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I shall let you know how it goes, I think I’ll try it with my weirder items henceforth. Now if only I could find some new inventory!
Morning all!
So is it just approximately ten years or do you guys have like, an ebay anniversary that you’re keeping track of?
I appreciated the discussion of auctions. Wanted to push back a little on Jay’s logic, with the caveat that I basically do NOT do auctions, these were just some contrarian thoughts that occurred to me at the time of listening.
What does it cost to do auctions using the method discussed? (High BIN price as the starting bid of the auction, and you just go straight to BIN if it doesn’t sell.)
Two costs spring to mind: (1) the logistical headache of keeping track of what needs to be relisted after failing to sell on auction, plus the added headache of auctions as a selling method in themselves. (2) The occasional item that gets lost (i.e., still in inventory but not listed) due to the above logistical complication with relisting. I have a hard time believing the cost of the above (in labour and lost inventory value) is more than $100-200/year.
Do you think the odd bidding war would save you that $100-200? Well, I know of at least 2 items I am confident I severely undersold in 2017. The unrealized profit is about $500 on them. Plus there may be others I undersold, that I am unaware of. (!)
Continuing to play devil’s advocate, recall the Pareto (80/20 rule). About 20% of your inventory makes about 80% of your profit. In my case, for the past year I can point to about 5 sales that accounted for a huge chunk of my profits for the year. I think your price histogram is flatter than mine, but still.
The outlier items that sell for high $ may not be *common*, but they are *important*. We have to give ourselves every chance to catch hold of the occasional, rare, *big* upsides.
Just doing auctions the old fashioned way doesn’t make sense because you lose a lot of bread & butter profit that way. But I like your commenter’s compromise – it makes sense. I may actually do it (only for stuff whose value I have trouble quantifying). *I think it gives you the upside of auctions without very much downside.*
OK, my numbers. Goodness, what a letdown after all the fantasizing above. Sore tempted not to post at all, but that would be sort of dishonest I think, when I’d definitely post if it were a good week.
Sales: CAD$70, 2 items, COGS $10 –> item profit $45
Expenditures: $30 –> after tax cashflow $15
Hours: 4, $4/hr
Listed: 4 items, $425
Notable sales: please kill me
Notable buys: got some cool med supplies (plastic sheets for custom splints) for a total of $20, on paper they’re worth $400 or so but I somehow sense I’ll be bequeathing them to my childrenMorning all! Hope everyone is doing fine on E bay dot com this week.
Very good week for sales, but my scavenging dry spell continues, as I have not found much at all to sell the last couple weeks. Partly I have been working extra at my day job, which cuts into sourcing time. Still, this is pretty pathetic for a growing business.
Sales: CAD$1773, 14 items, COGS $297 –> item profit $1175
Expenditures: $20 –> After tax cashflow $1194
Listed: 1 item, $50 (total listings 305) <– pls publicly shame me for this
Hours: 7.5, hourly rate $159/hr
Notable sales: toner cartridge $20–>$250, shower rough-in valve $90–>$315Now to listen to the podcast!
Personally I believe you should list everything as soon as it’s convenient for you to do so. The longer the hooks are baited and floating in the ocean, the more fish will start biting. One can drive oneself crazy trying to propitiate Cassini; just list.
Morning all. Decent week for me, but I’ve not been scavenging or listing much! I hope to do better this week.
Sales: CAD$1035, 5 items, COGs=$36 –> item profit $825
Expenditures: $138 (includes returns)
After tax cashflow: $542
Hours: 8.5, $64/hr
Listed: 3 items, ~$920Had one refund, which was a high end perfumed body wash new in box, that had exploded inside the box, I guess due to age. Ended up refunding the buyer everything. Kind of annoying, but it’s from a lot that has profited me quite a bit so… meh.
Notable sales: microscope power supply $21–>$275, Dallmeyer camera lens $0–>$500 (from a lot that’s already made me about $1500).
Scavenge of the week: medical height measuring rulers, 8 for $5 each. The nominal price on these on med supply websites is $400 each… I think that may be inflated but I suspect this will be a good buy. Expecting them to move SLOWLY though based on past experience.I found some MCM furniture! 4 chairs designed by on Walter Nugent, apparently a semi-famous Canadian MCM designer. They are pretty beat up but they have cool lines, I’ll see what I can milk them for. They cost me $4 so I overcame my general reluctance to sell furniture. Wouldn’t have bought them if I hadn’t got me a good storage unit.
Nice score! Is it something that makes sense to lot together a little so you don’t have to ship so much? Usually if I get quantity but the individual item is less than $30 I just lot 5-10 together to try and make a $100-150 sale.
Yeah, and the legs could be removed so I shipped them separately. It should’ve worked, it’s my own fault it went wrong as I didn’t have enough thicknesses of cardboard (but lots of bubble wrap).
Great to hear the podcast again! I too am sometimes flabbergasted by how un-agenty people are willing to be over their own lives sometimes.
I had a fairly lame week. The buyer of my awesomecool MCM coffee table started a return due to its getting gouged in transport… really too bad and I should’ve added more cardboard (especially to the top) in retrospect. So we agreed on a $250 partial refund. That item was still profitable but taking the hit this week makes things look bleak. A lot of lower-dollar sales… can’t complain, glad to clear them away, but all the same it’s not that exciting.
Sales: CAD$901, 11 items, COGS $106 –> item profit $644
Expenditures: $356 (includes partial refund above) –> cashflow after tax $251
Listed: 3 items, $440 book value. This means I have been eating the seed corn last week & I better get to sowing in this one.
Notable sales: best sale was a toner, $20 –> $230.Food producers & intermediaries along the supply chain have reasons for what they are doing that may not be readily apparent to an outsider without their localized knowledge. Since they have skin in the game (they paid for the food after all), I trust their actions more than an outsider’s what-if scenarios. Actually I find the abundance they create somewhat miraculous. The fact that there is redundancy built in is a feature not a bug moreover.
Allow some TED talk bluecheck to dictate to our food supply chain in order to eliminate waste and I expect we shall all be eating rats by Q2.
If you could post a picture with the rest of the writing, that’d be helpful. I can see a few letters here but it’s not ringing any bells yet.
BTW, Temudgin is the birth name of Genghis Khan. I suppose, like a food truck, being an invincible warlord from the steppes is another one of those gigs that go well with eBay.
In Canada the seller update includes the news that we are getting seller hub, which I suppose I had assumed we already had.
Haven’t listened to the podcast yet but now is my chance to go over my numbers before the day job starts in earnest, so…
Sales: CAD$846, 8 items, COGS $69 –> item profit $629
Expenditures: $152 –> after tax cashflow $409 (target $525)
Hours: 7, hourly rate $58/hr net
New listings: 10 (324 total)
Notable sales: more floppy disks $320, used neti pot $140 (ebay is magic)Freed up more storage space at home, need to shop for some shelving this week. And I am very keen to find some new inventory as this weekend’s snowstorm prevented me from going out scavenging.
TheHorseTrader is a Texas reseller fairly active on r/Flipping, who does it for a living & specializes in industrial type stuff (but not exclusively). He has a YT channel, if you search his name you’ll find it. Not a ton of videos but lots of good info.
