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03/11/2019 at 4:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 402: Can You Build An eBay Business On Repeat Buyers? #58496
I had an ’87 Corolla SR5 Coupe in college in the early 00’s that had the flip up headlights. I know it wasn’t true in reality, but those flip up headlights sure made me FEEL cool.
Best $400 I ever spent.
03/11/2019 at 2:57 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 402: Can You Build An eBay Business On Repeat Buyers? #58482You’re nicer than I am. I just counter – no response necessary.
That provided an incredibly incomplete list in my area.
The best search I have used is to open Google maps on my phone and just search “thrift”. It finds every single one of them – even the tiny church ones – and even has reviews, photos, and operating hours.03/11/2019 at 1:10 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 402: Can You Build An eBay Business On Repeat Buyers? #58470Items in Store 1045
Items Sold 22
Total Sales $580.56
COGS $55.50
Total Profit $525.06
Average profit $23.87
Average sales price $26.39
New Listings 11I had a $100 sale that is not included in my numbers because I don’t think the person will pay. This is a big electronic item with an issue and the buyer has zero feedback. I sent them a message that I will not ship until they confirm they have read the description and understand the issue. I just sent them another message this morning that if I do not hear from them by tomorrow morning I will cancel the order.
That thread last week that had people talking about their sourcing requirements to meet their sales needs really has got me thinking more about better fleshing out my full time plan. My average profit over the last 7 months has been $29.50 (I left off one week that had a $2500 item that would have skewed my numbers.) Based on that average, if I wanted to make $100,000 gross profit after COGS then I would need to sell about 3400 items a year. That means I have to SOURCE at least 3400 items a year just to maintain my store. That is sourcing 66 items a week on average. That is a number I can easily meet with my current sources.
I currently have enough inventory on hand to boost my store up to about 3000 items before I needed to start this scavenging process to maintain. Yes, I have a serious death pile by design. I will not need to source for about 3-4 months if I go full time at 20 items per day listing. I would have no costs during this time and would dedicate 100% of my time to listing and building up my store. I have everything I need.
So once I clear the backlog and settle into a full time groove it comes down to this:
Buy 10 items a day, list 10 items a day, sell 10 items a day, ship 10 items a day. Collect Profit!
A plan even an underpants gnome could get behind!I pre-research all my items and I have a pretty high turnover rate. My store has averaged about 1050 items over the last year and I have sold 900 items in that time frame. My store currently has 338 items that are over 16 months old. Now that they’ve fixed the listing page I’m starting to lower the prices on these items. I’m hesitant to lower too much because I do sell these items for full price, so I’m just bringing the BIN down to be in alignment with the market.
Anyways, have a great week everyone!
03/10/2019 at 8:01 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 401: You Don’t Have To Quit Your Job To Sell On eBay #58390Selling on eBay can be a rollercoaster. Fortunately, it is more of a kiddie rollercoaster than a vertical free fall drop coaster. I can totally relate to feeing down and then the complete apathy that comes when the forum eats a long post.
I suggest you do something this week that sparks your enjoyment of the process again. Change things up!
Honestly my favorite thing to do when I am feeling down about the whole process is list some of my oldest death pile items – the ones I dread the most.
Once I am into the process I start wondering why I was dreading it so much. I start to appreciate these items I had avoided.
Then over the next week those items start to sell! While the listing process acts as the kindling and spark, those sales are like throwing in the thick piece of hard wood onto the bright burning kindling that will burn a long time and keep me warm and invigorated to keep going over the next month of sales recovery.
Good luck!
03/10/2019 at 7:53 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 401: You Don’t Have To Quit Your Job To Sell On eBay #58389“Where did you get that” conversations are why people wear unique clothing.
It is actually incredibly common.03/10/2019 at 7:48 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 401: You Don’t Have To Quit Your Job To Sell On eBay #58388In high school ceramics class, I had made a hand sculpture. An idiot in class broke a finger off of it. The teacher told me to use Elmer’s glue to put it back on. I thought she had went bonkers – there was no way cheap Elmer’s glue was going to work.
Well 20 years later that finger is still on there and has survived a lot of moves.Wow, you have an amazing store!
You seem to have sources that most of us can only dream of. Are you mainly doing consignment?Next question, does Poshmark encourage putting additional items in your photos? That is such a night and day difference from eBay. Putting other things in the photo usually just results in an INAD case because the seller is too dumb to read and realize those items aren’t included.
The tracking uploaded metric is based on 90 days.
The Late shipment metric is based on 365 days.That is why you can be 100% on tracking yet still have late shipments.
Dang,
To think you almost sold the Mini Disc player to the President of the United States. LOL!My parents never went to thrift stores. The stigma was that those stores were for “poor people”. Yeah….we weren’t exactly rich.
