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Hard to beat Amazon MF for books. First, if people want books they go to Amazon by default; second, the listing process is literally less than 15 seconds.
The difficult part of it is pricing/judging rank. I don’t have much confidence as a book scavenger because I always end up with stuff so long tail I doubt it’ll ever sell. But if they’re cheap enough, why not…
I’m trying Inkfrog too. It’s about CAD$190/year, which doesn’t seem too bad. I already like what it allows you to do as far as a listing template; I’m certainly sick of re-typing my postal code for every listing. But main reason I got it is to back up my listings & photos.
Too bad it doesn’t have an app yet. I like to list on the phone.
Had a great Victoria Day long weekend with the kids, just heading back to work now. I’ll be listening in the car.
Had a good week; despite all my crazy spending this month on auction hauls I may just break even in cash terms. I have been listing like mad by my standards.
Sales: CAD$1542, 5 items, COGS: $285 –> item profit: $1005
Expenditures: $952 –> Net cashflow after tax: $77
Notable sales: 10 more medical wall panels for $800, profit will be about $550. Also lineman gloves for $200 (paid $10 and have 3 more pairs), a fancy faucet for $275 (paid $90 though), a Trimble survey controller, broken but still made $70 profit.
Hours: 21.5, $4/hr
Listed: $4620, 36 items –> Replenishment (listed minus sold): $3078That’s right. It’s a moderate amount of data entry but I don’t list that many items so it’s pretty manageable.
Interesting to hear your take on diversification… I have thought about it too but not from the angle of eBay failing or of increasing sales, more from the point of view of “what if I got banned”. I don’t think I’m in any danger of that, but it does cross my mind as a risk. But it doesn’t fuss me too much, really eBay IS my diversification from my main career.
If the logic of using multiple platforms is “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, then the obvious move to me is NOT to list in multiple places, but simply to archive all your listing information somewhere. Photos, model numbers, descriptions etc., so that if you are no longer able to list on eBay, you just copy/paste to kijiji or whatever. Yes, it’d take some time to restart on another platform, but I think a listing every 5 minutes would be reasonable with all the info already compiled. You’d get back up & running pretty fast at that rate (a few 12-hour listing binges would get you back to 500 listings). Indeed, eBay listings are usually more detailed than kijiji ones so you’d be more than ready.
Have I done this? No, but I really ought to do it soon.
Numbers. Did a lot of acquisition this week, not much for sales.
Sales: CAD$576, 3 items, COGS: $12 –> item profit: $481
Expenditures: $458 –> after tax cashflow: -$90
Listed: $3365, 26 items
Hours: 12.5, -$7/hr
Notable sales: ANOTHER cherry on top from my barcode scanner sale: sold all the batteries for $400. I think that’s the last of it. Man, what a great pick. $3835 from $580 spent ($2800 profit).
Also got $90 for a bunch of old tractor manuals I grabbed for $2 a while back.
Scavenging: a bunch of stuff from auctions last week. A weird oriental themed Roland keyboard, a bunch of laser guides for miter saws, lightbulbs, ac blower motors, papers for a fetal monitor, toner, an exhaust system for a Fort Mustang, a dishwasher control panel.This is why I laugh when I hear how people “curate” their “storefront”. My “store” is an absolute dog’s breakfast and if, God forfend, a normal buyer ever actually looks at it they’ll probably be reduced to gibbering idiocy by the sheer eldritch chaos of it.
Is it definitely lego? It looks a little off. Do the legs stick to normal lego bumps?
Had a fun time last night.
I recently drove 3 hours to pick up an auction haul that turned out to be rather disappointing when I arrived. I bid blind on some boxed kits (PTO shifters, if you care), and when I got them it turned out the kits had been raided for parts. So it looked like I paid $50 for about $100 worth of stuff, hardly worth the drive (had been hoping for $1000+).
The lot came on a pallet with a huge pile of other junk. Random gaskets and screws and rusty old chunks of metal. I threw out quite a bit in a bin at the auction site. Brought the stuff that wasn’t rusty or broken home, figuring I’d look it up just in case but probably take it to the dump.
Well I processed it last night and lo and behold, the random steel brackets I got are commercial semi-truck parts that are long-tail, but should bring $200-400 each. Plus a bunch of other unprepossessing stuff like a rev limiter. So I’ve just listed $2000+ of stuff I didn’t know I was getting, while what I actually bid on will get me just a little better than breakeven.
<jackie_chan_drunken_master.gif>
I still use my Honda Fit, lol. The seats are permanently down in the back and for all intents and purposes I use it like a truck. I have got insane amounts of stuff in it, e.g., a pallet with a coffee machine, huge auction hauls, a glass table and chairs… and I can always tie stuff to the roof.
I have thought of upgrading to a truck (wife wants me to for road safety), but this is such a great commuter car. If I ever needed to rent a truck it’d run me about $100/day which is acceptable compared to the purchase cost, insurance cost, and gas cost of a truck.
Steven – that orange fireplace is exactly what we had in the basement when I was a kid! Did you get anything for it? 🙂
Julie’s answers are super interesting. For myself, I would only add that given a website with low barriers to entry where you can list anything for any amount, you’re inevitably going to see looney prices. It would be more surprising if you didn’t.
I do sometimes run into items that I really can’t test though. My current thinking for them is as follows:
(a) Apply balance of probability: does it look like it ought to work? Was it bought in a context where one would assume it would work? Does it at least power on?
(b) Is it extremely heavy to ship?If it’s worth much more used than for parts, and I think it probably works, and it’s not too heavy, then I list as used. But in condition notes, I write in “untested, full refund if it doesn’t work”. That way the buyer knows that it might not work, in case they had a time-sensitive purpose in mind for the item.
If it’s either too heavy or I think there’s a good chance it doesn’t work, it gets listed for parts.
All of the above is probably unnecessary but might be fun. Just don’t scratch it up trying to wind it.
You can test it with a little ingenuity. The part that hangs down in the 5th photo holds the pendulum. Hang something heavyish from it, put the whole thing right up at the edge of a counter so the pendulum hangs down and swings freely, wind the springs up using the square shafts (you can use pliers if you haven’t got the key), swing the pendulum a little, and see if it keeps ticking and chiming. (The chime hammers don’t have anything to hammer on at present but you could put a salad bowl there or something).
Cool movement.
I used to do this with a local used goods shop. The deal was we’d agree on a base price + 10% commission and I took the items home, then came and paid 30 days after the sale.
I did ok with it and one of my first big sales was on commission. But ultimately, it’s harder to get stuff really cheap and I didn’t like the attention of “so, did that thing sell yet?” I still buy from that store but I just buy stuff outright. It’s mostly cheap enough that the cashflow aspect is minimal anyway.
