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Yeah, I like my job but I hate the hours, and that aspect is only going to get worse.
It’s true and good advice, I will certainly try to keep a foot in the door as a contractor and to keep up my qualifications JIC SHTF. That being said, unless I hit diminishing returns fast under full time, my ebay hourly rate has historically been quite a bit better than my day job, so it probably doesn’t make sense to do a lot of my old job. But I won’t be burning any bridges, for sure.
My wife and I have been talking a lot lately. My not being home enough catalyzed a discussion about quitting my/our jobs, tiny houses, RVing, etc. Inconclusive for now except we agreed that for now, regardless of the ultimate plan, we need to save hard, and that in about 2 years (when our car is paid off, which improves cashflow by $800/mo), it’ll be time for me to quit if ebay is pulling in enough money (even what I make now is close to adequate). She’s a nurse and should be able to work as many shifts as needed to cover any down month we have on ebay. We’d also save around $400/mo in childcare costs which’ll help.
Biggest problem is our large fixed monthly costs, primarily our house. We’re kicking around the idea of downsizing but we like our house, especially our big backyard… plus not convinced that it’ll really save us that much money especially after the transaction costs of buying and selling.
Feels good to have a tenative timeline though.
Honestly I like my eng day job in many ways but the trajectory ahead of me is stark. Many more hours & responsibility for not very much more pay. Already I’m in a quasi-managerial role and it eats a lot of time (50+ hrs/wk).
I loved hearing your manifesto gone through again. I basically agree with all of it, only thing I would add is an injunction to keep working hard on scavenging because what you scavenge is the key factor bar none.
OK sales week this week, nothing special.
Sales: CAD$1045, 8 items, COGS: $125 –> Gross profit: $744
Expenditures: $378 –> Cashflow: $491
Listed: $740, 7 items
Notable sales: smoke detectors $307, air sampler intake thing $200.
Hours: 7, $32/hr after tax02/13/2019 at 8:58 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56912I know you’re right. *sigh*
I hate calling eBay and it’s hard to find the time, being as I don’t want to call them from work but I sorta need my computer in front of me.
I know it’s only some listings and it can’t be TOO bad, because a good 50% of my sales are still to the USA without any difficulties. But I get this issue at least once every couple weeks.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by
simplicio.
02/11/2019 at 10:31 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56810Canadian sellers, are you also having this issue?
-US buyers message me asking if I can ship to the USA.
-I ship absolutely everything to the USA so I reply yes.
-They confirm ebay won’t let them buy.
-I check the listing in browser: ships to USA
-I check the listing in mobile: does not ship to USAThe solution I find is really hacky, I put in US shipping on mobile using UPS or something with some WAG number on shipping. Then I invoice the buyer for the actual cost once they offer.
Honestly this issue bothers me. For every buyer who messages me and is willing to work with me, there must be 5 who can’t be bothered buying if ebay isn’t letting them do so easily. Am I losing these buyers due to this ridiculous issue?
02/11/2019 at 10:21 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56809Listening to the podcast now in a hotel far from home, on a work trip. Yep, inventory costs are a big deal for me. Expenditures for 2018, probably 80% inventory cost, were CAD$21k, so $1700/mo. Kinda forced into it by my time limitations I think.
Incredibly good week for me!
CAD$3911, 16 items. COGS: $1009 –> Gross profit: $2270
Expenditures: $998 –> Cashflow: $2282
Notable sales: I sold some of the actuators I bought last month and was agonizing over. 48 of them sold for $1440. I bought my entire lot of 168 for $871, so I’m now paid off plus a $390 profit and I’ve got 120 left to sell. Thrilled about that, felt like my butt was hanging out on that buy. Also sold 5 amplifier things for $675, bought those for $52.
Listed: $1285, 13 items
Hours: 8, $184/hr after tax.To the caller with 1 sale in 5 days. Sales are lumpy and 500 items isn’t enough to smooth out the lumpiness. You’re seeing noise and taking it for a signal.
I have a store about the same size as yours (680 listings) and I average 5 sales/week. Run the Poisson distribution and you find, purely by chance, a 4% chance that a week will have either 0 or 1 sales given that average. 4% of 52 weeks in a year is 2 weeks out of the year that this will happen. That is ignoring things going on in the broader world (say, tax time) which make people more or less likely to buy.
Are you making good money on ebay on a timescale of months/years? If so don’t fret about smaller slow periods.
I suspect your call centre person was just trying to give you what you wanted and reacting badly to a confrontation.
The equation is very complicated and very interesting. There are really a huge number of factors and balancing them is damned tricky.
Re auctions, there’s a huge psychological difference between scavenging for almost free, versus having to go up to your full willingness-to-pay. The latter requires a lot more research and can be kind of psychically agonizing. When you get a lot for the amount you decided it would be borderline not worth getting it for, there’s not the same scavenger high (although I find it comes back when the stuff sells).
I wish I had a good rule for when to go with your gut versus trust your calculator but I’ve had big successes and failures both ways. I remember agonizing about some barcode scanners for weeks, buying them for $500 on trust-your-calculator logic, thinking “whoops, that was a mistake,” and then they sold in a few days for like $3000. Then again, I can point to 3 similar piles of junk in my storage that have had zero movement and are tying up huge amounts of capital, that seemed like sure things on paper.
One rule holds true which is, you almost always get better value buying a lot of miscellaneous stuff at auction, than you do buying individual, legible things.
