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Sorry I missed posting my computer sale numbers in December, the holidays just sucked all my time. Here is a two for one posting.
DECEMBER
Computer items listed: 35
Computer Items Sold: 14
Most interesting sale: Two vintage Soundblaster sound cards $24
Total Gross Sales: $344.23
Cost of Goods Sold: $0.00
Shipping Fees Collected: $10.40
Shipping Fees Paid: $106.54
*Estimated* Ebay and Paypal fees: $49.84
Storage Unit Rent: 167.98
Carryover fees from previous months: $256.04
Total estimated income after fees and rent: -$246.57JANUARY
“Computer” items listed: 28
“Computer”: Items Sold: 12
Most interesting sale: Two old IDE DVD-RW drives to a guy in Australia $60
Total Gross Sales: $389.34
Cost of Goods Sold: $4.00
Shipping Fees Collected: $0.00
Shipping Fees Paid: $99.76
*Estimated* Ebay and Paypal fees: $53.82
Storage Unit Rent: 167.98
Carryover fees from previous months: $246.57
Total estimated income after fees and rent: -$182.79There is a lot going on with this little experiment but it seems making lots of money isn’t one of them at the moment. Although I’m selling more than I did in November the shipping fees and storage unit rent is pretty much eating all the profits. This is the first time I’ve really gone all in on free shipping and make-offer on all the items in a category and I must say it’s been a bit frustrating at times. Computer parts are HEAVY and it does not seem to matter that the shipping is free, people still want everything half off and I can’t seem to negotiate up to a price where I can actually make money after shipping sometimes. As a result I’ve made a few mistakes where I basically ended up selling something for the cost of shipping. I’m probably going to be cutting back on the free shipping and/or raising the initial asking price on items and seeing how much that affects sales.
As for the storage unit, it’s got to go! I’m enlisting the help of my brother this month and paying him an hourly rate to help me get through the stack of computers. He sells on ebay and is tech savy so he should be a big help in getting the computers taken apart and cataloging/pricing all the components. I’ve been bringing home around 5 more computers every week from work so if paying my brother for help increases volume and sales enough I might keep paying for his help every month.
Thankfully the rest of my store has been doing decent the last several months so I’m still making money on ebay. Working on the computer parts has motivated me to get through some of my old unlisted items I had horded away and those items are selling well.
I found a local scrap metal recycle company that will take the computer cases once I take the good parts out, already have about 8 to take over to him. I think once I go through that stack of PC towers, pull the saleable parts out and get rid of the cases I’ll probably be able to get rid of the storage unit. I wish I had more space at home to store this kind of stuff but living in Florida with no basement our garage is already full of stuff. I also live in a deed restricted neighborhood that has rules prohibiting sheds in the backyard. I have a whole wall of shelves in my garage that is dedicated to the ~200 items I already had in my ebay store before I started this project. Maybe once all the PC parts are stacked neatly in bins I’ll be able to just store them in with the rest of my normal ebay inventory. The computer stuff sure sells better than my other ebay items so maybe a purge is in order to make room for the computer stuff.
November Recap
I think I’m going to just update my progress monthly for now. Since I do this part time I just move too slowly to have a ton to say each week. I do however keep a nice spreadsheet of my sales so here is where I stand at the end of November.“Computer” items listed: 10
“Computer”: Items Sold: 5
Most interesting sale: Motherboard and CPU combo from an almost 10 year old Dell Vostro PC $25Total Gross Sales: $99.48
Cost of Goods Sold: $1.00
Shipping Fees Collected: $8.30
Shipping Fees Paid: $22.79
*Estimated* Ebay and Paypal fees: $15.56
Startup Fees and Rent: $324.47
Total estimated income after fees and rent: -$256.04Definitely didn’t make back that $325.00 Yet. The good news is we are only 4 days into December and I’ve already listed more and made more money than the two weeks I was doing this in November. The bad news is I have to pay for the storage unit out of my own pocket again for December. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be in the black and have enough money to cover January’s rent. That Dell Vostro motherboard/cpu that sold was interesting not for the sale price so much as the fact that it sold at all. Normally you couldn’t give away a computer that old yet there was clearly somebody who needed that part as it sold within a day or two of me listing it.
Is that what causes the extra charges? I usually measure the boxed up item and enter/update the dimensions before buying the label, especially on larger items, so I’d be really surprised if I got it that wrong.
Old Dad, Yeah I was just posting in the user groups. My wife basically told me the same thing that I should try Facebook Marketplace. I’m not really much of a fan of Facebook so I’ve never used their Marketplace and I don’t know if there is a way to limit items listed to a specific geographic area. I don’t want to be driving far away just to meet somebody to sell these things.
Week 01 Recap
Nothing but expenses and spinning wheels this past week. Kind of a bummer but it’s mostly due to me wanting to test the waters on social media before doing eBay listing. Basically I pulled 3 computers out of the pile and fixed them up. 1 went to my mechanic as partial payment on a car repair and the other 2 I posted on my neighborhood and small town Facebook groups, no takers. Ironically the same computers sell very well at $250-$350 in the shop at work but this goes to show you different markets justify different prices. Everybody wants garage sale prices on Facebook. Here is my current costs. Hopefully next week there will be some sales to offset this.
