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Why I do ebay: My husband works full time, I stay home with our 4 children. My ebay business proceeds go towards paying down debt faster than we could with just one income. We have 400k debt (car,graduate student loans, mortgage). Our goal is to have it all paid off within 10 years.
Items: 585
# sold: 72
COGS: $368
Total Sales: $3189
Highest Item: hallmark peanuts wireless band $400
Average Price: $44.30My best week to date. Things feel like they are slowing down today and yesterday. Which I’m ok with. I need some time to work on Christmas for my 4 kiddos. Talking about buildings, I have a 30×40 insulated shop with heat/air running water. It is an essential part of my eBay success equation. The first 10 years of my eBay adventures I did without a shop so I know it can be done without but I’m grateful we found a home that had one already built. I think the original invoice that we got with the home documents said it was $19000, but that was also 10 years ago. Then we spent $5000 to put in heat and air. I store unlisted inventory, clean items, photograph, and list in the shop. I do packaging in my office inside the house.
Thank you for sharing this! I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that info forever!
Sourced. My kids come out to the shop and play with unlisted inventory. My kids hardly have any toys at all. What this business has taught our whole family is that kids want experiences, not toys. (even though they think they want toys – haha) That’s why I can find them in abundance to resell. Parents buy them, donate them, and then go buy more. It’s weird. But works for my business! 🙂 I get my stuff from garage sales and consignment sales. Finding inventory has never been a problem for me, it’s getting it listed that I struggled with. But I think I’ve found my rhythm with that too! Thanks for the kind words Retro. 🙂
Total Items in Store: 544
Items Sold: 78
Cost of Items Sold: $533
Total Sales: $3107.37
Highest Price Sold: $187.50 loving family dollhouse lot
Average Price Sold: $39.84
Number of items listed this week: 90+I believe last week was my best week ever. November was my best month ever with $9900 total sales. And cyber Monday was madness, 20 items sold for $900+. I packaged 36 items this morning… with a sick baby under foot, so I’m absolutely exhausted. You know you’ve hit your limit when you’re looking forward to things slowing down?! I have 10 death tubs of clothing left and then I will have gotten through all of my unlisted inventory. Which is so crazy to me. If you would have asked me three months ago if I was ever going to list it all, I would have laughed at you. It feels great.
Ryanne, listening to you talk about the overalls return, is there a way to close a case if they don’t return it? I have a woman who opened a return case on November 19th and still has not returned it. When I click on the return I don’t see anywhere where I can close it. Maybe that’s not possible but I thought I’d ask if you know. Thanks.
Edit: Ah! sorry, I should have kept listening to the podcast, you answered my question. 🙂
Listening to the podcast. Several thoughts:
1 – I wasn’t angry about politics being discussed, just disheartened, but I totally respect your right to speak about whatever you want. It’s your podcast!
2 – You should look into promotions. I have been running a promotion of buy 1 get 1 25 or 50 percent off. These have been great ways to generate revenue and if you do the math it’s NOT a bad discount to offer when you’re getting someone to shop around and buy more and saving money on shipping by combining. For example, say you are running a buy 1 get 1 50 sale and you have two $100 items with $15 shipping. So the person is going to get those two items for $150 but you are going to save maybe another $10-$15 combining shipping. So they pay the $30 shipping and it only costs you $20, so add $10 to your $150, $160. So the REAL discount on the total of both items was only $40 or 20%. All of my items have room for me to discount it at 20% and still make great money. I LOVE the new promotions tool! I’ve generated $750 in sales this month using it.
3 – You don’t have to sell clothes or electronics to do well. I sell mostly used toys and will come very close to $10,000 in sales this month.
4 – My death bins weren’t un-interesting items. I fell into the camp of those who are much better at finding and buying the treasures, then they are at listing them. My death bins are full of amazing things. I would encourage anyone who is sitting on piles of unlisted inventory to take it one item at a time and work through it. It has been the best feeling to start to get through all of my crap. Before it was such a looming mental and emotional burden that I didn’t even recognize. Kind of like debt. Climbing out is hard but SO rewarding!
