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[NC]

Weekly sales 1/23 – 1/29
Total items: 6698
Items sold: 160
New items listed: 350
Gross sales: $1,723.41
Net sales: $1,218.00
New buyers: 120
Repeat buyers: 3

Etsy
Orders: 22
Gross sales: $240.00
Net sales: $204.00

Gross sales total: $1,963.41
Net sales total: $1,422.00

Another solid week. If my numbers stay like this for the year then I think I’m going to make a decent amount more than I was at my old job.

[NC]

Yeah, eBay isn’t offering the standard envelope tracking service in the patch category right now so I have to ship with stamp.

I get a few item not received cases every month and I usually end up having to refund the buyer without getting the patch back but it’s still a lot cheaper than paying for first class tracking at almost $4 and every patch seller ships with stamps so you can’t compete with them and charge the customer for shipping.

[NC]

I create 75 listings every day 5 days a week in less than 4 hours a day. 60 patches and 15 hats. I do a quick search of the patch or hat I’m listing to see if someone else has the same exact item to determine if I need to compete on price, then I go to my store and select a hat or patch to “sell similar” from and then I upload the photos, change the title and price and click save as draft. Then I launch 40 patch listings and 10 hat listings every morning 7 days a week which takes about 5 minutes.

 

If I was selling everything, I’d be doing good to get half as many listings up since I’d have to start most listings from scratch and every item I sold would possibly be a different way I’d have to ship. I have the same size box for all hats and envelopes for patches. I might do just as well selling random stuff in less quantity and just spending time finding higher-priced items and figuring out how to ship them, but niching down was attractive to me since I can set systems up and focus on getting more listings up instead of worrying about finding the next valuable item to list. It was more “fun” back when I was an everything seller since I never knew what I was going to find, but niching down has been more profitable for me and I’m now doing this as my sole income so profitability is more important to me than having fun doing this as a side gig. I also feel like I’m putting less time into it to get more reward so that’s fun in its own sense

[NC]

No problem! I think it comes down to how much value are you adding to your store each day in order to get a percentage of that back in sales consistently. I do low value/high volume and some people spend more time dealing with finding and processing high value/lower volume.

[NC]

Thanks, it shows that what you and Ryanne have said about taking the 40 hours you would give to a company each week and using them to build something for yourself can really pay off.

[NC]

Weekly sales 1/16 – 1/22
Total items 6488
Items sold 179
New items listed 350
Gross sales $1,873.42
Net sales $1,307.00
New buyers 130
Repeat buyers 6

Etsy
Orders 23
Gross sales $235.00
Net sales $199.75

Gross sales total $2,108.42
Net sales total $1,506.75

I’m having a better January than December. Not bad for selling a bunch of hats and patches.

[NC]

Meh, I guess we’ll never know since we aren’t going to give it a shot lol

[NC]

Weekly sales 1/9 – 1/15
Total items 6338
Items sold 143
New items listed 350
Gross sales $1,622.61
Net sales $1,118.73
New buyers 107
Repeat buyers 1

Etsy
Orders 29
Gross sales $320.00
Net sales $272.00

Gross sales total $1,942.61
Net sales total $1,390.73

Sales are up this week and a bit higher than they would have been due to selling a BMW motorcycle jacket for $225. I hope the buyer likes it and doesn’t want to return it. It’s looking like this is going to work out – me doing eBay full time. I can pull orders and list so quickly because I’m just doing patches and hats now and I’ve been getting done in 6-7 hours a day total. I think I’m just going to stay at my current listing level for the year and see where I end up in 12 months since I’m listing 50 a day and only selling about 20 a day. Cashflow will run out if I stay at these numbers indefinitely, but I have faith that sales will go up as my store grows and if I get to where I’m selling 50 and listing 50 every day it’s going to be some crazy money multiplication.

[NC]

Wow, yeah that’s very low especially for something that looks like it’s have to be shipped first class package

[NC]

That’s interesting, I’d think military gear would sell well nowadays with all the preppers and people thinking the world is going to end. I know bullets have skyrocketed in price and the shelves stay emptied.

I was going to go to Mississippi and possibly buy this myself but I decided I don’t want to deal with getting a uhaul truck and all that. I tried to get them to sell me all the patches and challenge coins but they want to sell it all together. Some challenge coins can go for over $100 for a single coin but I’m not sure if they have any of those. It sounds to me like this is more military collectibles than gear.

[NC]

I mean if there is at least 50,000 items like they say, at 50 cents an item you’d gross $25,000. They obviously did a terrible job representing the amount of stuff in the photos. It sounded to me like they’d take less than $10k if you went out there and wanted to buy it. But yeah I know most scavengers don’t want to spend more than a couple hundred on any deal

[NC]

They’re still really common in the states. I saw one the other day that said “if you’re going to ride my ass at least pull my hair”…

[NC]

They said the photos don’t scratch the surface and it’s 50-75,000 items in total. And said they’re willing to hear any offer and just want it gone

[NC]

And with the patches it’s just pulling from a ziploc bag and throwing in an envelope. With hats it’s pulling from a plastic bin and throwing in a box

[NC]

I’m doing this full time now so I start each day pulling and shipping, then get on listing. I am usually done before 10am and start around 7:30-8. I decided to just sell hats and patches going forward so I’ve got very organized inventory systems in place. I run things a lot like popeyespostcards if you listen to his episode

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