Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
From my numbers the last couple months, it looks like I can spend the day sourcing and find about 60 items, or if I spend the day listing, I can photograph and list about the same 40 items. Averaging that out, it is about 25 items sourced and listed in a “full” day (about 8-10 “casual” hours).
Therefore, I think the goal T-Satt has of 150 items a week is reasonable for a committed full timer.
For us, who are only free on the weekend, we are aiming at the 50-75 items sourced and listed a week between two of us for a comfortable growth, and that eats up most of our profit at the moment.
Good points and food for thought – even though I’ve been on eBay over 20 years, we’re at new levels that excite us, and our financial thoughts are “what are we going to do for income” stage – just planning on how to pay the bills in the future.
Financially, we need to think about extra money – we’re fairly secure in that we will have no mortgage, have no kids, have our own retirement savings, and have earned some OK pension money that will come to us, on top of the regular government pensions and old age security we will qualify for – so we will be comfortable when we get older. Our ground floor for income to pay the bills is about $800 at the moment – which will be easy to make between two adults – and we’re very frugal. So yes, we probably need to think about what we want to do with our money that interests us, and generates more money or assets. I think once we are “full-time” into eBay, and moved, the ideas will flow in. We have several ideas for rental businesses (as the area we are moving to is very seasonal) for water sports equipment (kayaks, canoes), bikes, and even specialized barbecues/smokers that interest me. The cool part about those ideas is that I find the stuff while scavenging. The idea is that if someone like you has a rental property, but wants to offer add-ons like bikes, barbecues, boats, etc. you could come to me to deliver them to your property for your guests, or the guests would contact me directly with there rental dates and I would drop off the equipment and pick it up at the property they are at. We have to explore things more though – lots to continue to think about and get excited about.
The Kitchener/Waterloo area is the closest major city to where we are moving (about an hour drive) – we are moving to the south end of Bruce County – about 1/2 km from an amazing beach on Lake Huron. We currently are in south end of the Niagara Region outside of Fort Erie, just across the border from Buffalo, NY.
If you end up driving through Quebec, I find it a very interesting area to find unique items – must be the cultural/language differences, but they have some unique items. Years ago I use to make a killing on French titled video games, French sports memorabilia (especially baseball) or French Star Wars stuff (which I know nothing about) that I would pick up when I had to go on business trips to the outskirts of Montreal. I think I would need a van if I went back!
The sales have been great the last month – especially last week I had 5 sales Monday, 4 on Tuesday, and a couple both Wednesday and Thursday. Started March already with 3 sales today. It’s very addictive and my wife and I send texts back and forth with each “Cha-Ching” we get on the app. It’s a much different experience then hovering in the 100’s for inventory. The extra income is a huge motivator – and wouldn’t be surprised if we upgrade our store in April/May – we’re thinking the same as you that around the 700’s is time to flip to the next level. That will give us 2000 listings between Canada and the U.S. and that will keep us busy.
Right now the balance is good – we’re too excited to sit around as the results keep coming for our efforts. I just keep thinking it will become tedious chore – but don’t know why – maybe because my corporate jobs always end up that way? But just finding plentiful items I personally am excited about, and my wife has her own interests, has made us move on from the “it will make money, but is annoying” items we use to buy. Guess it is all a product of getting out more often, seeing more places, and just the volume of items we see in a month compared to going out occasionally looking for items as we did in the past.
The ultimate goal we’re looking forward to sitting on the beach by our current or new house, and hearing cha-chings on the phone while relaxing in the sun this summer. That will be the greatest feeling for us! I’m still waiting for “the package” from my job to move on though…it’s tough, but it’s too huge to give up. It will happen any day…just got to be patient…
For those of you who don’t use GTC, and re-list every time the listing is expired, do you not worry about those buyers who are watching, or bookmarked your items? As a buyer, I tend to watch a lot of items I’m interested in buying in the future – however, when they are “gone”, I may go elsewhere then quickly buying the item I’ve researched and “watched” for a future purchase.
From the buyer’s perspective, it’s an annoyance that I have when I watch and item and it goes away without a sale. There has been a lot of items over the years I would have bought eventually that have lost me as a buyer since they were either re-listed under a different item number, or removed prematurely.
We did well in the area we are moving to for scavenging. It was limited to thrift stores (so I’m not sure how estate auctions, garage sales, and the area auction houses are like) but the good thing was that most of the stores were independent charity operations, and there isn’t as many Goodwills/Value Villages/Savers in the area compared to where we live now. I just find the charity operations more reasonably priced, and they are willing to tell you about items in the back if you mention what your looking for. Going there, even though it was $50 in gas and probably cost us $25 in fast food/snacks to keep our energy up, was another “unknown” that we don’t have to worry about going forward.
