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You can get a soft roof mount cargo bag at walmart for less than $50. I take one when I go on weekend scavenging trips. Just fold it up and stow away for those “just in case” unexpected honey hole jackpots when you are already full up.
09/17/2018 at 3:59 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48835About a year ago I had a new in box Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story 2 sitting on the top shelf of a tall storage rack in my ebay room. My son spotted it, “assumed” it was for his Birthday, and climbed up there to get it. He ripped up the box and also broke off Buzz’s head.
Oh man….if it would have been near the floor I could have understood…but 8 feet in the air? I typically (wrongly) assume things that high are safe from my kids. Needless to say, I was more than a bit upset. That was going to be one of the stars of my holiday season inventory.
I could write a book on the things that ebay sellers with lots of children have to contend with that childless sellers do not.
09/17/2018 at 12:02 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48806Items in Store 1128
Items Sold 29
Total Sales $976.05
COGS $86.10
Total Profit $889.95
Average profit $28.71
Average sales price $31.49Ughhh!!! I was soooo close to breaking the $1000 threshold this week. I had a crappy weekend of sales which kept me from it. I do have a trend of three consecutive weeks selling over $900, which is very awesome! My listing fell off toward the end of the week due to other commitments. I also had to do some cleaning/organizing of my ebay space that took some of my listing time from me.
We are supposed to be at the beach this week, but the hurricane ruined our plans. I was able to get all my money back, so yay for that. The good news is that we were able to score a free vacation from my brother in law to Williamsburg VA. Free resort condo for 5 nights for free? That’s the scavenger way.
This week I have a bunch of stuff ready for photos so hopefully we can get a bunch of stuff listed and keep banging on the $1000 door.
I suppose I disagree with your value of the weekly numbers. Weekly numbers let me see the trends in my sales and listings. I also like the aspect of taking time every Monday to go back through all my sales and reflect on the week.
You really want a P&L report from everyone? BORING! I’ll give you mine for the entire year. My Final P&L for last year was $0. Yep, right on the money, 0 dollars. I was shocked when that number spit out and had to verify everything in case something was wrong with the software or numbers.
That is not a real number though as you well know. As a small business owner, I expense a lot of things that I was going to be doing or buying anyways. I have my house whether I have an ebay business or not. I have a car either way. I combine a lot of trips for efficiency, so I drive anyway. We took weekend trips throughout the year before ebay, and now we still take those trips but I source a lot when we are on them.
This business isn’t just a job, it’s basically melded into my everyday life – thus making a majority of my existing life tax deductible. By just reporting on my gross sales and listings, you get a more true vision of how my business is improving and growing (or shrinking if I go on a months long listing break).
One last thing, I value the input of folks here who post their numbers much more than those that do not. I encourage you to report numbers each week. It’s fun and informative.
On the one I recently had reversed, I still have an INAD defect though. I haven’t called to try and get it removed, but you may keep this in mind if you get a lot of false INAD’s.
So were you getting charged listing fees for all of these listings? That’s the first question that popped into my mind when this was discussed on the podcast.
And yeah, Magic for Humans is great. The invisible man thing was awesome.
Per my post above, I totally related to that one kid who popped the marshmallow in his mouth with a big smile as soon as the person left the room. Smart kid – he’ll go far in life. Lol!
You say that, but time is relative when you are staring at that treat for 30 minutes. Especially when you don’t know you’ll be waiting 30 minutes or more. I bet that 30 minutes feels like hours.
I would have totally failed this test.
My logic: So you’re telling me I can have this one cookie now and go about my business, or I could stare at this one for an indetermined amount of time in hopes of getting a second one? Nope! I’ll take the guarantee and be on my way. Of course, I was the “poor” kid they expected to fail who constantly had promises broken by my parents. Gotta take the guaranteed reward when it is presented because it might disappear and the final better reward probably ain’t happening anyways.
Interestingly enough, another researcher alterted this test to take preconceived expectations of the child into consideration in 2012:
A 2012 study at the University of Rochester (with a smaller N= 28) altered the experiment by dividing children into two groups: one group was given a broken promise before the marshmallow test was conducted (the unreliable tester group), and the second group had a fulfilled promise before their marshmallow test (the reliable tester group). The reliable tester group waited up to four times longer (12 min) than the unreliable tester group for the second marshmallow to appear.[11][12] The authors argue that this calls into question the original interpretation of self-control as the critical factor in children’s performance, since self-control should predict ability to wait, not strategic waiting when it makes sense. Prior to the Marshmallow Studies at Stanford, Walter Mischel had shown that the child’s belief that the promised delayed rewards would actually be delivered is an important determinant of the choice to delay, but his later experiments did not take this factor into account or control for individual variation in beliefs about reliability when reporting correlations with life successes.[13][14][15][16]
+1 for the full refund with humble apology.
