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I find it shocking that they caught him in 2015 and allowed it to go on for 2 years? They could have added postage due from the get go and stopped it. I suppose they just wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself, which I find disturbing. Letting a heroin dealer or a child abuser go on for 2 years to gather additional evidence… There is no perfect solution, but this certainly can’t be it.
Imagine if this guy would have put all that effort into a legitimate endeavor? He was creative and relatively smart. He could have made so much more money by being legit. I worked with guys like this. Always looking for a way to scam the analytics. I saw plenty of companies go under once they got caught.
I see people do stupid garbage like this all the time to save a buck. Expired coupons, whining or lying to managers at restaurants, etc. So much effort. People would rather buck the system than succeed within it. Disgusting. I really hope he doesn’t get prison, but he gets taught a very harsh lesson here financially.
I also find it odd that the mail was all presorted without a scan. I guess I just expected the barcode to be the end-all when sorting. That explains how so many packages were delivered without scans this last holiday season. Our local carrier is great. The people working the counter at our post office are awful…whining about the size of labels, saying their scanner doesn’t work(when it does) etc
Items in Store 2503
Items Sold 57
Gross Sales $2642
Net Sales $1698
Average sales price $46.35(Shipping included)
Did not scavenge anything, but got a bunch of pressure washers, paint sprayers, etc back from the repair ship. Total repair bill was $345. Should get about $1100 from the sale of those items. They would have otherwise been trash, so I am happy with that return.
The subscription changes are pretty great. This will save us $150/month right now, and $250/month if we get back to pre-covid listing levels. With 2500 listings, we were paying the 10 cents/listing over 1000 as it still made sense over going Anchor. With these changes, we will not have to pay those overages anymore. Nice big win. Seems to me the slight FVF increase will be taking a few extra pennies from all the casual sellers and rewarding the sellers with a store. Makes sense. So many sellers refuse to list more because they don’t want a subscription, while those of us paying for stores got stuck with listing fees.
We may take you up on trying the Guatemalan, but I’d have to insist it gets shipped 1st class–still a lot more fresh than our Folgers morning blend!
Log your activity for 2 weeks and tweak from there? I’m personally way too lazy to do that, but many many great business people say it.
Wear headphones so you don’t hear the distractions. Fall in love with listing because it is your peaceful music time. SILENCE YOUR PHONE and keep it away from you. Anything can wait an hour or two. Check it at a set time–perhaps 12 and 2.
I almost make it a contest to see how fast I can list because I do not enjoy it. Generally I get 20-25 done per hour.
It is perfectly fine to take breaks and get distracted sometimes. Just make sure you are fully optimizing the time you do spend. Do it now, Do it now, Do it now. If you start a task, finish it before you do anything else. Otherwise it turns into just another in the long line of unfinished work. Don’t open your mail, email, social if you don’t have time to deal with it all right away. Don’t even start on social media until after you’ve put in your necessary hours. For me–2 hours at the warehouse and 1 hour listing is plenty to progress quickly because I work as efficiently as possible. My goal is to work more, but I really have a hard time spending more than 3 hours per day at the warehouse cleaning, sorting, photographing. Right now I am reading this at 10am before I shower and go to the shop–and I have a hard end time of 2pm every day. But I promise when I work, I will work hard to make up for the wasted time.
Just make sure you make a little progress each day and the results will compound over time.
2/21/21 – 2/27/21
Total items in store: 2518
Items sold: 39
Gross eBay sales: $1810
Net eBay sales: $1120
Highest price sold: $145—Greenworks 60v battery/charger
Lowest price sold: $7.17 — NFL Lanyard
We did OK locally. almost identical to the eBay sales, but far fewer transactions.
We went to another auction. I had a lot of items researched and had plans to spend a lot, but too many people bid close to ebay prices. A bose system I bid up to $300 before I let it go. Coolest score is a 1961 Supro Dual Tone guitar. It is definitely worn, but I got it for $100 and should have no trouble getting 5x that.
I can’t think of anything other than Disney when I hear “Mainstreet USA.” My daughter listens to a singalong ALL THE TIME when we drive and I just about know the disc by heart.