($178.98) – Storage unit first month rent plus other BS expenses like a lock they made me buy
($117.49) – 10 plastic storage bins, might be returning half of these as I didn’t need them
($28.00) – U-Haul trailer rentalSo I’m $324.47 in the hole, no small sum. That’s more money than I probably spent in the last 3 years on inventory for my very part-time ebay store but I’m ok with it so long as this experiment starts making money.
Old Dad, have you had some success parting out printers? If so, which ones? We get inkjet printers by the boat load and I’ve generally felt that they are made to be disposable with very little value in fixing them.
My boss agreed to let me have my pick of stuff before it gets tossed in the shed. I’ll throw the business a couple of bucks for what I take. The escrap vendor really does not pay much, I think the most we ever got was $70 for a whole shed full so even if I gave $2 per complete computer the company would be making more money and I would be getting a huge bargain.
The volume of computer waste varies, but I’d say what you saw in those pictures was about 6 months worth of stuff. I’m going to try to keep a log here of what I’ve spent and how much I’ve made so we can see if this turns out to be a profitable experiment or not.
Well the pile of junk has been sorted, my plans changed a bit in the process. It seems that shed is not even slightly water-tight and a lot of stuff was wet and ruined. I ended up just taking about half of the computer towers, a bunch of hard drives and a bunch of busted laptops. I left a little over half of the equipment in the shed. We will have to get an escrap company to come get all the printers and wet stuff and hopefully they are ok with it since they just care about the gold content and scrap value of the metal.
Here is what the storage unit looks like with the 41 computer towers, half dozen servers and bins of hard drives, laptops and some other miscellaneous items. I’ve already pulled a few computers out of the pile and finished refurbishing 2 of them tonight, I’ll hopefully sell them next week on social media.
I’m going to take everything out of the shed this Saturday, we need to empty it out as this is only about 6 months of eScrap for us. If this turns out to be profitable I won’t have any shortage of more should I want it. I’ve rented a 5×8 U-haul trailer and recruited my wife and father to help move it all. It’s such a huge mess that I need to dig it all out and organize it anyway just so I know where to begin.
Retro, yes most of the computers in there will have Windows 7 or XP OEM license stickers on them. I’m banking on some of the PCs with Windows 7 licenses being new enough and in good enough working order to refurbish them, upgrade them to Windows 10 and sell them as working systems. I estimate I should be able to sell a refurbished PC for $100-$300 depending on the specs. There is also a huge lot of old decommissioned servers in there and I’m curious if the parts on those sell for a decent amount on eBay.
Ok, I finally got around to taking photos and putting them on Imgur so I can post them here. The shed is about 3 feet wide and about 20 feet long. As you can see from the photos it’s a total mess and filled about chest high with computers.
I have made the decision to take this project on. I think I’m going to keep posting about it here so you can see how things progress.
I know about computer hardware so no issues there. I know some of the stuff sells, I sell it at work once in a while when I find time. My real concern is just the time/profit part of the equation to sort out the mess and go through it all. I estimate there is several thousand dollars worth of parts in there….and hundreds of pounds of eWaste that I’d have to dispose of. I’ll try to take a photo while at work tomorrow and post it.
Having worked my fair share of retail sales jobs when I was in college I’ll say what you did with the sink is fair play so long as the item was in new condition with all the proper packaging so the store could resell it as new. Compared to all the stupid scams I saw while working retail what you did was fairly normal.
The most deplorable thing I saw was when I worked at Radio Shack. Basically, a relative or acquaintance would pass away and these people (I called them scavengers ironically) would go through all the deceased person’s stuff looking for anything they could try to return to a store for money. Since Radio Shack sold a lot of stuff with their own logo on it I would get people trying to return all kinds of old, yellow, broken electronics with no packaging and no receipt. They would typically demand to see the manager and then rant about how we had to take the item back simply because our company’s logo was on the item.
Jay I understand your point about “how long does it take you to make $500 on ebay vs your job.” I always like that you use ideas like that to help people see the potential in selling on ebay. However, I think your example this week could use some elaboration.
I think a better question is… How long does it take you to make $500 PROFIT on ebay vs GROSS $500 through your normal job? Those two words make all the difference. I can gross $500 through ebay, but once I pay all my transaction and shipping fees, COGS and misc business expenses my profit is more like $250. That $250 profit has a lot more in common to the pre-tax amount on a normal pay check than the original $500. I don’t think your example was bad, I just worry about making comparisons to gross sales on eBay and the amount that is actually paid to somebody on a pay check.
So Cal Joe, this is what I get on ebay when I search for “Fairbanks Scale”
Not sure if you were being funny or if you have a model number you could give me. One thing is for sure those antique mechanical scales will definitely stay “on”
I am surprised to hear that so many of the larger scales have issues with accuracy at lower weights. That is one issue I actually don’t have with the one I linked to above and it’ll handle up to 100lbs, although I’ve never put something quite that heavy on it.