I like lotting stuff up. It is true that you (usually) make more money by splitting lots as much as possible, but the more you split the more time it takes. I find the sweet spot is to lot stuff so that the lots sell for around $100 (provided the item makes sense to lot up at all).
Regarding the painting and the lady who couldn’t pay. Did you try an e-mail money transfer? I personally have not done it but it seems like it could be a good solution in this sort of case.
On electronics, it’s all about risk/reward. You sold that DVD player for $30 risking shipping of what, $15? plus your initial COGS. Not worth it because you don’t stand to gain much. If you get a piece of electronics that sells for $400, you better believe it’s worth taking the risk if it powers on (I wouldn’t risk much COGS on it though – assume it’s broken). Kinda paradoxically Ryanne said “at least it wasn’t a $500 sale”. No! That’s exactly the kind of sale it’s worth taking the risk on. Now, it will be *more disappointing* if it gets returned, but the risk/reward is way better.
Anyway, annother fair to middling week.
Sales: CAD$1026, 8 items
COGS: $144
Gross profit: $716
Expenditures: $248
Cashflow: $611
Hours: 7, $51/hr
Listed: $810, 14 items
Notable sales: rubber lineman’s gloves $280 for 2 pairs.
Purchases: got a fancy projector, some fridge filters, and some timers. Nothing spectacular.01/28/2019 at 2:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 396: Guaranteed Delivery? How is that working? #56023Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I paid $3500 (including the freight) for a whole bunch of lots from an oilfield liquidation.
Expected sale price on all of it is… well, tricky to estimate. $7k at the low end to maybe $30k if some of my gambles were right.
With long tail industrial parts, a very typical situation is you are not sure there’s a market, but IF the market exists you’ll do great. I got a big 4 kV capacitor. If that sells at all it’ll go for a few grand at least and I’m in the black. The devil is in that IF.
Either way I should probably break even later this year on the small stuff, but it’s a lot of capital tied up.
01/28/2019 at 10:48 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 396: Guaranteed Delivery? How is that working? #55996I listed some weird stuff last week. Highlights: lots and lots of bearings, and a big 4 kV capacitor.
My big pick, which cost me $3500… well at this point I am thinking I overpaid. It will take too long to make my money back. There are two items which, if they sell for full price, will cause me to reverse this judgment and become a genius again, so we’ll see. But there’s not enough meat on the bone in my “low-to-average case scenario” (something like 2x).
Actually getting the things was interesting. I paid for freight from a commercial freight company. I’d use them again, partly for convenience (they’re based about 1 km from my storage unit). It cost me about $450 for 3 pallets to be shipped 400 km.
I think I will call them for any quotes to buyers on freight henceforth. Very good experience, the driver was helpful. Offloading is the key logistical problem; you need to make sure they have a lift gate (unless you own a forklift or something). Or the pallets can be opened up and the parts taken out individually, but drivers get cranky if that takes too long.
01/28/2019 at 10:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 396: Guaranteed Delivery? How is that working? #55993Fair to middling week for sales. Got some good stuff though, I think.
Sales: CAD$701, 5 items, COGS: $131 –> Item profit: $459
Expenditures: $193 –> Cashflow: $397
Listed: $3240, 28 items
Hours: 12.5, $19/hr after tax
Notable sales: combustible gas detector $200 from an old lot buy, insulated lineman gloves $142, 2 boxes of specialty 3M tape $140.
Bought: a whole bunch of stereotaxic instruments (basically lab instruments for holding rats while you dissect them). Got them all for about $40, hoping for around $500.I find the best flow these days is:
-Take photos on my phone (not in the ebay app)
-Start a draft and upload to ebay app
-Finish draft on computer01/21/2019 at 3:13 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55528Hi guys, thanks for the podcast.
Yep, calling about bills, absolutely. I had my internet bill cut to 1/5 of what I had been paying after I nagged them about poor quality connection. It’s still terrible service but at least I get what I pay for!
I had a slow week but I didn’t put much time in either.
Sales: CAD$726, 4 items, COGS: $51 –> Gross profit: $558
Expenditures: $558 (mostly shipping my 3 pallets to my town)
Cashflow after tax: -$150
Listed: $0
Scavenging: none apart from waiting for my auction haul to come to me
Notable sales: Calcium electrode $200, bought for $5. Hearing aids $321, bought for $40.I am really itching to list right now. Can’t weight to get my hands on my big buy.
Another good week! Went all in again – I spent about $3k on a big oilfield surplus auction. All sorts of stuff, from welding rods to gas meters to big capacitors. I got a freight quote to ship it to me and it looks like that will cost $270 (not in these numbers). Basically, the auction company requires pickup ASAP and I can’t take time off work. (It’s not that much more than my daily take-home pay anyway – assuming the quote doesn’t increase.)
Hoping I can receive some of this stuff this week so I can get it listed.Sales: CAD$1288, 9 items.
COGS: $64 –> Item profit: $1019
Expenditures: $3186
After-tax cashflow: -$2470
Listed: $140, 5 items
Sold: audio connector thingies $324, emergency lights with expired batteries $320 (this now pays off an auction buy from about 3 months ago + $200 profit). I like this sale because I ALMOST threw these out and I hated looking at them right up till they sold. They took up a lot of room in storage and I was pretty sure nobody wanted them. Ha! -
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