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12/31/2018 at 8:04 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54201
Geoff, my apologies, I read your original comment too fast & misread it as being primarily about this new years thread. Regarding whether to track shipping supply expenses and mileage, my answer would be yes, absolutely – mainly because they’re tax deductions! 🙂
12/30/2018 at 11:37 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54192Geoff, I’m not primarily thinking of eg shipping supplies, but rather our main costs e.g. COGS and COGUS (cost of goods unsold). For folks with employees or major storage expenses (I know a guy pays $600/mo for storage) that would be relevant too.
Personally I think COGS as a bare minimum is critical. I could make a million dollars this year but if my COGS is a million too, I’m not getting far. (Seems like some amazon sellers work on this model.)
Another way would be to report net profit. One way or another you gotta get to net to compare apples to apples.
12/30/2018 at 3:22 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54165I get quite a bit of new boxed stuff from auctions. Often the boxes are utilitarian so if there’s a few scuffs it’s no big deal.
I am starting to sour on the idea of sending these in to amazon. When I cross post to Amazon MF 80% of my sales still come from ebay best offers anyway.
12/30/2018 at 3:17 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54163I reckon Expenditures are worth reporting too. Sounds good!
12/30/2018 at 3:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54160I have been toying with the idea of restarting Amazon this year. Counterpoint: when I sold a shower base on Amazon they gave me $50 to ship it when the real shipping cost is $250. I had to cancel.
12/30/2018 at 2:30 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54155@T-Satt I think there was talk a while back about doing a yearly numbers thread, are you still planning that?
12/30/2018 at 2:28 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #54153Listened to half the cast so far, good to hear you guys talk!
I had another really good week.
Sales: CAD$1382, 7 items
COGS: $523 –> Item profit: $617
Expenditures: $144 (mostly refund on defective item)
–> After-tax cashflow: $835
Hours: 5, $168/hr
Listed: $0 (Ouch! Only eating the seed corn this week.)
Notable sales: Mosquito trap $211–> $750.
No scavenging! Boy, I got the itch though!Wow, those are remarkable numbers!
Happy Christmas all!
Another great week.
Sales: CAD$2064, 12 items, $172/item
COGS: $350 –> Item profit: $1377
Expenditures: $423 –> After-tax cashflow: $946
Listed: $900, 3 listings
Hours: 4
Notable sales: Trimble rugged computer $100 –> $700, sold to Spain. Discharge lamps $25 –> $330, sold to China.
Scavenging: not too much, but I did buy some more shelving for my storage unit and set it up with my bro in law. Things are quiet for the holidays and I doubt I’ll be buying much, but we’ll see. Big auction coming up in mid January so I’m trying to save a good wad for that.I got a kick out of this e n t r e p r e n e u r
Cool, thanks for sharing. I noticed the $0-20 column is out of place though. Still, definitely tells the story of a volume seller!
Even in your analysis though, I see you had only about 20 or so sales over $100 (out of what, 1000 sales?) and yet those 2% of high dollar sales made up a good ~20% of gross dollars.
Probably – I’ve been selling 2 years so there’s not a ton of data.
Not really making any changes that I wasn’t planning already, I just thought it was a cool illustration of Pareto in real life.
12/20/2018 at 7:18 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 390: Building a Business to Build a Life #53807I don’t have death piles because I buy so few items, but I can see how they arise. You buy a lot of stuff, then find some of the marginal things are not worth your time to list relative to other things you could be doing at that moment. If this is why they happen, fair enough – though one hopes that a time will come (yearly?) when it IS worth your time to list them because the oppo cost is lower (i.e., you aren’t finding as much stuff).
I’m not sure if I like the idea of death piles as a rainy day savings account though, at least as a primary motivation for them. Selling something earlier rather than later is never bad (just put the money into an actual savings account). Long tail inventory takes time to list, then LOTS of time to find the right buyer. It’s super extremely illiquid. Listing gets you off the critical path so that at least the buyers can bite whenever they happen to find your listing.
12/17/2018 at 9:02 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 390: Building a Business to Build a Life #53494Copper theft is just depressing to me. People wandering into substations and electrocuting themselves for what, $6/kg?
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