Trust me, had I known what I know now I would have vastly preferred to get all my clothes from Goodwill rather than get my new clothes and shoes from K-Mart. It was rough wearing K-mart clothes in the “spellout” era of the early 90’s.The first time I started going into thrifts was in the very early 00’s in college with my girlfriend (now wife) and her mother (They were my OG Scavenger Life guru’s). Maybe it was different in other areas, but here…well…they stunk. Literally. Every thrift store was dark, grungy, and had terrible odors. One I went to near my college literally smelled like poop.
About 10 years ago the thrifts started cleaning up and improving their image. Most chain thrift stores now are very clean, well lit, and organized. They don’t put out clothes with odors at all. Of course, the prices have increased with the quality.
I try to source as much of my familie’s wardrobe as I can from Thrifting. Our wardrobes are definitely greatly improved because of it. My wife even finds it hard to shop at standard stores now, because the clothing selection is so limited and the clothes just feel cheap. I’ve ruined her….muwahahahahaha!
Because it works. Plain & simple. Eventually you will get a seller who caves and falls for it. People are dumber than you give them credit for. 😉
This is an interesting subject!
I’ve been thinking about how I would “feed the beast” if I was full time. I have a large backlog of unlisted inventory that would keep my busy for a couple months. My goal was to have enough inventory on hand that if I was laid off at work I would not have to spend a single penny on inventory for 3 months. I have that secured for sure
But…what about after that? I have a series of thrift stores in my area that I can do a couple runs during the week to shop. One 30 mile circuit East and west can get me 6 thrift stores each way. I also have a thrift store within 10 minutes of my house I could hit every time I run an errand to check for shoes. So those 13 thrift sources I think I could do 75-100 bread n butter items every week at $5 COGS, $25 ASP on average.
In yard sale season, which is April through September, I can do a TON of sourcing. MY COGS on yard sales is MUCH lower than thrifting – somewhere between $1-2. If I took yard sales very seriously and went from 7am-1pm and greatly expanded my radius, I could easily get 100 items every Saturday at $25 ASP or better.
Lastly, I have a ton of Metro areas within a 4 hour drive. Several are about 2.5 hours away. We currently do weekend trips a couple times a year and I source on these trips. My sourcing is limited to 2-4 hours over an entire weekend though because my family is with me. If I took it VERY seriously and went from 8am-9pm I could fill my full size truck no problem. The beauty of scavenging in a metro area is I can stick to low hanging fruit, and I can stick to higher ASP items. I typically stick to $50 ASP or better when I am on these weekends since I have finite space in the van to bring things home with. A lot of these stores go 50% off one Tuesday a month, so if I was full time I could make a day trip of it during the week.
Bottom line, I think I could very easily feed my store 150 items a week just by expanding my current shopping methods.
03/05/2019 at 10:59 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 401: You Don’t Have To Quit Your Job To Sell On eBay #58150I figured out that logging in from different computers or web browsers often results in me needing to log in again. It is annoying, but a good security feature to have.
Ebay does the same thing now when I switch from using the website on phone to pc and back again.
03/05/2019 at 8:08 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 401: You Don’t Have To Quit Your Job To Sell On eBay #58130Ah yes, the age old “My job is not quite annoying enough to quit” thing.
I have a love/hate relationship with my day job. Some days I enjoy what I do. Most days I am annoyed with the bureaucracy and poor management.
Am I well paid for what I do? Yes. Do I want more money? Absolutely!I got a raise in January and I’ll be getting another later this month. I make enough money that it would be a major stretch to replace all of my income/benefits with ebay. If I was making T-satt money I think I could make it work, but I do not have the buy-in from my family that would be required to run that kind of business yet.
A few weeks ago I was reaching a boiling point and had conversations with a friend/former co-worker about doing contract work for his company. I didn’t like what he had to offer and things cooled off at work, so I’m back to my holding pattern for now.
In the mean time, I am in full F-U money mode at work. I do my work and I do it well. At the same time, I am comfortable telling my boss exactly how I feel about anything. He knows that if I left then all of my work would fall to him. He grants me a lot of leeway when it comes to my family. I am allowed to work from home when I need to if my family is sick or my wife needs help due to her pregnancy.
I have have flex time and can start work anywhere from 7-8. My boss has pretty much let me do whatever I want to do since I’ve been here.
I work my 40 hours and I go home and “leave it at work”. I’m not on call I generally do not think about work once I leave for the day.
So the reality ofmy situation is that I have it pretty darn good at work. It is soul sucking, but I couldn’t ask for a better situation for a day job I think. That’s why I’m still here.
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