That being said, we are also trying to be part of the club! We had the city inspector take a look at the property we plan to use for our new warehouse. The hiccup being that we want to use the light industrial space and hold a monthly weekend sale. The inspector wants to have the city electrical, water, and fire inspectors to also come through and establish a max occupancy for the building. Fortunately we have plenty of exits and the sprinkler system was 100% tested just a few months ago. The main warehouse space is 10k sq ft with about 2k in office area as well as 2 indoor loading docks. Sounds promising, but you never know when that many city employees get involved. I am nervous because we are scavengers at the end of the day, and it is scary to think about huge improvements to meet their requirements.
When we listened to the podcast today, my wife and I were talking about how we’ve only heard it get heated 2 or 3 times over the years. I remember 1 episode in particular where you commented about editing it out. I suppose you’re working side by side less now than you have been, so the podcast is almost your weekly team meetings…with a large audience. It’s actually refreshing to hear. My wife and I work together every day, and we discuss the same type of things often. Life, personal, and business all become entangled at times. I used to have a hard time keeping business stress(former business) from spilling into marriage stress, but I’ve learned a lot and am now generally very good at it. Being results orientated helps.
That patch store is mighty impressive. I think I’d need employees listing those things–I can list 50-100 items in a day, but I couldn’t do that 6 days a week. That store has 6637 sold patches…unreal. Stamp shipping is key for sure.
Highest priced patch I ever sold was a boy scouts patch. Sold within a couple hours for about $160. I found it while listing a scrap book(still haven’t sold that book after a year)
LOL I like the eeyore reference! I forget who it was, but I listen to a guy who calls them ducks. They just swim around in circles and QUAAACK QUAAACK QUAAACK all day. Just like to wallow in their misery
Total Items In Store: 2437
Items Sold: 41
Gross Sales: $1091 Net:$649Highest Price Sold: $158 shower head
Average Price Sold: $26.60Money Spent on New Inventory: $110
FB sales: 4 Gross: $600
I was inspired by the recent auction activity to attend one of our own–so that’s what we did for our Valentine’s weekend. Only spent $110, but did pretty well. Best/worst haul was 80+ teacups and saucers for $50 because nobody wanted them. Have a lot of junk, some look decent. I’ve sold a good amount of these in the past. If we avg $10/cup, that’s a healthy profit. I may take the lazy route and not even research, just list them all at a couple set rates based on country of origin. Researching is definitely my least favorite part.
It has been below zero here with wind chills around 35 below. Our warehouse is not heated save a few torpedo heaters, so we are going to list the auction haul at home and only go to the warehouse for shipping or larger FB sales. Saturday its supposed to be about 30 degrees warmer, so next week will be better.
We approach the week much like you. We have a basic plan, but allow flexibility. Combining trips or cancelling planned trips to focus on something more efficient makes a ton of sense to me. That is definitely how you can get more done. You’re right–most of the time you can’t get it all done anyways, so focus on doing what makes the most sense or $. Getting up every day and getting to it is the key. It can be a challenge, but it is so rewarding to set your own schedule and live on your own terms.
I tried to post, but I got this:
Error: Are you sure you wanted to do that?And now I am rethinking that post!
Congrats on 500–we listen every week while going for a drive. Your podcast started me on a lot more than just an eBay journey. It got me to fall in love with Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Rose, Dan Pena, and more recently Gary V. Same messages at the end of the day, but I feel like I hear something a little more every time I listen to them. Changed my life–and it all started with selling remote controls from work that I had been throwing in the garbage. I was looking for someone I could relate to who would talk about the way I wanted to run ebay and you opened my eyes to a bunch of old junk that people still buy. I love the teamwork. I do purchasing, shipping, customer service, facebook, and advertising. Erika does all the cleaning, photography, and organizing. We share in the listing. I hate the research, so she lists the weird stuff I don’t want to figure out. I list faster, she lists better.
eBay sales have been steadily declining for me(40% this week), which I know is because of the local focus–making a brand per Gary V.
Gross sales $994
Net $516
We did just over $5000 in gross on facebook marketplace.
Net is tricky there because of how we purchase, but it was very good.
eBay sales netted $984.98 with 47 total items sold.
We didn’t list much of anything as we were focused on our home improvement warehouse sale. We had a nasty snowstorm on the 3rd and final day, but our daily gross totals were $5539, $5017, and $1530. On top of that, we did just under $3500 in local sales from marketplace. It is difficult to pin actual profit, but it was awesome to see the plan starting to come to fruition. Everyone there was excited and the landlord association seems like they will become frequent visitors going forward. I imagine it is just like seeing your online coffee sales exploding before you actually get the storefront opened…just validation that it does work and will only get better.
