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When I was money poor and time rich (IE, unemployed), I was doing some arcade and pinball repair for a friend. He was paying me quite well to do just routine maintenance on his machines with some minor troubleshooting. The whole time I kept thinking “Why doesn’t he do this himself – it’s not that hard. He’s wasting money!”.
Since then two things happened.
1. I have way more money.
2. I have 4 kids compared to the 1 back then.I’m now time poor and have plenty money.
I now understand why he was paying me to do this work – he was with his family while I was making his games work great so he could later enjoy them with friends and family. He was also helping me out because of my situation. Unfortunately that friend died quite unexpectedly a couple years ago, leaving behind two children and his wife. I constantly think back on the two different perspectives we had that time I was working in his gameroom and how things eventually turned out. It is constantly on my mind as I waste the prime of my life away at a day job away from my family.
So after that tangent, back to my point. Some people realize their time is better spent on more important things than cruising a goodwill for a specific need. They have the money, so they just buy it instantly on ebay and apply that time to more meaningful things.
11/06/2017 at 3:28 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 333: The Illusion of Keeping Up With Everything #25161I’ve kind of went this way with my storage building. I built some awesome wooden shelves and hated them almost immediately. I started using it and realized I could have done it better if I did it slightly different. Eventually I started going with these large metal racks that are $100 and I can assemble in 20 minutes.
This reasoning is exactly why I never want to build my own house. I just know that once we design the “perfect” house and build it, it will no longer be what we want due to everything we learned through the process.
Once I get into it a bit further I’ll probably create a thread here with pics.
Looks like it is fixed now.
I use no auto accept/decline. Negotiating is part of the fun! The more you do it, the better you get.
I rarely get true lowball offers (25% of asking price or less). I don’t consider 50% of asking price to be a low ball in this game. Best guess, half of them end up a sale through negotiation.11/06/2017 at 10:22 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 333: The Illusion of Keeping Up With Everything #25102Total Items in Store: 866
Items Sold: 26
Cost of Items Sold: $149
Total Sales: $920.35
Profit: $771.35
Highest Price Sold: $150 Roscoe Knee Scooter
Average Price Sold: $35.40
Average Profit: $29.67See what not listing does for you? I have not listed in a couple weeks and this week would have been my first ever $1k week if not for a $100 cancelled sale. I was hoping for a big weekend, but it was a dud. Most of my sales were Monday-Thursday.
I’m knee deep in my ebay garage conversion. My ebay room was our den, but that is being converted into a dedicated gameroom. My garage was a dedicated…junk room. It is hard getting rid of stuff but I am forcing the process for the betterment of our sanity.
A couple notes: I found out my garage is 100% uninsulated. I knew the attic wasn’t done but I was hoping the walls were insulated. I plan on renting an insulation blower and insulating all the joist spaces as well as blowing a ton of insulation in the attic. Also, since I have 9’+ ceilings out there I’m going to build some overhead storage so I can place a row of inventory tubs all along the perimeter of the room – that’s ALOT of inventory storage. I’m struggling in trying to determine exactly how I want to set the space up. If anyone has complete garage setups and wouldn’t mind sharing pictures, I’d appreciate it.
11/06/2017 at 8:54 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 333: The Illusion of Keeping Up With Everything #25072And if you call, make sure you get a documented answer. Otherwise you’re likely just getting an opinion.
11/06/2017 at 8:53 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 333: The Illusion of Keeping Up With Everything #25071I’ve also been wondering about the unemployment thing. First thing is, after expenses at tax time my taxable income on my ebay business isn’t very much. How do they determine the weekly pay? I guess I could keep ultra accurate records and account for deductions as they accumulate. If you had an LLC, you could technically just keep the money in the business and not pay yourself during unemployment.
If I truly wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment, that would be crap. Makes me think I should put the business in my wife’s name.Bottom line from my point of view (which amounts to a hill of beans legally) is that my salary job and my business are two separate things and I’m entitled to my unemployment as long as I kept the hours I was working off-limits to my business. IE, only do ebay in evenings and weekends like I do now. In some states, this is the way it actually works from what I have read. By stating you are actively seeking full time employment and are truly available to work anytime, you are good to go. Some states will even encourage you to build your own business while collecting unemployment.