Occasionally I have to do this for shoes. You just have to accept that occasionally things you sell are fine when you are simply handling to list/ship but in real world use they just don’t hold up. The good news is that these issues are few and far between.
I’ve been on 3 day handling for several years. It allows me the freedom to only ship twice a week if I am busy. If I let an item go over a weekend I’ll occasionally get a message asking for shipping update. I simply remind them I have 3 business day handling due to my busy schedule and they are happy.
Remember – only a portion of your buyers will see the full 5 day handling time.
If this is what your business needs to succeed then go for it!Items in Store 1147
Items Sold 25
Total Sales $917.00
COGS $255.00
Total Profit $662.00
Average profit $26.48
Average sales price $36.68This week is a story of letting things sit even when I know they will sell quick. I bought an Arlo security camera set a while back for $200. After researching it and realizing the batteries were going to get expensive I decided I would sell it instead….then I set it aside/buried it in unlisted inventory for a year.
So I happened upon it again on Saturday and committed to listing it all for sale. I broke the lot up and sold the cameras individually and the base unit individually. EVERYTHING sold within 24 hours and I made $290 on the sales, so I’ll be net positive on the effort after fees.
I have countless items in my unlisted inventory just like this that I know will sell quickly. Why didn’t I just list it immediately? I think the answer simply lies in the fact that I am a very busy man with too much on my plate. I’m trying to do better with prioritizing listing the items that I know will recoup investment quickly. This week I have 4 Canon AE-1 camera bundles to test/list that have been sitting a long time. Those will be very lucrative sales.
At the beginning of summer I my listed inventory had whittled down to almost 800 items and my sales had slowed down due to lack of listing for several months. Now that summer is over I am up to around 1150 listings and my sales have noticeably increased. I need to keep the pedal to the metal. I need to keep listing the high dollar, quick sale items so I can keep cashflow high.
Anyways, have a great week everyone. Fall is here so lets all sell a bunch of stuff!
Can you give an example of one of these pieces as to how you identified it?
I find it very fascinating that the origin can be identified on something like this with no markings at all. To my very untrained eye its just a bunch of run of the mill pots.
No doubt! I’ve listed things I felt was a sure thing that haven’t sold years later. Others I listed doubting it would ever sell and it sells within a day.
Items in Store 1127
Items Sold 29
Total Sales $918.50
COGS $80.35
Total Profit $838.15
Average profit $27.94
Average sales price $30.62Long out of town weekend and jury duty this week so my numbers are late. I love when I do my numbers and realize my week was much better than it felt. Weeks like this I feel like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka – I want it all and I want it now! Even though I sold almost 30 items and flirted with $1k, I’m not satisfied. I want more!
It was nice to be extra busy with shipping.
Anways, we went out of town to celebrate my wife’s Birthday over the weekend. It is a “working” weekend as I source the whole time as well. This was definitely the most I have sourced on one of our weekend getaways. I filled the back of the van and a cargo bag on the roof!
The goodwills were all having a big labor day sale with not one, but TWO clothing tag colors at 99 cents. I spent…a bit of money on inventory. I spent $553.54 on 195 items. My average COGS was $2.84. The clothing I bought was 99 cents an item, with a few things thrown in that were full price of $4 each. Almost all of my shoes were $4 each, with the exception of a few specialty pairs I bought that were $10-15 each. I got two brand new pair of Mephisto womens shoes, and two pair of womens Prada Shoes. I had to race a fellow reseller to get those items as the doors opened as they were 50% off. I had scoped them out the night before.
This was all bought during 5 shopping trips of around an hour each – I work very fast and high quality inventory is quite plentiful at these locations. It’s like this is my own private honey hole! I am actually quite picky on these trips and still buy a ton. Usually on these weekend trips I set the goal that any item I buy has to sell for $50 or more. With the dual 99 cent tag sale though, I decided to load up on clothing that will sell for $25+.
Now that yard sales are wrapping up and I did this huge weekend buy, I think I’m going to shut down sourcing for a month. I need to maximize cash flow since we have a vacation coming up in just over a week.
The things ebay pays for: Itself, car payments, weekend sourcing getaways throughtout year, vacations, and occasionally the house payment.
My goal is to have ebay covering the house payment consistently every month by the end of the year. To do this I plan to list approximately 1000 items from now until year end. This should bring my standing inventory into the ballpark of 1500 by year end assuming I’m selling 25 items a week on average.I LOATHE the new photo system. Why won’t they show the entire picture??? How do I know which ones need adjusted or cropped if I can only see a small center chunk of each picture???
They killed important function so it “has a prettier layout” screw tbat, we need more functionality in the app not a prettier layout.
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