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I cut out carbs except veggies/nuts, Walked consistently, don’t snack/graze, and restrict my eating window to a few hours each day.
It’s generous of you to take a return. I would have told him that he has a software issue he needs to figure out and good luck. No way I’d give a return in this case.
It would definitely be nice if vacation mode would override all handling times to your designated return time AND properly communicate the expected shipping date to the customer at checkout.
eBay is TERRIBLE at communication to customers. This is where Etsy, poshmark, and Mercari and owning ebay. I bought something on Mercari recently and I was shocked at how much better the communication to me, the novice buyer, was.
What an awesome story! I’m happy to hear you are able to work towards being financially independent!
I fell victim to the recession back in 2009/2010 and lost my job. Bigger contractors moved into the territory my employer worked and started taking bids from us. I was low man on the totem pole. We had a small child and my wife was pregnant. Using the aid programs available to us (unemployment pay, WIC, health insurance for pregnant women/children, Food stamps,etc) I was able to maintain everything I had worked for until I got a new job 6 months later. I’m VERY thankful those programs exist. In the end I got a new job that paid DOUBLE what my old job paid.
Items in Store 1506
Items Sold 27
Total Sales $728.00
COGS $90.00
Total Profit $638.00
Average profit $23.63
Average sales price $26.96
New Listings 38Ah well it was a good run! I made over $1k in gross sales per week for 11 weeks straight. I haven’t listed anything this month and it caught up with me finally. I started to get back on the wagon yesterday with plenty of listings and immediately sold a rock band drum kit I listed.
I mixed it up a bit yesterday and did some retail arbitrage at TJ Maxx. There are some hidden gems there if you go through the clearance racks. Yes COGS are higher than thrifting, but I like to have a mix of new stuff in my store as well.I’m going to try and buckle down with some serious listing this week.
In other news, another cool benefit of having a large ebay inventory is that when I lose weight I can shop in my own store! I threw out 2 more trash bags of big guy clothes this weekend, including ALL of my shorts. I knew I had a tub of Ralph Lauren shorts to list this spring so I hit it up. I was able to pull out a couple pair of size 38 shorts that fit right now, and a pile of size 36 shorts that I can technically wedge myself into but will fit perfectly in about a month. I never thought I’d be wearing size 36 pants ever again in my life, yet here I am.
The “print labels and ship” button on the overview page was broken for me – it was showing the old shipping page. I messaged ebay for business and they pointed me to the orders tab and “awaiting shipment page. That one was correct. I informed them which link was broke and it is now fixed this morning.
So if it still isn’t working for you just go through the orders tab and you’ll get the correct shipping page.
Yes, you ABSOLUTELY want the number pad. If you sell clothing you will be inputting ALOT of numbers. I also manage all my spreadsheets on laptop.
The only reason you wouldn’t want a larger laptop is if you will leave it docked the majority of the time. In that case you’ll be using external monitor, keyboard, and mouse anyways.
Buy with confidence. Get one with a SSD drive in it so you don’t really have to worry about a hard drive going bad. They also run faster with an SSD.
Do you have paid leave saved up from work? If you are looking to quit anyways, maybe you could take 1-2 weeks off and be “full time” during that time on your ebay business to get a feel for it.
If you don’t have paid time off, you could request a leave of absence or figure out a way to use FMLA.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmlaA used one! Laptops for everyday use (non-gaming) have not really improved in 10 years.
All of my computers at home are from 2010-2011. They all run the latest operating systems and do everything I need them to.I recommend a business class laptop (like an HP elite or a Dell) with a metal case from early 2010’s with at least 16gb ram and an I5 or I7 processor and the full size keyboard with number pad.
They can be had on ebay for less than $300 with windows 10 on them and I guarantee they’ll be better than any budget plastic piece of junk you can get at Best Buy.My travel deduction was the miles + $900 in hotel costs this year.
I source a couple hours each day in a metropolitan area on these trips.
The purpose of the trip is 100% business based – I get better inventory when I go to metro areas for a few days.
So basically mornings are spent working and evenings are spent with family.