The health benefits are great – it’s amazing how stress affects so many health issues and “the cure” most doctors have is to put you on pills. We’re amazed how great we feel, the “good” sleep we are getting, and a lot of anxiety, anger, and turning to bad foods/beer/wine when we are down is completely gone. I need to exercise more as well – and that should be one of my goals this month to get a little more active with my time. I have a beautiful bike trail that goes on forever by my house I’ve rarely used, I have a kayak and Lake Erie 200 yards from my house, and the Post Office is a nice hour walk (there and back home) through a wooded park – I need to take advantage of these!
Congrats! You deserve a vacation (I would love to have a couple weeks away!).
I’m going to be curious how you divulge your personal large items – we’re looking at a few options – Kijiji, Garage Sales, or MaxSold. Kijiji is annoying sometimes, a Garage Sale is intriguing to my wife, but I’m leaning towards MaxSold since I’ve had good experiences as a buyer. For the junk, our local St. Vincent de Paul will pick-up, or we’ll put some of the items on the curb for pickers to get.
2550 listings is an awesome amount of work – that’s a solid year of working most of your free time when you had a full time job. Now it will start to pay off!
Have fun on your trip – and have fun explaining to customs if they ask what you do for a living!
03/01/2019 at 9:41 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 400: Tax Season Advice for Newbies from Strangers On The Internet #57909I remember we played Wolfenstein at College in the labs constantly, and then we moved on to Duke Nuk’em…the IT department would wipe off the games nightly, we would just re-install them the next day and waste the computer lab time. I became an instructor after graduating and joined the students that moved on to Command and Conquer – Red Alert.
It was great to be in a room with the people you were playing, hearing them groan and swear…now kids probably just play with strangers they will never meet.
FEBRUARY 2019
I feel this was really a continuation of January focused on growth (inventory) and a lot of work, with very little profit. We spent every Saturday sourcing, and every Sunday listing, and worked our jobs during the week with evenings/mornings spent shipping as required. We were going to take one Saturday off, but ended up pushing to meet our 500 listings goal. Not there yet, but will be in a week or so. Our new problem is a growing “death pile” from too much sourcing and not enough listing. Oh well, we’ll work through it in March and spend less time sourcing until we are caught up.
The February numbers…
Listings – 430 (316 end of January)
Sales – 47
Sales Revenue (minus shipping/PayPal fees) – $1452.79
Total Listings added – 161
Inventory To List – approximately 175 (50 January)
Profit – $89.33Expenses:
New items – $844.26 (approximately 336 items – average $2.51 an item)
eBay Fees – $225.01 (paid in Feb, runs 15th to 15th on my account)
Supplies/Travel – $236.50 (gas, 2 shelving units, 8 bins, 2 rolls of bubble wrap, 200 polymailers)
Other – Undercharged for shipping $57.69…we usually end up ahead, but had a few items with “free shipping” this month.Still not a “livable” profit, but based on the number of items we’ve got this month, I’m OK as we are in fast expansion mode. The expenses (non-inventory) were really high this month, but they are long term investments in equipment and supplies for the most part.
Lessons learned this month…
We spent a day (a VERY LONG day) sourcing in the area we are moving to – 3 hours to drive there, almost 12 hours straight of sourcing (a full car load!), and 3 hours drive back home…focused just on thrift stores. A couple of stores were just beautiful (Thrift on Kent in Kitchener was beyond beautiful) – looked like high-end boutique stores but were charities and had amazing pricing. Feel very good about future sourcing once we move. The trip (time and almost $50 in gas plus a few coffee/snack stops) isn’t worth doing often, but gave us an idea that things are just as good where we are heading to. There is enough items locally where we are now that we won’t do this again unless we want to, but gives us confidence soon as we move that we have a good source of items.
Next steps for us in March…
Need to cut back on sourcing in March – we have a pile of items that need to be listed, and we are approaching our 500 listings goal quickly. We have the items to hit that goal quickly. We won’t go on a buying trip until we get caught up with our pile (it is well over 150 items…and may be 200). This will boost our profit for March if we don’t spend much. We’re well stocked for supplies and storage bins/shelves so the only expenses will be more inventory.
We will be going into what I call “Maintenance Mode” either this month or next. We are going to exceed our 500 listings goal – at this point, we are just going to maintain our store between 500-600 items, and only replace what we sold for a while. We worked hard to get here, need a breather for the next push (and store level…). The last couple months show us what growth mode is like (and the costs) – we need to see how a stabilized store works out at this level.
Storage was becoming tight again – but we should have plenty of room for the 500-600 item store size we want to maintain for now. Just need to re-organize a bit before aiming for 1000.
Where our heads are at….
Spending a lot of time on sourcing (a day a week) has shown us there is plenty of items out there. We are getting to the point where we “like” certain items, and “dislike” others. We’re starting to go for the larger profit items, cutting back on smaller items, taking less risks, and becoming a little more niche in the items/categories we sell in. In the end, it will be “easier” on us, and make us more money. There is an infinite supply of saleable goods out there – we’ll leave the items we don’t care about for the next person to buy…
The other challenge is we are not procrastinators – we want to grow, and feel good about putting in a lot of work. I think we will be challenged to hold back on growth if we try to maintain a 500-600 item store. We’ll see what happens, but think we may take the next step sooner then we think because of our motivation and current financial situation being secure while we are employed to take the risk on quick growth – however, we do need some time off or we’ll burn out (we think we will…but we’re still excited with how things are going). Between jobs and eBay, we’re working about 60-70 hours a week. We also need to think out this next expansion – we need to pre-plan the storage space (pre-plan how we organize really – we keep “splitting” bins), and come up with a plan for shipping multiple items on work mornings/evenings. A lot to think about.
