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04/18/2018 at 7:46 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Maria & Ryan from Passport Vintage Austin, TX #37891
They had discs at Costco this year? I was under the impression that turbotax was exclusively online download this year. No retailers in my area had the disc this year – not even Walmart.
04/17/2018 at 3:31 pm in reply to: New Tax law and it's effects on your business (Politics free please!) #37864Any time corporations want to screw their employees, they use this corporate speak phrase:
“In an effort to align with industry standards….”That is code for “we’re screwing you”.
Sounds like legistators are going to do the same thing.
There has been a national sales tax issue being kicked around for a while and I had a conversation with Senator Joe Manchin about the national sales tax bill a few years back. I explained how unfairly cumbersome collecting sales tax for every single state would be to independent small time sales people such as ebay sellers. His response in a nutshell: everybody needs to pay their fair share – tough luck.
Look at it this way – they could have filed an INAD case and you would have paid 2x shipping. This way you kept your money, your feedback score is unaffected, and that neutral will eventually fall off. All things considered this is a win.
Respond to the feedback stating that buyer never contacted you and you strive for 100% customer satisfaction.
04/17/2018 at 8:51 am in reply to: New Tax law and it's effects on your business (Politics free please!) #37836Thanks for the sharing your numbers. I’m sorry that you are paying more in taxes. Hopefully your state leadership can figure out some form of solution to help people in your situation.
04/16/2018 at 3:33 pm in reply to: Hit the wall… 132 items listed and a ridiculous pile unlisted… #37787It came time to put up or shut up, and you put up. Good for you! Remember to keep your receipts for the rack and tubs. That’s tax deductible if you have your business set up and registered.
04/16/2018 at 3:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Maria & Ryan from Passport Vintage Austin, TX #37785Items in Store 953
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $339.25
COGS $51.00
Total Profit $288.25
Average profit $22.17
Average sales price $26.10I got some listing done early in the week. Good thing too, because this weekend was all taxes and baseball. Every year TurboTax does a nice discount the last month of tax season, so I like to wait and get a good deal. This season they didn’t do a deal. Boo on them!
Saturday it was 87 degrees and between 3 kids I was coaching or watching baseball from 9am to 5:30 pm. What a beautiful perfect day it was! Today it is snowing…. Season changes are rough around these parts.
Anyways, sales stunk this week. I have taxes behind me and hopefully good weather approaching. Time to hit listing hard.
Buy yourself a large enclosed trailer. at 8′ wide, you could put racks along the walls and back. It will hold ALOT of inventory and is completely portable.
I paid $1900 for a v nose 14′ enclosed trailer. I’m very happy with it.
I use everlance.
http://www.everlance.comIt’s not perfect, but it is convenient and easy. If you can remember to consistently turn the app on and off at the beginning of every trip, it will be much more accurate. I just leave it in auto mode, which is not as accurate. Battery life effect isn’t too bad either.
Still, automatic mileage tracking on my phone that I can go weeks without even thinking about? Awesome!
Categorizing trips is easy too – just swipe left or right.04/10/2018 at 9:53 am in reply to: What advice or guidelines do you have for using the best offer option? #37485If you get a lot of half-price offers really fast on an item, those are the flippers/dealers looking to buy your item and sell it at twice the price (or more).
Multiple half price offers within the first day means you should just wait the item out just like you did.04/10/2018 at 8:44 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37482If a former President can claim his used underwear (Clinton), then you can absolutely take the deductions you are legally entitled to as well. It doesn’t matter where you live.
I never put “smoke/pet free home” on any of my listings.
I’ve sold items I’ve noticed a smell at the “too late” point of packing and went ahead and shipped the item. To date I have never had a complaint or return due to smells.I specifically remember a pair of tennis shoes that I totally missed the smoke smell on when I bought and listed them, but it hit me like a wall when I was going to pack them. I shipped it and hoped for the best. Got a glowing feedback 2 days later.
You’re totally getting that item back in a INAD. Lol!
On the flipside of this, I purchased a timeshare vacation week a few years back and the seller attempted to charge me sales tax. I pointed out the law to him and asked him for evidence for why he was collecting sales tax from me when it was not required. He gave me a BS excuse about it being an error and quickly updated the invoice. Pretty nice way to score an extra 8% on sales there since most people wouldn’t know the law enough to complain.
04/09/2018 at 3:32 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37428Please start a thread on your experience with this. I’m curious how you get the info to them. I’m assuming you take all the photos and load them online somewhere and they list from the photos. How about weight? Shipping info?
04/09/2018 at 11:18 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37408I really want to hire someone to help with listing. My wife is not on board – she thinks the person will learn everything and then start their own business. I’ve tried explaining that she shouldn’t overestimate the short-sightedness of the average worker, but to no avail.
I have time to spend on it but truth be told, I’ve gotten lazy. When I should be listing I’m playing a dumb game on my phone. My work space is a mess and I’m in the process of organizing. I did a lot of cleaning/organizing this weekend. I’ve said it multiple times on here, but I really need the weather to fully turn to spring. Poor weather is such a motivation killer for me. While many folks on here list heavily in the winter, I am a summer lister. Last year once spring hit my listings went through the roof as well as my sales. Winter weather just drains me of all motivation and energy.
04/09/2018 at 10:54 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37404Items in Store 933
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $515.50
COGS $60.25
Total Profit $455.25
Average profit $26.78
Average sales price $30.32Hi, my name is Retro and I have a buying problem. Lol! I just felt really overwhelmed this week because I spent more than I wanted to. We took an impromptu trip to Columbus over Easter weekend. When we do these weekend trips I always make it a scavengenging weekened so I can deduct the mileage and hotel. The combination of monthly ebay invoice paying out, the hotel costs, a couple hundred in inventory purchases, plus slow sales really puts me in uncomfortable waters. To make matters worse, the local Kmart went out of business this week. I stopped by in their last three days and was surprised to find some very, very good clothing deals. Kmart started (inexplicably) selling high end clothing in the last year. When they first started doing it I joked to my wife and said “I can’t wait to buy all this stuff when they go out of business”. Well… that day came this past Friday for real. I spent $250 and could have easily spent ALOT more. We’re talking NWT Spyder shorts for $3, and designer jeans for $4. If I would have went in unrestrained and without a huge backlog, I could have easily spent $1k there. Normally I would have been fine with it, but my ebay paypal account has been cash poor this week so I had several hundred roll over to my personal checking account. I don’t like doing that – I always keep things separate.
The second part of my problem is that I’m reaching critical mass for unlisted inventory. To be honest, I thought I would get let go at work when they had their bloody Monday a couple months back. I thought I would be full time ebay right now and that large unlisted inventory would have been AWESOME – it is my safety net after all. Now I’m on track to a promotion at work in the near future and I have even less time due to kids activities…but…I just… keep… buying…
Yes, I’m aware that it is a stress relieving experience for me. Buying is FUN! I very much need to stop thrift store scavenging for a while. So I’m making a proclamation that I will not thrift store scavenge for the rest of this month.On the listing front, I started to get back on the wagon this weekend. I created 70 listings and got photos done for 15 of them. This week I will list over 50 items.
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