder how I can do this and why someone is paying me $40 for a lock (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202070590253), $20 for golf balls I paid $1 for at a yard sale (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202349188516), but get excited when I find NIB Legos (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202028252495). And then I look at my Paypal account and don’t care why they’re buying as long as they keep doing it.
Office job is closed on Wednesday, so hope to get a handful of things listed before headed to visit for the holiday. I’m sure I’ll be running around doing laundry, packing, etc, but need to find time – I have about 10 things to list that I want to be up in preparation for the buying weekend.
I too am considering moving a bunch of items to auction to get whatever I can for them – perhaps that would make things move quicker than my “Clearance” section. In there, even at 65%+ off things take a while to move.
October: I had 68 sales, $2811 in sales, $41.34 average. This is down from last October, when I had 80 sales, $3106 in sales, $38.83 average.
I partially credit this to what I had sourced last October – a collection of 1960s Barbies. In October last year, sold 5 for $877 total ($175 each avg). Take those sales out and this October was better than last.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by
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