Lol! It is quite a punishment. Hey at least we’re on IE11 now. We were still on IE 10 less than a year ago, I kid you not. There were work related websites that I couldn’t load! My browser crashed regularly. This ain’t a tiny company either – large 100+ year old global company.
Why? Because he got to share his link for his courses. He stands to make a lot of money selling e books and courses from all the clicks. For many of these amazon sellers, being successful on amazon is just a gateway to selling their books and courses.
I loaded up a couple carts during my amazon experiment. The clearance aisles have largely dried up around here though. I couldn’t do RA even if I wanted to on amazon. I keep my eye out, but the pickings are slim.
Unfortunately I can’t update on my work computer. We’re forced to use IE11. I’ll check the phone version out though. I haven’t tried it in a long time.
Another option is playing a game or doing a puzzle. Sudoku is a great puzzle for clearing your mind.
When it comes to games, I prefer to stick to ones that take 5 minutes or less. The marathon RPG games or games you can play for hours on end without an evident stopping point IMO are unhealthy. They will increase stress!
Arcade games and pinballs are great stress relievers. They were literally designed to be played for an average of 2-3 minutes per credit. While you may not have these machines in your house, there is an emulator called MAME where you can play them on your computer. You can even buy real arcade controls to plug into your PC. If you live near a big city, most of them now have multiple BarCades in them that have tons of games on free play.
Ah, ok I see what you’re getting at here. Without context in a general term, I’m naturally an optimist. I always try to find the positive, no matter how small, in any setback placed before me.
Since I’m an engineer by trade, I like fixing things. I look for tangible ways I can improve a situation. Doing something physical or completing a difficult mental task always helps me work through something that is mentally bothering me. I have to complete the task though, or else I just increase the stress. Don’t just idly work at something. Set maintainable short term tasks and work it through. Even 5 minute tasks make a mountain of a difference in stress levels. Lastly, lay out your issue in full and in complete honesty to someone you trust. If you don’t have someone you trust, then a therapist like Jay mentions is great. There is this grand misconception that going to a therapist means there is something wrong with you, or that you should only go if there is something wrong with you. NO!!! Like Jay says, a therapist can literally be that person that will just listen to you and you can trust them to not rat you out to someone else. They’ll also give their honest feedback on what you can consider doing.I do best offer. I love getting offers. How I respond to an offer changes with my mood, the age of the item, the activity on the item, and how bad I want a sale among other things.
Sometimes I think it is annoying to get a really lowball offer, and sometimes I think it is hilarious.
Bottom line, the offer system is kind of like a game to me.
As a buyer, I hate the auto accept/decline. It is so impersonal. I’ll make an offer or two and then either write the person or just move on to someone else’s item. I can tell you that many folks have lost out on my business because they had auto accept/decline turned on. I can also tell you that I’ve had many great sales with folks who started with a really low offer. I think some of them are just testing to see if I have auto decline turned on. I remember one item in particular – it was a $100 item. I got an offer for like $5-10. Instead of declining I countered at $90 and they accepted and paid immediately. If I had auto decline I would not have had that great sale.
You just have to learn from experience to separate yourself from the business. When you run the whole show, it is difficult to set that boundary. For practice, next time you have a grumpy buyer, just take a deep breath and tell yourself to respond like you are the employee/representative of a business. Do no respond as yourself.
The more you do it, the easier it gets. I documented my bait/switch experience here.
1. Educate yourself on the rules.
2. Most of the time, the customer is honest and likely has a legitimate complaint. Assume they are being honest unless proven otherwise.
3. Treat the customer the way you would like to be treated if you were in their shoes.
4. Make a plan of attack and stick to it. Take logical steps to rectify the issue then follow the plan. Make sure you have designated the amount of effort you are willing to put in to fight an issue.
5. Give yourself a jump off point. If you do XY&Z without a resolution you’ll eat the transaction. Once you do steps XY&Z keep your commitment of letting go.The old cliche "I'm being scammed"…but it just may be happening this time
11/02/2017 at 1:42 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24838The main reason I don’t want to do the inventory software right now is that I know I don’t have the time to sit down and figure it out proper. I don’t even have time to list hardly!
If we don’t travel, I’ll make a commitment to trying one of them out over the thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
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