5 – Do you wonder if your employee will someday rather just take what she’s learned from you and start her own ebay business?
Thanks for the great podcasts!
Thanks Paulo! 🙂
Here are a few of my higher items I sold last week:
$112 – little people nativity with rare pieces from several sets
$90 – set of dinosaur train talking interactive dinosaurs
$80 – lot of Hannah montana Malibu beach house furniture and dollsall pre-owned
Total Items in Store: 455
•Items Sold: 59
•Cost of Items Sold: $410
•Total Sales: $2,379.61
•Highest Price Sold: $180 Thomas train wooden lot
•Average Price Sold: $40.33
•Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
•Number of items listed this week: 90+It was a great week. Packaging 36 items today from this weekend. I continue to attack my death bins and stick to my buying freeze. It has been great and very motivating. I’ve tried buying freezes before and never stuck to it so I’m proud of myself for finally attacking these bins of death. 🙂 I listed something a couple of days ago that had a sticker that showed I bought it FOUR years ago! Ugh. I don’t ever want to go back to doing that to myself. It’s a mental burden to have all that unlisted crap piling up. I have already broken my “best month ever” record for sales. I’m hoping to hit $10,000 for November but that’s a pretty lofty goal and I’ll have to have 3 amazing days but it’s my goal none the less. My kids are all back to school and my husband has a week of vacation so he can tend the 1 year old while I list list list this week.
I cringed that this became political also. I avoid social media like the plague for this reason and too enjoyed that this forum wasn’t about right vs. left. I hope we can get back to that. People feel so passionately on both sides it never settles anything to banter/argue about it on the internet and usually only fractures relationships.
Anyways, I am again VERY happy to share my numbers! <insert shameless arm flapping happy dance>
11/13-11/19
Total Items in Store: 423
•Items Sold: 70
•Cost of Items Sold: $467
•Total Sales: $2783.59
•Highest Price Sold: $135 calico critter toy lot
•Average Price Sold: $39.77
New inventory: 0
•Number of items listed this week: 75-100I continue to list like a mad woman! I feel like I’ll never get through my death tubs but when I get discouraged I refocus to the mentality of “just one item at a time” “you can do this” haha. I also ran a promotion “buy 1 get 1 25% off” that generated $254 in sales. I was happy with that. I’ve tried the promotions before and never made a sale off of them but this one seemed to finally spur some interest. For black Friday I’m going to do “buy 1 get 1 50% off”. Hope everyone has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving! 🙂
Yep. I will be the first to admit that I used “treasure hunting” as a coping mechanism for some personal struggles I was going through for several years. I’m doing much better now, clear mind, focus, and joy. And it’s showing in the numbers! 🙂 I cannot wait for the day that the death tubs are no longer starring me in the face. Party time!
There were 184 – all cats and dogs – no duplicates. Took me almost 5 years to amass the collection. 🙂
I’ve been really excited to post my numbers! I have committed to attacking my “death bins” as I will call them. I have resolved to not spend another penny on inventory until I list 1000 items. It might take me a while but I’m actually listing items much quicker. I think the changes ebay has continued to make really has helped listing time become much shorter. At least for me that seems to be the case. I have been hard at it for less than a month and have listed 265 new items. All while my main job is still wrestling a one year old and chauffeuring the other 3! So I’m pretty proud of myself. Anyways, like we all know… list list list! And it’s working! 🙂 I had 25 packages waiting for my poor mailman today.
Nov 6-12
Total Items in Store: 400
* Items Sold: 40
* Cost of Items Sold: $291
* Total Sales: $2260.13
* Highest Price Sold: $525 184 littlest pet shop animals
* Average Price Sold: $56.50
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 100+Walmart has the same 18 gallon sterilite tubs in clear. I have about 50 of them. Maybe they don’t sell them anymore? When I bought them in the past couple of years they were about $1 more than solid grey.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sterilite-18-Gallon-Tote-Box-Clear-8pk/44785785
