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Jay and Ryanne, thanks for the shout out! very hard lessons for us for sure. It’s really good to be back. I hope our initial failure helps steer someone away from doing the same things we did the first time around. It seemed like such a good idea at the time but boy were we wrong. Run your business like a business, not always fun but necessary for success.
Totally Agree Julie B, during our dark days we had the ACA ( obamacare ) health insurance and both of us needed dental work done which it didn’t cover. In Mississippi you can’t even get the expanded medicare because our state voted no on it and the only dental plans you could get covered children under 18 only. We didn’t know what to do until a neighbor told us about the family medical center in our town that had free dental care for people under a certain income.
We also had a pet that needed medical attention and none of the vets around us would take payments so we had to treat the poor baby ourselves the best we could with medicine we were able to get from friends. Luckily he survived the ordeal but yeah that can be a huge expense.
Home repair was for me not too bad since I am pretty handy with a hammer, plunger, paint brush and used to be an electrician a long time ago. I just had to buy the parts and do the work myself. Not everyone can do that stuff though.
our family helped us with some car repair and that was huge, I don’t know how we would have made it if not for family and friends.
It was not an experience I would ever want to go through again.
Thanks Jay, I will give updates as we progress, starting over nearly from scratch, we have 178 items listed. For this month we have already passed our goals. I was shooting for a 9% sell through rate at 16.00 and hoping for 278.00 in gross sales but have already hit 11% @ 16.82 for a total of 370.00 in gross sales not including shipping. Not bad for a first month back in the saddle.
Specific questions:
–how did you go from $3400/month in expenses to $1600/month? Was it debt repayment? Or are you in a smaller house?
–What kind of things are you buying and selling now? How have you learned not to buy and sell low cost junk?Ok almost all of it was unsecured loans and credit cards to the tune of 1300.00 a month in unsecured debt. Once that stuff went to collections each one started writing us offering lower and lower amounts to pay them off. So we would wait till they reached a certain level like 1/3 or less than the original amount and take the deal. We did that one card at a time until they were all gone. I could not believe it.
Next we got rid of AT&T and combined our cable, telephone and internet all on Xfinity for 100.00 less than what we were paying before.
No we still have the same house, we have been here for 25 years and our house note is only 300.00 per month. We are probably going to move though, at some point to a nicer house 🙂
Deidre’s job pays for medical,dental,vision and that saves us 100.00 a month on medical insurance.
The last bit was embarrassing but it was food, we lowered our food cost by not eating out and cooking our own food. We went from 800.00 a month on food to 500.00 per month which includes 1 day of eating out each week.
We only buy clothing now, it’s what we know and it’s what we can get for cheap and sell at a good profit. I guess it’s our niche, lol. We stopped buying junk by looking everything up BEFORE purchasing on ebay SOLDS and by inspecting EVERYTHING for holes, stains, etc. So much money wasted in the past on stained clothing or clothing that had no resell value.
hard to say without being an expert model train’s but there always seem to be some little easter eggs let out in almost all collectable items and the prices for those catches are usually demand driven. There may not be a single sale on ebay but the expert knows the demand price. Will he or she sell it on ebay? perhaps or perhaps not, they may have it listed on a specialty board or even have a brick and mortar, who knows.
We don’t track our numbers on a weekly basis, I don’t know how accurate that can be really, I think you need more time to really get a true reading. We track monthly. I wouldn’t get too depressed if your sales for a single week are down. Take a look at your average over a month, 6 months or even a whole year to really see your stores heartbeat.
Having said that we had a good week overall but I would have been just as happy if we had not because I know we will reach our STR goal by the end of the month which we are currently holding at a STR of .07% @ 17.00 APS.
With 2 weeks left to go I have no doubt we will meet or exceed our STR goal of .09% and maintain or exceed our current APS.
Wishing everyone great sales !
TonyOur normal payout is $1 to $2 per item, we will go up to $4 on a few things but they have to be a high dollar item to go that high. Our method definitely would not work for everyone because some places things cost so much more. We are lucky we live somewhere where the things we sell are super cheap. It will be easy and cheap for us to reach 3000 items but for some people out there that is an unreal target.
