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Hi, Team!
Posting a response here so that other people have it. I got on the phone with IL Revenue Dept today and they said that since Ebay, Amazon, and FBM are collecting sales tax, I’m not actually considered a retailer in the state. I’m considered a wholesaler for tax purposes. The difference between the two (in laymans terms) is that I still get a tax-exempt registration card, but I’m not responsible for filling out ST-1’s and reporting monthly income sales, so I don’t owe any money. How cool is that? Love the Dept of Revenue!
Happy Tuesday!
Hi Bob!
Very cool, I started selling in 2012 when I was 14 (I’m 23 now) and have been making the stretch to full time from there. Love the name, btw. Also awesome stat on 5-7% being profitable- I usually describe it as less than 10%, but never knew the actual stat.
Thanks!
Re:Grandma, it’s definitely been an adjustment, but I love her dearly. I’m lucky to have flexibilty and a bit of a gig mindset than a regular 9 to 5, so I have time to spend with her. She’s 75 and doesn’t drive, so I figured out quickly that my 6 day work week needed to move down to a 5 day work week so that I have time to drive her around and do things. We’re careful with covid, but we all qualified for our 1st shots so I’m planning on relaxing some tighter restrictions we’ve been doing for the last year and start to move towards some sort of normalcy.
Thanks Jay!
I’m definitely not at that point where Ebay’s making me rich, but I’m thankful for what I’m making right now and I feel like I’m just rounding the bend. Forgot to mention, last week I broke up with the post office- I used to go 3 days a week and take all my packages, but my house has a foyer so I started scheduling pickups. It is AWESOME. I love just packing the night before and not worrying about it the next day. 10/10
Hi!
Long time no see! I’m a bit behind on episodes, but I’m catching up this week. Here’s my numbers for this week.
Items in Shop:747
New Items Listed:50
Items Sold: 7
Net Sales: $241
COGS: $8
Net Profit: $233
(Edit, I forgot a $14 bumper sticker on FBM, so there’s really 8 sales)
Awesome sales this week: Yearbooks and Collectible Plate Frames. Yearbooks are bread and butter for me. I charge between $35-$50 for one, and sold 3 this morning (my shop is 25% off, so they really were 25/35 sales, but simple packing!). Additionally, Last week I picked up a few collectible plates that no one was bidding on, I figured if one sold for like $20 then it’s worth bidding a dollar. Ended up with 2 out of 5 being in the 25/35 range, but they were in these frames from Van Hygne and Smythe, which turns out to be about $10 a piece. I had 5 of them, but they were pretty scratched, so I took an offer for $40 for all of them. So my $1 bid will end up with around $100 in sales, pretty good for what I thought was crap.
In personal news: I bought a house! It’s a super cute mid century ranch, and I moved my grandma in with me. I took 3 weeks off in December and January where all I did was ship items and no listing to get my grandma settled in. The house is great, but there is no storage room for the business, so I’m still in the office. However, I only paid 71.5k for my house and it’s on half an acre, so I’m pulling a page from Ryanne and Jay’s book and building a building. Mine will be smaller (24×28) but I have the permit, a deposit on the slab, and I’m hoping the building will be up in May. I’m currently netting about $1200 a month between Ebay and Amazon, which is covering office bills but not much else. In hindsight, the office was good for me on a personal/get my feet in level, but it’s not maintainable for the long term. Right now I’m paying about $800 a month in rent, electric bill (this is killing me) and internet. Once the building is built, I’m looking at $160 a month for the slab for 3 years and $130 a month for the building itself for 6 years, and another $100 or so in extra electricity and bumping up my house internet plan. This is also aligning with what I’m calling “heavy growth periods” in my buisness. Since I got into the office I went from somewhere around 150 listings to 750. I’m hoping to be at 1000 by the time the building is built, and the entire thing will be able to hold around 6000 items at max capacity if I keep selling the same size things as I am now. I know we’ve talked previously about how it took Jay and Ryanne about 2 years to get fulling running with Ebay, and I feel like I’m just getting started and I’ll be running strong in the next year or so. I’m still caregiving for mom, so I only work on ebay 20 hours a week, and I also applied to be a contact tracer for COVID for my alma mater for a couple months while I have a few months that I’m paying for the slab as well as paying for the office. The building payments don’t start until I have it built, so that’s nice.
