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Thanks all.
So it looks like I’m stuck at my boring retail job for now at least. I’m planning to put in my two weeks at the beginning of October and be out of there by October 17th.
The $1200 expansion a month is all encompassing of all side hustles. I have a great little apartment which it’s biggest problem is that could only fit 200 items in it max and was limiting to my mental health because I was working at all hours of the night. The 12006yyy includes a hefty amount of inventory up front right now (about $400 a month) while I’m bulking up numbers. The new office can fit 2000+ items, serve as a meeting space for FBM, gives me table space to pack, ship, and package amazon. I knew it would be tight this few months because I didn’t have a real option to do a mid-size grow from 200items to 1000, which is why I’m listing like crazy this month. Storage units are especially sketchy in my neck of the woods and the thought was to make one larger jump instead of smaller jumps.
Thanks for your advice. We’ll catch back up in a couple months.
Total Items in Store: 271
Items sold: Ebay: 8, FB Marketplace: 2, Paypal FB Shipped:1
Gross Sales: 291.83
Highest Price Sold: 67.49 (Set of 3 aluminum pots)
COGS: 5.45
Average Price Sold: 26.53
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: 130
Number of items listed this week: 40Had a few fun sales this week. Sold a lot of dead pens associated with a specific town for $25 with the buyer’s shipping address being the same town. Also sold some sea shells that I considered dead stock for $40 on FBM. I had 4 lots for $15 each that haven’t gotten any hits for months, someone asked me for group pricing for all of them and I said $40 and she took it in a heartbeat. I’m mostly just glad to sell them locally and not ship them. Also sold the stamps that I posted about earlier this week for $25 incl. $3.21 shipping. Going to a collector who’s very excited to put them in her album. Learned how to invoice on paypal for that one.
I established an LLC earlier this summer and have been feeling the growing pains since. Right now the LLC is just covering Ebay, Amazon, FBM, etc, so I didn’t necessarily need to start an LLC, but it was easier to file now while I’m just starting versus transitioning later. I’m looking into getting into expanding in the next few years, so I’d rather do it now than when I get bigger. Turns out, it’s really easy to issue the state of illinois $150 and they’ll call you a business, but theres a lot more paperwork that the bank wants and the IRS wants to open accounts, so that’s what I’ve been working on this week.
Getting less hours at my boring retail job, which worries me. However, if I turn my attention back to books on Amazon, I can make up what I’m missing with the time I’m missing. Amazon doesn’t have nearly as much ROI as ebay does, but it’s like a money printer for me. Put books in, money comes out. I know I’m privileged to not live in an area with any other scanners, so it’s becoming a priority again. I like sending in 140 books a month, and this month I’ve sent in about 60. Theres another 40 in my car which will get sent in by the end of the month, so it’s not my ideal numbers, but I’m okay with them.
Had my first return this week. It was my fault, and I shouldn’t have sent out the item in the first place. It was for a food processor bowl and I noticed the lid was kind of off looking but couldn’t figure out why- turns out it was missing a locking mechanism. Accept and refund. The mechanism is on the lid so I’m going to try to list the bowl again and recoup some $ now that I know what it should look like. I’m not on managed payments yet so I leave $100 in my paypal for returns, so it didn’t really cause any problems.
Numbers are still climbing, I have until October 6th until I’m out of loan money and need to be fully funding the business with it’s own income. If I can just make another $100 a week I’ll be golden. With some effort on Amazon matched with ebay, I should get there.
TLDR: Money’s coming in, things are going okay, and I have another month to make it work. Time to get going!
Thanks Simon! I appreciate it!
I know nothing about them, so it’s fun to learn.
Curious on the test-ability of these guys too. I’m a big fan of listing for parts, not working on things that I’m not able to test or verify their soundness. Will that cut into your bottom line? Are they used?
Update on these-
Had them listed on FB Marketplace for $20 and had someone ask if I’d be willing to ship them, said sure and sent her an invoice via paypal for $25 including shipping. Paid, and will be shipped monday.
Not bad for found stamps
This sounds like Etsy’s version of a VERO claim. You might be out of luck if the company is saying that they are the only ones allowed to sell online.
Sorry 🙁
Thanks Mike!
@Jay, here’s a link to themI don’t have much of a use for them because I don’t mail anything outside of Ebay, where I need tracking. I decided that I’m gonna have a little fun with them. I looked up a good amount of them and it looks like the max any single stamp is going for is around $1.00 with free shipping. However, the idea of parting these out and taking pictures, listing, and inventorying individual stamps literally makes my head hurt.
So, I put them up for auction.
I know, we hate auctions. But here’s my thought – They have a face of $25 bucks, so I started the auction at $15 for a week. If I get one bid on them, I’ll be happy, and if someone else wants to part out the like 100+ stamps they can. If no one bids, then I’ll just list them in my shop for the same price and let them sit until they get sold. If a couple people want them, I might get a little bit closer to face, but these have been more fun than anything else. I didn’t set a buy it now on the weird off chance that multiple people go for them. The auction I bought them from got me 110 listings with a lot of higher dollar items (which means $50+ for me) and I only paid $54 for everything, so I’m already standing to make some good money off the auction in general that I don’t need to put the effort in to parting these out myself.
I think what’s been cooler is it’s the closest thing I’ve been to just finding straight cash in my stuff, so it’s been fun to talk about with friends.
Thanks for all the advice. Learned a lot from this thread!
No worries! They look great on the page. I’ll be in my office tomorrow so I’ll run some off then.
My packages have so many stickers now
1) Repurposed boxes, reduce reuse recycle
2) Thank you for supporting my small business – ebay
and now
3) #SaveTheUSPS
Matched with ebay tape, they’ll be looking pretty exciting on the top, lol
Another question- I’m seeing a lot of listings use the term “world wide”, does this just mean theres all kinds? That’s kind of the vibe I’m getting? Or would mine be like “american wide”? Is that a thing?
Awesome! Thanks @thesilentowl
I’ll have to look and see what all is there. I was remembering most of the people, so I don’t know how much I have of other stuff. I’ll reserve a copy of the Scott guide from the library this week.
Thanks!
Yep, they are government stamps. I’ll post pics tomorrow. From the couple I googled it looks like they are maybe 50c-$1.00 a piece, but I feel like I’d rather take the quick nickel on this one. I only paid $50 for the whole van load (110 listings) so if I can make half of it back in just stamps, thats cool by me
Loved this, but I don’t have a 4×6 thermal. I do have a boat load of 30up labels, so I reformatted it. Haven’t printed these off yet, so they may be a little small when they come out.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pG5J04Y2XiaDlfO7v8M7WM8dUI3vYms1/view?usp=sharing
I’m sure R & J can chime in on this, but I swear I’ve listened to the podcast before and they said you could refund less than the full amount if it wasn’t recieved in the same condition it was shipped in. I think it’s for people that have 30 day free returns though, I may be wrong. Was it a regular return or an “Item Not As Described” (INAD). If it’s an INAD, it might be harder to argue, they are typically a bigger pain than a regular return.
Looking forward to reading other’s responses
