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There is so much wisdom in this post. Craig, you’ve really shown how focusing on a niche (baseball cards) can be extremely profitable. Plus from your history, it sounds like you really enjoy learning about the players, history of cards, and why buyers get excited about certain ones. That’s the positive feedback loop needed to keep going.
You’re asking the right questions, especially since you’re an owner operator. Getting a system that you can do each day is key.
My point is to just remember to surround yourself with things you enjoy. A process can be super efficient and profitable, but if you hate what you’re selling, then burnout is inevitable.
Do you think he’s pulling in the numbers that I posted? ($5k a day on eBay sales? That’d be $150k/month)
Not sure if he has a bunch of employees or overhead costs.
He’s strictly used items, almost all clothes. His ASP is like $30 shipped. He is grinding HARD with a goal of like 170 sales a day. It’s all about efficiency. He tracks his listing times and drives each step to the most efficient time.
He’s been doing this for 3-5 years now, right? His stamina is incredible. That’s a GRIND.
So he’s grossing $5k a day on eBay sales? That’d be $150k/month. Do you think he has big overhead of employees, storage etc?
What is he doing with that kind of cash? It doesnt sound like he’d have time to spend it
I think you have to be reasonable about the niche you decide on. It has to be something you can find a lot of consistently for cheap. I feel like if you’re resourceful enough, you can find a good source for just about any category you want to sell in though. Clothes are obviously the easiest thing to find a ton of consistently.
I’m always curious if “consistent sellers” have the staying power because the consistency would equal boredom to us. Selling baseball cars, or patches, or postcards can be exiting because there’s a whole world within that niche. Just selling sweat pants or dress shirts would be pretty dull because it’s a very limited field. But if you can set up a system where that’s fun, then its all good.
we are opportunists
That’s really a good way of describing scavenging. You sell what you find….rather than doing market research, and just looking for that one item.
You did great. It’s a good feeling to just admit the mistake, give a refund, and be done.
In our early days, I felt we needed to respond to every message. Now we only respond as needed. silence really is golden.
Agree with Retro. We kindly suggest for the buyer to talk to their post office or neighbors, but ultimately we stay silent. The “delivered” tracking is what protects you.
Daily Refinement and Technsports both have 25,000 item stores and they only sell clothes. They say that their way is the easier way (vs selling random stuff) because they have mastered the categories they sell in and can list super fast cause all they have to do is “sell similar” and change the photos title and some item specifics. They can also ship super fast cause they use the same size packages for everything.
Absolutely this would be easier. They’re basically Amazon sellers where they sell a handful of sku’s that they replenish.
Now the big question is how much they pay for consistent inventory. They gross $1000/day, but how much do they net? How many employees and how much is their payroll?
NC wrote:
Weekly sales 8/1 – 8/7
Random Item Store
Total items 819
Items sold 19
New items listed 95
Gross sales $597.18
Net sales $359.09Patch Store
Total items 2731
Items sold 58
New items listed 92
Gross sales $508.56
Net sales $398.30Etsy
Orders 14
Gross sales $86.80
Net sales $73.78Gross sales total $1,192.54
Net sales total $831.17Another decent week for me, I think I sold a lot of my “home run” items so this week was mostly just bread and butter stuff.
Do any of you guys follow Daily Refinement on Youtube? I’ve been watching some of his videos and thinking about his method. This was an interesting podcast episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=wRU9Vg8iET Daily Refinement and Technsports both have 25,000 item stores and they only sell clothes. They say that their way is the easier way (vs selling random stuff) because they have mastered the categories they sell in and can list super fast cause all they have to do is “sell similar” and change the photos title and some item specifics. They can also ship super fast cause they use the same size packages for everything.
I’m tempted to try niching down to a specific thing in my random item store and seeing how it goes. It won’t be clothes, maybe hats or something small that’s easy to store and ship and I can find a lot of. It’s hard to argue with
I remember this guy. Its cool that he’s still cranking.
If I remember correctly, he moved from selling scavenged items to selling wholesale/new items because that was the only way he’d get volume. True?
And does he sell a “system” for new sellers? Or is he just making the vides for fun?
Incredible. You’ve really hit the jackpot being so knowledgeable + hard working at the right time when sports cards are so sought after.
Do you have a personal collection that you are growing and won’t sell? Or is everything for sale?
Yeah, I think all the old price data is extremely overrated. This is why 90-day search history has always worked for us.
Jay – regarding your question about whether your drop in sales my have been related to downgrading from an Anchor store to a Premium store, I did the same downgrade around the same time as you. My sales didn’t change in a noticeable way. From eBay’s perspective there’s no real reason why their algorithm should favor one seller over another based on their store subscription. eBay makes most of its money from making sales. It will always push the items most-likely to sell and store subscriptions don’t factor into that.
Thanks for the level headed explanation. I logically understand this , but I get why sellers delve into magical thinking when sales are bad 🙂
