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Forgot to answer about being full time Yes, I work full time and do this on the side.
I am not sure how much time my lister spends per listing. I would think about 10 min which is about aversge for me. I just made a video for her on how to use the ebay listing templates that I have created which should make it faster for her.
My regular pay is $4 an hour on a contractor basis. I wantto offer more right now to get ready for yhe busy season.
Mike: yes, it would be cheaper to hire soneone, but I dont want to hire anyone right now. I an not sure I could give them consistent work. Plus, when you areworking full time, it is very difficult to find soneone good to hire. My current lister has been listing for me 4.5 years and had done an excellent job. But, if she cant find the tine, I will be forced to get someone else.
Mark S
Jay,
Yes, $5.50 an item is quite generous. However, my lister hasn’t listed since May and I have been doing double time doing that work. I want to motivate her to do some listings. She does do a lot for each item – weigh, measure, photograph, list, tag, etc. If that doesn’t work, then I will have to look to hire someone else.
Also, I have nearly 1000 items in TBL status that I want to get listed. That would mean about $15,000 or more in potential annual income from those items that is just sitting there. If I pay $5,500 to get them listed, then I think that is worth it.
Mark
2018-10-14 – 2018-10-20
Site: US / Feedback 1197 (Red)
Neutral Feedback 2.00
Positive Feedback 446.00
Total Items In Store: 2497.00
Items Sold: 22.00
Total Sales: 652.57
Total Fees 137.22Highest Price Sold: 50.00
Average Price Sold: 29.66
Buyer Shipping $ 237.00
Avg. Daily $ 93.36# Items Listed 56.00
$ Listed 2899.51
ASP $ Listed 51.78Fee % of Gross 21.03
# items being watched 1114.00
# items watch count >= 10 20.00
Avg. Item Hit Count 532.00
Best Offer # 8.00
Best Offer $ 246.56
Best Offer ASP $ 30.82
Money Spent on New Inventor: $86.00Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were ok. Sales have slowed to a crawl since Thursday. I listed more than usual this week. My average hit count has gone up a lot.
My process improvement for the week: I received my new photography equipment this week and got it set up. Awesome! For some reason the new equipment gets me excited to take pictures. I had a setup for smaller items, but this one is for large items. I also found that when I improved my shipping supplies, shipping became fun again also.
Challenge of the week: To motivate my lister, I said I would pay $5.50 for each item listed between now and the end of the year.
What I learned: Two things.
1. Don’t cave into high prices.
This is a good story about not caving in too bad pricing. I went to this estate sale and just wanted some CD’s for myself. I picked 5 CD’s and 4 VHS tapes that I thought I could sell. The lady said they were $20. I said no and turned to walk away. Then the price immediately went to $1 per CD and $.50 per tape. I put back one of the CD’s because it had 3 in it. I ending up paying $6. I think that lady was just throwing out high prices to see what would stick. So, morale of the story is don’t fall for high prices just because they are asking those high prices. Use the best negotiating technique – walk away. They may not come down in price like they did for me, but you won’t overpay.
2. Vetting the estate sales has really paid off for me. I put in time to determine which estate sales to go to and it has been paying off. Sure, you can always find something at most sales, but I am looking for good mega picks that will save me a lot of time. I had a mega pick of high end shoes (Average selling price of $75.88 on 9 pairs of shoes\shoe horn and average buy price of $5.73) this weekend. The funny part of it is below:
This story really struck me as funny. I went to an estate sale where most of the shoes in the walk-in closet were high end mens shoes, but really dusty. That in itself is not uncommon, I see that all the time. But what was funny was that this guy kept all of the original boxes and I found about 30 shoe bags in the closet in the next room! I bought them all because they were Allen Edmonds, Ecco, etc. That just struck me as really funny: he had all these shoe bags and boxes but didn’t use them and let most of his very nice shoes get caked in dust.
Mark S
I didn’t have time to post this earlier, so here it is.
Gut Sales Report for the week: Just like Michigan Football, I feel like my business is now firing on all cylinders – buying, selling, and listing all going well. I needed the sales to pay for what I bought.
My process improvement for the week: I ordered my new photography equipment so that I can take pictures of larger items with a white background.
Scavenge of the week: From Thursday – Saturday of this past week I bought nearly $4000 worth of inventory items. Without a doubt they are some of the best items I have ever picked. I am very excited about these items because they are a piece of sports History from the 1930’s – 1950’s. The majority of these items came from one private estate sale which was a mega pick – 11 items that were $100 items or more. The 11 items have an average sell price of $225. Average buy price was about $27 for each of 11 items, but 1 item inflated that number. And it is not just about the money. Most of the 11 items were antique sports equipment from the 1930’s – 1950’s which I really love.
Challenge of the week: Still to make space in basement and garage. Also, I am working on getting all items in a “To be listed” state instead of “death piles”. I have been good at avoiding death piles in general, but the clothes that need to be hung up have been the exception. My lister is going to be doing most of the hanging clothing, but she hasn’t listed in a while so I haven’t had much motivation to get that done. She is suppose to start back this week.