So that’s where I’m at! Happy to be back!
Lauren
Thanks So Cal Joe!
Yeah, property taxes are rough out here. The house that I’m looking at’s bill is about 2200 a year. Just trying to not put too many eggs in one basket, but I’m really excited about one in particular.
Numbers for this week:
Items in Store : 632
Items Sold: 5
Total Sales: 181
COGS: 5
Total Profit: 176
Average profit: 36.20
Average sales price 37.20
Highest Priced Item: Colt Presentation Case: 110
New Listings: 30ish
Had a nice quick sale this week for a Colt Presentation Box. Couldn’t figure out what guns it fit, it was scratched to hell, and sold for $125 shipped, so about $110 gross sale. Probably could have gotten more, but was happy for the quick 3 day flip for something that wasn’t even what I was bidding on in the lot.
Secret’s out- I’m buying a house! My grandmother is moving in with me from California to Illinois and my dad is gifting me a downpayment. Trying to get a loan is challenging at best because no one wants to use self employment income for my application, even though between amazon, FB,and Ebay I’ve been consistently making 2k+ a month in sales (1200 net or so, low estimate) so they are trying to base the entire loan on 1200 a month that I get for caregiving for mom part time. Dad’s willing to cosign, and the house is under 100k, and my girlfriend and grandma are going to be paying rent, so it’ll be fine. I just need to find a house. So….fun.
Ebay was slow. Amazon has been on fire- those 130 listings I posted last week went live and I had a $250 day on Amazon for just books. Still feeling slow on Ebay, but we’re getting through it. Kayley and I didn’t get to list much this week before today. My dad is coming to Illinois on Wednesday for a week so I’m anticipating not getting much done when he’s here, but I hope I can get more done on the front half of this week because he’s traveling most of Wednesday.
Numbers for this week:
Items in Store 608
Items Sold: 16- 11 Ebay, 5 FB Marketplace
Total Sales: $375
COGS $29.25
Total Profit $345.75 minus fees
Average profit $21
Average sales price $23
Highest Priced Item: $45 Ice cream maker- local, no fees
New Listings: Ebay-0, Amazon- 130
Been focusing on Amazon this week. Had a $130 dollar day on amazon today thats not included in my numbers. Ebay was a pretty solid week. Been working on a secret project this week, and I ran out of stuff to list, but I have more that will be available starting tomorrow so next week will be a big listing week again. Woohoo!
@Jay,
Without any sales running I am at about $26 an item. I feel like this just dropped because most of my listings last week were sub $30 items, so it’s bringing the total down. I’m not sure where I lie on $20 items. I don’t mind them when it’s mixed in with some higher dollar items (about 250 items in my store are over $30) but it sucks when nothing higher end sells for a week.
I’m really pulling long hours this week to get some sales going. I’ve sold 3 things since posting, scheduled 3 pickups for the next two days on FBMarketplace, and I sourced 74 books today for amazon. Plus I have an auction pickup with a good deal of 50+ dollar items picking up on Wednesday. 26 lots in total averaging around 5 listings a lot, so like 125 listings coming up. I feel like part of my problem is that I don’t have like a death pile of things that are higher dollar, I get them listed pretty quickly, so I’m either listing more low dollar items while I have them for risk of not doing anything at all.
Thanks team, I haven’t written my response yet, any thoughts on what to say? I’m thinking something like “Customer stopped responding after trying to find resolution. I’m happy to take any returns within 30 days” but idk if thats too harsh. They never responded to the message I posted here.
Thanks!
PS: Ebay said it wasn’t removable when I did the feedback thing. Since it’s a neutral I’m not gonna call them over it.