The other odd thing that is happening to us both is our health – my blood pressure is way down (to the point where I may get off medication!), we’re both losing weight (in a good way), and just haven’t had the usual winter “blahs” we have every winter – we are just generally happier. I think a lot of it is the worry of the unknown is disappearing – we have a scaling business that is matching our expectations and projections. Just an added unexpected benefit of our effort.
02/28/2019 at 1:55 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Clock radios, Red Wing boots, Fairytale book, Vintage City Cafe Menu #57862Sharyn – like the Fendi perfume sale – I just listed the 100ml version 50% Full and trying to get $75 for it – glad to see that they sell!
02/28/2019 at 9:46 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 400: Tax Season Advice for Newbies from Strangers On The Internet #57839Here is what we have figured out for our contingency plans:
Electricity – we live in a rural area with a lot of power outages, so we already have a gas generator that we can use when not connected to the fridge, sump pump, or heater. We previously had battery back-ups, but the batteries are expensive and wear out after 4-5 years. If we run low on gas, I have a syphon hose (that has a pump so you don’t get a mouth of gas) ready to go.
Internet – rural issues with using a wireless hot spot, therefore our back-up is the local library (if they have power…), if not, we would go somewhere that we could get our wireless hot spots working efficiently, or a business with free wi-fi. We probably won’t list in this scenario – just wait it out. Our ISP from our experience last week will swap out equipment with no questions asked, so that is an option if we feel it is an equipment issue again. This is our Achilles heel at the moment…
Shipping Labels – need both electricity and internet, but if the printer dies we have discovered our local post office can “reprint” labels with a tracking number, therefore we just need to bring the info in and they will print the labels for us. If for some reason we can’t even setup our own labels, we’ll have to bring the info and our account number to the Post Office do it old school.
Cameras – we have 3 identical Nikon cameras now – all use the same batteries/lenses, so we should be good here. We also don’t re-use SD cards, so if we did run out of cards, we could re-use one of the dozens we have. Worst case we have a couple other digital cameras with lower picture quality, or use a phone/iPad (which would be lower in quality, but acceptable).
My experience is that electronics is the worst category to sell in. I’ve gotten to the point where I only ship within the country as there are a lot of bad buyers and it’s a lot of work to get your money back from eBay.
The one way that I have fought back is that I offer a return shipping label (at my expense) to the buyer if they are a pain – once they have that, they have to ship back the item. If it comes back without items, broken, etc, you are now in control. Chances are that they won’t ship the item back (these scammers rarely do), and this gets you in the clear with eBay in trying to resolve the problem and getting your money back. You can then cancel the label, and get your money back for postage.
As long as you look like the good guy in the situation, eBay (and Paypal) will cover you if you are trying everything you can to resolve the problem for the buyer. Bad buyers usually go off and make mistakes in their communication – the more weird communication, the better for you.
02/27/2019 at 4:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 400: Tax Season Advice for Newbies from Strangers On The Internet #57804Thanks for the link – there regular pricing looks like it would be 5% of what you sell, and then it varies significantly for the other fees beyond that (advertised is $49.99 a month, but other sites say they have other fees as well – translation services, hosting, eBay fees for multiple listings, etc.).
Keep us up to date on how it works out for you. I’m scared of getting burned shipping to some countries from bad experiences in the past.
02/27/2019 at 3:52 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 400: Tax Season Advice for Newbies from Strangers On The Internet #57802Just so you are aware, when you setup your eBay shipping preferences when you list an item, the item will show up in the countries that you are willing to ship to. For example, if you are willing to ship to Canada, and check that in your shipping preferences, it will show up on the Canadian website and the U.S. website for the same cost, and it will show the price in Canadian dollars on the Canadian website, and you will still get paid in U.S. dollars.
02/27/2019 at 2:53 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 400: Tax Season Advice for Newbies from Strangers On The Internet #57794Be careful…not sure what you are signed up for…you could always do this through eBay and still use your own currency and buyers could use there currency. How much are you paying for the translation service (my listings for example don’t translate if they appear on international eBay sites).
You may want to be careful where you ship – not all mail services use tracking that is compatible with your mail service – so buyers can say they didn’t receive the item and tracking will support them.
As a buyer, I like this – there are a few categories I always look at daily for new listings and to avoid seeing the same junk or overpriced items every 30 days will be great.
I guess that a seller can always cancel the listing, and relist the same items to get a “fresh listing” in the system under the new changes, but they would have to be careful not to duplicate their listing count with both listings if it brings them over their monthly allotment.
-
AuthorPosts