What I learned: Two things. 1. I love being a generalist and buying anything that makes sense. I went to an estate sale that advertized a ton of vintage and antique. When I got there, those items were mostly gone. Instead, I found a mega pick of Vintage clothes in the bedrooms for next to nothing. 2. Don’t be afraid to go all in. One of the 11 items I bought above, one was marked $150 and that was at the start of the sale. I picked it up and didn’t want to spend $150, but I just had to have it. I asked the guy if he would take $110 and he said $125 was the least he would take. I also had $40 of antique sports equipment and he agreed to $150 for all of it. Below is a picture of that item.
Mark
Doubly,
I think it is a good thing that you are staying at your 9-5 job. You just didn’t have a peace about quitting, so I think you did the right thing. I think you would want to feel good about the move and if that isn’t there, then it wouldn’t feel right. There is something telling you to stay at your job and you listened to that.
I think you will know when it is time and then it will be a moment that you can celebrate.
Mark
T-Satt,
I just bought a Trumpeter suit that sounds identical to mine. Was there anything special about yours or are they really eorth $140? I was going to list it for $100.
Mark S
Items in Store 2467
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $848
Hightest Price: $1000 Vintage WWII uniform)
COGS $80
Average sales price $36.87
Items listed: 34Like Michigan football, I had all cylinders firing this week. Good sales, good listing, and some of the best picks I have ever had!
I went to a family estate sale and picked up 11 items that were antique sports items from the 1930’s – 1950’s. Absolutely amazing items that I will list for an average of $225 each. That is one way to get those $100+ items. I don’t think I have been this excited about items i have bought as I am with these. I will post more later.
From Thursday – Saturday I bought nearly $4000 worth of inventory for about $425. Just amazing items.
Mark S
Items in Store 2451
Items Sold 19
Total Sales $678
Hightest Price: $76.50 (Vintage shoes)
COGS $60.00
Average sales price $35.68It was a good week for sales and for buying.
My sump pump frooze up this week on Tuesday but I didnt realize it because there wereno sales that day and didnt have togodown to the basement. There was very little lost because I learned my lesson from the last time the sump pump stopped. I got nost everything off the floor and most everything is in a plastic container. 2 hanging coats touched the water so just had to wash them. This is whereplastic bags around my hanging clothes helps to protect.
Make sure you are prepared for this because it will happen if you have a sump pump.
Mark S
Thanks Brian, Troy, and ebaymom.
This has been a journey getting to 100k. I hope to get the next 100k in a little over 2 years. We will see how that goes.
Mark S
9/23 – 9/29
Total items: 2469
Items sold: 18
Total Sales: $908.27
Cogs: $85
Highest price sold: $170 (shealing jacket)
Avg sell price $50.46
Items Listed: 12
New Inventory: $30I hit a major milestone this past week. I’m sure many of you have long hit this one, but this is a big deal for me. My store hit $100,000 in Lifetime sales! Whoa who!
The week started very slow, but starting on Wed it felt like the busy season. High dollar items were selling fast. This was such a contast to the rest of Sept. I made over 40% of my sales for Sept in the last 5 days of the month.
I took a friend out scavenging with me this weekend. He is a real estate agent (very good one) and owns 4 Bnb’s. He used to flip houses. He is interested in ebay now. Lots of fun showing him how do do it.
Mark
Oh, I forgot my new format since I haven’t posted my numbers in a few weeks.
Gut Sales Report for the week: Sept. has been a really slow month for me.
My process improvement(s) for the week:
1. Add the custom label to all my listings so that determining COGS is much easier.
2. Cleared my ebay room of a lot of the clutter of misc items (not quite a death pile, but it would become one)
3. More planning of the new basement space to open space for about 1250 new items. (this has been in the works for a while, but everything takes a lot longer when you are a part timer)
4. To get more focused, I have created a spreadsheet that has my work for the day broken down into an estimate of how long it will take (so that I don’t plan too much for the day). This has been great because I am strategic about what tasks should be done it what order. I am trying to fix the issues of the past and yet list items at the same time, so this is challenging.
5. I had 30 listed items in my ebay room. These were from cancelled item, unpaid items, returned items, questions about items, requests for measurements for items. I have been lazy in getting these back to inventory, so I took care of this. This is part of “Challenge of the week” below.
To Do: Order new photography equipment this week.
Scavenge of the week: Bought a new in the box Nike golf cover from a guy who won it at a golf outing. He said he couldn’t use it, so that was my cue to offer a low ball offer that was accepted.
Challenge of the week: Get messes from the past cleaned up as much as possible and put processes in place to prevent them from happening again. This is hard for me as a part timer because some of this is very time consuming. That is why I don’t want to have these things happen again.
Pulse of my business
Things are really starting to click for my business. I am getting my old messes cleaned up and starting to get a lot of items listed. Getting messes cleaned up is very important to me right now. It is hard to feel organized when there is unfinished business that is causing issues. I really feel like my business is about to take off. It will be exciting to see what happens.Mark S
