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March 2018
Ebay Stores
Total Item Count on Mar 30th: 1421
Mar Gross Sales: $7888
Items Sold: 197 @ 40.04 avg sale price
Total paid for items sold: $1267Amazon FBA Store:
Items left in Store on Mar 30th: 342
Total Sales: $6621
Items Sold: 113 @ 58.60Total Sales: $14509
Items Sold: 310Here is feb as I didn’t post it
Feb 2018 sales
Ebay Stores
Feb Gross Sales: $7853
Items Sold: 190 @ 41.33 avg sale price
Total paid for items sold: $1553Amazon FBA Store:
Total Sales: $4675
Items Sold: 84 @ 55.65Total Sales: $12528
Items Sold: 274I add my two cents to the auction/bin debate as a seller who has been on ebay for almost 20 years. I still list everything as an auction first. Either for 5 or 7 day depending on when I list so the item ends on a weekday. Then if it doesn’t sell I relist it as a 30 day buy it now and just relist everything as it ends each month (I know another topic under much discussion). I like to do the relist so I can adjust prices if it looks like I need to lower prices.
Back to the idea of listing everything as an auction. Originally I used turbolister and now I use Garagesale. I build all my listings and then have them all end in the evening on a weeknight. Part of the my reasoning is that a lot of what I sell is conducive to auction as many items may have multiple parties interested and could get into a betting war and the other part is the fun of auctions and getting bids as that is how ebay used to only be. Nothing is more fun that on a night were a bunch of listing are ending and the phone is just making constant bid sounds and Ka-Chings. It helps with the boring parts of being an online seller. I do list everything now for pretty much the lowest price I would take. It does save time on research as I don’t have to worry about underpricing a hard to price item. It probably would make sense to go straight to buyitnow for a good amount of my listings but old habits are tough to break sometimes. It just works for us. I totally get why fixed price on everything makes sense for most sellers.
The D&D books are definitely auction stuff. Personally I feel that is the only way to sell cool rare stuff like that that would have a large amount of interest as its hard to exactly price and bidding wars are possible.
The cool thing about selling on ebay is that it is not a one size fits all way of selling and still is an online flea market/auction house with bidding and haggling and all the fun those things bring.Crazy that the first month of the year is over already.
Here are my almost final numbers for the month
Jan 1st-Jan 31st
Ebay Stores
Total Item Count on Jan 31st: 1459
Jan Gross Sales: $10394
Items Sold: 244 @ 42.59 avg sale price
Total paid for items sold: $1469Amazon FBA Store:
Items left in Store on Jan 31st: 316
Total Sales: $3848
Items Sold: 67 @ 57.43Total Sales: $14242
Items Sold: 311I save my previous years totals jan15:$12284 jan16:$9046 Jan17:$10566
So this was our best Jan but that probably doesn’t mean anything in the longrun. Sales were strong the whole month for us except that amazon slowed down in the second half mostly because of a lack of inventory sent in on our part.and yes Jay you are correct: There are no ghosts. There is definitely alien life outside of planet earth but I believe that whatever life exists has never visited our planet.
My favorite part of the podcast was when Jay said “There are no ghosts”, the same line I always give. I love getting in debates with believers.
I’ve never seen that recorder out in the wild. But I always buy similar ones whenever I see them since they are usually cheap ($2-$4) and sell from $25 and up and don’t take up any space.As for the overall theme of declutter. Anyone who has sold for while and works from home knows how overwhelming it can be if your ebay inventory starts living alongside your personal stuff and life. It is important for those starting out or growing to a full time operation to make sure you find separate space if possible for the business which will allow you to work efficient and help keep you motivated as a cluttered/unorganized space definitely makes it hard to get stuff done and time is everything in this world. This is a constant battle for me and I’m sure most of you. I usually have between 1000-1500 itmes up at a time.
Amazon is 99% trash elf scavagened (thrift stores/yard sales/ etc) just like eBay. The retail arbitrage margins are way too thin for me on amazon and no fun anyhow.
I do the numbers on a monthly basis so here is half the month
Our Store 1st half of Jan 1-15, 2017
Ebay Stores
Total Items in our Stores: 1406
Items Sold: 118
Cost of Items Sold: $650
Total Sales: $4869
Average Price Sold: $41.26Amazon FBA Store:
Total Items in our Store: 313
Items Sold: 44
Total Sales: $2402
Average Price Sold: $54.59
Cost of Items Sold: We make on avg 60% on amazon sales after cogs and amazon feesFor health insurance, my brother gets his coverage from his wife and I buy mine off the exchange. NJ uses the federal one so I get my Horizon Blue Cross from there for around $300 a month. I’m a 42 year old male.
I will definitely hit you up soon about about maybe doing the podcast Jay.
–How do you and your brother work together?
My brother lives in a house about 45 mins away from me. He works out of his basement. I am in an apt building, personally I have a 2 bedroom apt and I also rent the apt across the hall which is a 2 bedroom as well and that is the office where everything is done. We basically work on our own except for the 2 days a week that we travel together and look for inventory.
–Where do you photograph and store everything?
In the 2nd apt/ Office. Most of the photos are taken there and the listed inventory is stored and then packaged for shipment there. I do mostly all the packing and shipping.
-how do you split up expenses and profits?
Early on when we both lived together and were starting out we sold under 2 ebay names and then just split the profits. We both filed our taxes as sole proprietorships and it worked fine. Once he moved and got married it would be a bit trickier that way so we decided to form an LLC that files as an S corp. So the business we set up pays the rent on the apt/office and runs a payroll that pays us a weekly salary. We both take the same salary. Its been set up this way for 3 years now.
