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You’ve been an inspiration to us. I like the calm and measured philosophy towards your scavenging. I share your wish to travel to different places and live for longer periods of time. I even have a list already written out.
Fascinating. Can you give us an example of yourscavenging and selling?
You said you sold a 14K Necklace for $1,662.90 this week.
–How much did it cost you? Where did you buy it (auction, online)?
–Your COGS seem to be about 25% of yur selling cost. Why do other scavengers not bid up such expendive jewelry since the price of gold etc is so clear?
–Does it take a while for things to sell? Or do you sell items quickly?
–If you average $10k net profit a month ($120k/yr), how much more would you need to make for your husband to quit his job?
Yeah, eBay is really the only ones who could answer this question since this feature still relatively new. eBay has never had a good way to turn off your store for long periods of time and keep all your listings archived.
We’ve only been able to solve it with archiving with InkFrog or another third party lister.
Understood. Sounds like you want to sell an original item. Private Label usually connotes slapping a label on an already existing item.
I’ve seen horror stories of people who sell original items on Amazon, only to have people start copying the item and undercutting their prices. Here’s a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S24X1O4HEE
Its a cut throat world. But I’v seen people find small niches where they arent making millions selling an original product, but making a god amount selling an item that’s difficult to copy. Think I remember a woman on Etsy who will sew custom curtains for you if you send her dimensions.
Its interesting to hear you say how mellowing has been good in your business. I feel this has been a dirty word among resellers. If your not, “balls-to-the-wall” then you’re a loser! I love the mellow lifestyle of a large eBay inventory.
Burundi is definitely fruity and bright. A good afternoon coffee. The Sumatran will be the darker, chocolate flavor for a morning brew.
This is a good point. Most private labels sellers are just really good marketers. Photos of products look amazing. Then you get the item and its the cheapest dollar store junk.
Ryanne has taught me to look on eBay for more of the new items we purchase because we can buy from sellers that take real photos of the real item we’ll get.
Welcome Broadstone. Not sure I’ve ever seen you post here. Impressive numbers! You’re an example of a scavenger who has less items and makes more than we do.
Can you tell us a little about your store? From your numbers, looks like you sell jewelry? What do yu do wit the kind of money you’re making? $4k+ in a week is crazy profit.
Glad things are going well for you guys. I know you have traditionally been a clothes seller so I can imagine its been difficult to source enough.
Rentals are great as long as:
–you have the up front money to buy the rental (or rentals)
–you either can afford the necessary renovations or afford a house that’s turn key
–you can handle the monthly nut in case rental income doesn’t cover your bills 🙂
Other than that, its a slam dunk 🙂
This is good info. Glad they covered it.
It’s always been confusing what happens if someone inItaly wants to return a big item. This is why we still keep shipping GSP.
Good to see you! Happy new year.
I know your wife was going to grad school and you guys were thinking of buying another house near her school?
Navyvet wrote:
So as nicely as I could I reminded the buyer, 1. you never opened a case, 2. you only messaged me days after sending a non-approved return and 3, this item is way more damaged than you stated. He could tell I was not just going to refund him 100%, so he opened a return case. I accepted the return and after talking to ebay about what to do, I gave him 50% back, not including original shipping. I believe 50% is the lowest % you can give back in this situation. I confirmed with Ebay that I am now out of the loop and that any further dispute would be between the buyer and ebay and no more $ would come out of my account. The next day he opens a dispute with ebay and then eBay pretty quickly ended the case with this result below. So I think he got close to 100% of his money back between ebay and I, except for the unauthorized shipping back to me. I sent pics and a video of the damage to ebay so they could really see the visual evidence. So I would say I’m satisfied I did not have pay back more than about $17.
True. But that product is a good example of a “private label” seller. A generic, cheap product with some made-up brand name. Often overpriced. $27 for a set of cheap kitchen tools!
Robb, I reposted your response because for some reason our system was hiding it.
There’s no reason why you cant continue to enjoy the scavenger lifestyle, especially if you remember working jobs you hated. Being grateful is also a good motivator.
I think the traps are “why am I not making more money like x” or “there’s more stuff I should be buying. someone else is going to get all the good stuff.”
Robb_ wrote:
Burnout hasn’t crossed my mind too much, I enjoy the freedom that having a business affords and maybe just scavenging being fun and also I have small goals like I try to put a certain amount of an item up. For example, I already have a good amount of boots up, but I want to put 100 pairs up, I did that for pants, I had a goal of 100 pair and went for that goal and got around 1oo put up. Having little goals within the business like that I think helps stave off any burnout. I have had a few moments of feeling a tinge of burnout, but it seems I get back interested in different aspects of this business. I hear often about you guys trying experiments, so these 100 items of a type of item are kind of like experiments. It is nice to have a variety of different items, but having enough of those items where they are actually selling at a decent amount, not like 8 of one type of item and selling only one every long once in a while, (if I did that, then that might get frustrating if I was focused on that one category), but if I have a large amount of a category (probably depending on category) then I see sales in the category at enough rate it seems worth it. Yet don’t get me wrong, I have tons of items that may be the only one in a given category and having that large variety of items all in different categories is cool and that is largely what I do, but I have just been trying to get a large chunk of certain categories also as I previously explained. I get all kinds of items of all kinds of categories all the time, yet I have also been focusing on having a volume of a particular category and 100 seems to be the number I like for that right now. So, I do both, many categories all the time and concentrating on building up a particular category (100 in this case).
To avoid burnout, I guess I am just stoked to not have to clock in somewhere. I enjoy being able to work on the business any hour of the day, it often feels like I am just chilling on vacation, it’s like a dream. Maybe, I am in honeymoon time, but it is a cool feeling to see stuff sell, for example I found a poster in a side of the road free bin and it sold for over 100 dollars. Even though pandemic was going on last summer I live in a large enough metro that there were plenty of garage sales, I enjoyed driving around, haggling, talking to people. I think counting my blessings consciously or just being aware of it subconsciously perhaps helps keep me from being burnt out.
Since the buyer has not opened a return case, there’s not much you can do. If you call eBay about the buyer, they will say that “the buyer has the right to their opinion. Contact the buyer directly and work it out.”
So you must choose. Is it worth trying to refund the buyer and hope they remove their bad feedback? Or just eat the feedback and chalk it up to “what a grumpy pants”.
If you have more of these deodorants, you can always say explicitly that there is no expiration dates, but its also never been used.
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