MyCottage, yes unfortunately it doesn’t work like that and no that is not how we are projecting future income, It’s a lot more complicated than that. We thought that it was when we started and that is what was so depressing. You have to know several things about your business to project your future income and I suspect you already know 🙂
Sorry for the late response, the reason we failed the first time around was pretty much like I said, we didn’t know our numbers and more importantly we didn’t even know what that meant ” knowing our numbers ” so the whole endeavor was doomed from the start.
Jay, I have heard you say know your numbers for what seems like forever but it never really sank in and I don’t know why. I heard you say that over and over but I was so caught up in learning brands and what vintage items were worth looking for and how ebay worked that I guess I just let that part go by.
We were on track to do well and if you want to know what we will be doing differently it’s really easy. The last time around we got to 1000 listings and stopped because that is how many free listings we could have at our store level. We never once thought it would take more than that to have a great business but again we didn’t know our numbers.
We didn’t know anything about our stores financial health, I mean seriously we had no idea what you were even talking about when you said know your numbers, I mean it was a great catch phrase but we didn’t know what it meant.
It wasn’t until I was watching a youtube video one day when this guy, I don’t remember who, was talking about his numbers and he went over in depth how he arrived at his numbers, that it really hit me and it was for me a AHA! moment.
I took what he was showing me and ran my old stores numbers through it and saw where we went wrong. With what we are selling, at the average price sold and our sell through rate it would have taking us 3000 listings to become viable and that is where I am headed this time around.
We don’t have to change anything except DON’T STOP LISTING. It was really as simple as that and I feel pretty stupid now looking back that I couldn’t see that then but I’m not that smart and it has taken me this long to fully understand.
Other than that, don’t buy junk, don’t buy stained or broken merchandise, keep buying cost low. Unfortunately for me I am alone on this now, my wife went back to work. It’s all on me, Challenge Accepted. I will succeed this time, it’s not even a question, I mean I know it for fact. The question is only how long will it take me alone to reach 3000 listing? 🙂
I have wanted this since I first started listening to you guys back in 2013 so I am more motivated than I have ever been to run this business like a business, no excuses, get it done. I have a work schedule now and I have a minimum amount of listings I must do each work day ( 5 days a week ) before I can call it a day.
When I reach 500 listing I will give you an update on how consistent my numbers are. Right now my average sold price is 16.00 and my sell through rate for the store per month is .09%. I look for that rate to increase slightly with the influx of new higher quality merchandise.
Well that is my story and I know it was a bit long but this has been a 5 year journey for me and now it’s time to get back to work, thanks for reading.
I hope so, if I get any takers i will let you know. I hope you will talk about any success or failure you have with this on your next podcast. You guys have such a huge inventory I think your experience with this feature will be a much better test than anything derived from our small inventory.
Thanks Ryanne !
Tony@retiredtreasures719 Yes I have been getting those nearly everyday and your right it is very annoying. I also would like to know how to opt out.
Oh yeah i forgot to mention, for Mark The Shark, when you are listing on the mobile app your now getting a question at the end where ebay ask if you want them to auto lower your price on the item if it doesn’t sell after a set amount of time. If your not careful you can click yes on that if your not paying close attention.
great podcast as always!
I’m saving up for a flying car with my ebay money 🙂
Paypal is in a total panic, I got that email from paypal too. Not sure what becomes of paypal after ebay, I think it could be a boost for platforms like bonanza if paypal starts promoting them. Weird zone ahead, grab your hardhats.
Thanks to everyone that has contributed on this subject, very informative. I know my formula was missing components but the reason I did that was to try to make it very simple for someone who knows absolutely nothing about business or accounting to get a ball park idea of what is possible no matter what level of NET or sell through your seeing from your sales. Like Jay said in the beginning, it’s a Big Picture explanation. The hope here is that this will inspire someone who may have thought this life wasn’t possible to push forward.
I used to think this wasn’t possible where I live because of the lack of great items. The truth is this life is possible no matter where you live as long as you have the drive to do it.
Motivation is a powerful tool, if you have it you can accomplish almost anything.