Great podcast, as usual Jay and Ryanne. I realized I have missed out on a great opportunity. Today’s my mom’s birthday and we were listening to the podcast together and I realized I could have had an easy Bday gift with some Coffee! She loves coffee, and will just have to settle for getting some in a couple weeks. The shoutout about the neutral feedback made me chuckle – I actually haven’t responded to it on ebay yet, but the buyer went silent after messaging what I posted. I did happen to see the listing again and realized there was a picture of us holding the item afterall in it- c’est la ve. Life goes on.
This week was murderous for sales. Nothing sold for more than $20. And I had several days of no sales. I actually just took a $15 offer on a $25 item because I literally haven’t sold anything all day. (edit: and I just received a cancellation request for the item as I was typing numbers. Woof) Tonight’s also an auction night, so I’m seeing a lot of good potential.
Side note, any idea of what to do with a john deere lawn mower attachment? It’s a leaf attachment, I am now the proud owner of it for a whopping $1 (my mantra is you never loose money on a dollar bid) but on the flip side, I’ve got no idea how to get rid of this thing quickly other than FB, which has been throttling my listings I think, but thats mostly a conspiracy theory than anything else (I know we hate those. )
Amazon has been kicking ass this week- several $50 books, and my total sales have gone up about $500 in the last week. Thats with starting to send in books once a week about 3 weeks ago. It’s a very small time money machine, I just have to keep doing it.
Numbers for this week:
Items in Store 620
Items Sold: 7 – 5 Ebay, 2 Ebay
Total Sales: $115
COGS $4.50
Total Profit $110 minus fees
Average profit $15
Average sales price $16
Highest Priced Item: $20, lot of 30 otherwise worthless porcelain dolls (pulled all the good stuff for ebay already. $3 total investment for 45 dolls)
New Listings: 119
Lots of new listings this week, but about 77 of them were ephemera and some costume jewelry rings I bought for cheap, so I feel like the number of listings is deceiving.
Interested to see how everyone else’s sales went- it feels like every platform was slow for me this week. I didn’t even really have watchers to send offers to. 2 or 3 a day instead of 6 or 7.
Thanks team. Yeah, this was a partylite candle holder. LOL. Def not Belleek. I think I’ll try asking ebay, and then ignore it and add her to my block bidders list.
Also adding, this was a 4 x 4 ” item, so I guess it could be big for a votive, but I don’t know what size would fit in it if it wasn’t a votive. Also, this was before I was taking photos while holding the item, so I didn’t do a great example of showing scale, but I think they think they bought something different?
@mprw77 I totally agree: re auctions. I think thats the hardest thing about the pandemic for me. I LOVE auctions. I go twice a month to one about 20 minutes from me. They have free food, everyone is so nice, and it’s so much fun. I happened to see the auctioneer a few days ago because I’m sending something to auction that I can’t sell on Ebay, and it really bummed me out. He’s still having in person auctions, but I just can’t risk it. It’s not even like I don’t have the option for in person- it still happens every week, but I personally can’t go.
I’ve been really thinking about the podcast title this week. In all since Saturday, I’ve talked to my girlfriend, mom, therapist, and 2 FB meetups. That’s it. I feel like I’m in a bubble, but on the flip side I thought today if I’d rather pick up a 9 to 5 again and almost immediately pushed that thought out. I hate working for other people, I’m really happy doing what I do, and I’m seeing progress, but I wish I hadn’t taken the time to go full time during the plague. I’d love to be able to go list at a cafe and spend more time with friends, but the risk factor is super high for me. I recognize I’m being overly cautious, but I’d rather be cautious now and get out of it with the people I love. Rambling now, sorry.
Thanks Jay. I feel like I’m getting really well set up, just waiting for the sales to start in.
Re: Pirateship, I use it for all of my shipping that doesn’t get an Ebay label. Basically it’s just a discount service, kind of like GoodRX for perscriptions. Your main point of contact is still the post office.