Bringing the family and going to the zoo and staying at a fun hotel is just a perk.What I do not deduct is a true vacation. Let’s say we go to the beach for a week. That is a personal vacation. If I make a trip to scavenge on the vacation I can claim the miles for that specific trip, but I cannot claim the whole vacation just because I did a bit of scavenging. My wife doesn’t understand this one at all – she tells me I should claim our
whole vacation no matter how many times I tell her I can’t.Another example would be if I went to go make a business purchase that happened to be at the beach and decided to stay for a week since I’m already there. I could deduct the mileage and expense of the trip there and let’s say a single night of the lodging since that would be required before heading back. The rest of the lodging nights would not be deductible.
What it boils down to is what I said before – read the code and then read LOTS of CPA interpretations of the rules to get a good grasp. Then figure out how to properly apply what you learned to your own business. Then document thoroughly so you can justify your actions if you are audited. When in doubt, ask yourself this: “Can I reasonably explain this to the IRS if they ask?”
Vehicle expenses, Scavenging weekend trips, Home office deduction, etc.
When you are a sole proprieter with a home based business, pretty mnuch EVERYTHING I spend money on becomes deductible in some way.
Some examples:
I had just over $5k in mileage deductions this year.
The home office deduction lets me deduct a percentage of all of my home expenses. That adds up huge.
This year I added a door to an exterior wall in my ebay space – deductible.
The scavenging weekend trips are a joint business trip/family mini getaway. I come back with a car full of inventory and we also get to have a bunch of fun as a family.
It’s all 100% legit. Taxes is a game – the more you understand the rules, the better you are at playing.If I made substantially more, I could even pay my kids a salary as employees. I have 5 kids so I could tax shelter up to $60k a year directly into their own college funds and/or IRA accounts. I say “could” because I would have a hard time ethically justifying that in my situation. I likely would not do it unless I was actually paying them by having them do real work.Having said that, LOTS of folks totally “pay” their kids up to the standard deduction so it is tax sheltered profit. That’s probably one of the most abused tax laws because the kids can “gift” the money right back to the parent, tax free!
Had a fun one this weekend.
Buyer asked me to measure the cuff width on a pair of jeans priced at $30. I got the measurement for him, he said thanks, then made an offer. His offer was…$12. I declined and he sent a new offer of $17. I declined again and he sent a message that said “Do you want to make a counteroffer and we can negotiate from there? Might be a good idea”.I replied “I would have been happy to if your offers were worth countering.”
He responded “That’s fair” and then made a reasonable offer. I countered and he accepted. I did check his feedback left for others before I accepted his offer.
Sometimes things work out for the best.
Items in Store 1495
Items Sold 33
Total Sales $1,042.00
COGS $107.00
Total Profit $935.00
Average profit $28.33
Average sales price $31.58
New Listings 0I finished my taxes this weekend. It feels good to get that out of the way early. It also feels good to already have plenty of money in the bank, all bills/credit cards fully paid off, AND have vacation paid for in advance. It’s been quite a few years since I was in this position going into tax refund time! I also have the 5th child tax credit this year. Cha-ching!!!
Last year I reported earnings of 0 for my ebay business. The year before that I posted a slight loss. This year I went whole hog – I showed an income of approximately $2500. I’m sure I could have scrounged together $2500 more in deductions…but no need to get too greedy!
Troy’s point of having to get a real job to qualify for financing really highlights the double edged sword of business deductions. Troy I believe it is possible that the bank could even call your loan if you technically didn’t have the qualifying income to support said loan, even if you can technically afford it. That is scary!
In other business, I still have alot of home projects taking up time. I’ve been hitting it pretty hard in the ebay space prior to 2 weeks ago, so it isn’t a bad thing that I stepped back for a few weeks. Thankfully my store has kept on performing at a high level in spite of my lack of listing activity.
Back during glitchapalooza at the beginning of 4Q last year I posted on here about how my impressions had dropped 30%. I didn’t get many responses then.
Eventually I recovered and my store is performing at an all time high.You are still listing at a high rate and I have the impression that you “pre research” your purchases much like I do so you aren’t likely listing dead inventory.
So back to the impression drop – did it tail off over some time or just drop off like a cliff? That would be valuable data to inform if your business is just not doing as well or if something is wrong on ebay’s end. For me the drop was a definite cliff – in September they dropped like a rock on a specific day and stayed down for about 6 weeks.