We bought another semi load this week and found an 8×12 storage shed kit in it. Not a lot of fun to unload, but it will be fun to sell!
I haven’t experienced anything bad with Godaddy. I mostly use it as a convenient place to record expenses and mileage. I am sure it is a waste of money, but it did make taxes really quick with 7 different 1099s to deal with.
Retro-that really goes against everything taught by guys like Jim Rohn. If the company finds itself in trouble in the future, they need not look any further than treatment and retention of employees. Sure is nice having scavenging there, so you can feel confident speaking your mind. I had a similar situation when I was 21–promotion and responsibility without a raise. I did not have anything else at the time, so I stuck around for a while and resented the place before I eventually quit. Hopefully they make it right for you, but if they don’t just add the improvement you headed up into your resume!
Thanks for the link Simon! I was wondering the exact same thing. Got a couple 1099s, but waiting on eBay yet.
I am surprised you haven’t been looking at the Performance tab a lot longer! I don’t remember when it first popped in, but I want to say that I’ve been using it since switching to managed payments in July? I really like looking at that stuff. It isn’t perfect, but it is a great quick tool. Your selling costs are impressive! Mine range from 26-40% depending on the week. It’s so weird how eBay rolls out different things to different users all the time. I guess Facebook is the same. My interface looks completely different than my wifes. I can search through my listings, which was a very much needed feature, but she cannot and is stuck searching marketplace for her listings.
We are getting ready for this weekend when we have our first open warehouse sale since Dec 10th. It is expected to snow all weekend and I’m expecting at least 5 times more customers than last time. I’m nervous about handling that many people and overall inventory may not be good for future reputation. The last couple loads were heavy on grills and toilets, so the variety just isn’t there this time. All we can do is our best and improve every single event.
When the smoking in bars/restaurants ban came into play, I was basically against if because I value the freedom even though I never smoked. Now I really enjoy going out and not getting a headache from the person next to me.
Julie B-yes I watched a bit of RR’s stuff. I still look at the totals from his sales, but I really never got into the hour long unboxing videos that most youtubers like to do. That’s why I gravitated here instead. I actually purchased 3 pallets of toys from him last year and he mentioned it in a video so I felt like a star LOL. His August sale was something like $70k gross sales in 9 days, which is amazing but his avg item price was something like $4 if I remember correctly. I really don’t have interest in that, but I did get the warehouse sale idea completely from him. I am just choosing to use it for less higher dollar transactions. Avg transaction was about $90 at our last sale.
We are definitely having fun. The loads I purchase are really a set price item. They did go up about $500 since Jan 1, but the quality also improved quite a bit so no complaints.
Simplicio-Expanding and dealing with current for sure. It will cost 1 truckload per month to cover the lease, but we are fully capable of doing 6 additional trucks by ourselves. Limited strictly by square footage right now. We waste a lot of effort moving inventory to make room and also have a bit that we have never sorted or listed because they’re large and we never have the floor space. Shower surrounds and doors in particular. Lots of interest, but I literally do not sell them because I need room to inspect. It feels foolish. We list all the smaller long tail on eBay, but seem to sell enough that we have adequate storage in that section. I am always more motivated to sell larger, longer tail items. I sold a $6700 retail whirlpool tub for $1800 because it gave me enough room for 2 pallets. I would have liked to hold out, but it’s a difficult item to sell and realistically it paid for 50% of the semi.
I know the added space will pay for itself immediately. I just wasn’t sure how much I wanted to throw away at a lease.
Kind of, but not really a store. No thank you on the retail!
First truck purchased was an Amazon truckload for about $9k and it took around 4 months to recoup the money. We have made money on it and still have inventory, but a lot of it is not ideal for shipping and quite honestly I will probably never buy one again. That’s kind of why the warehouse sales came to be.
Lately we have been buying Lowe’s returns, which are under $4000 with freight. The loads are a lot more junk(25%?) and a lot more work, but the cost is low and we have recouped the money much faster through local sales. We do list a decent amount of it on eBay to keep the pipeline flowing. Net profit varies, but avg $4-5k per load. I am working on networking with local landlords, plumbers, etc so I can sell some of it immediately.
The first couple took 5-6 weeks to recoup the investment. It has gotten to be closer to 10 days now. We get a lot of repeat items, so we are able to find a missing part on truck #10 for an item we got on truck #3. I outsource almost all of the repairs so I can focus on listings and sales. The last 3 loads were full of grills and smokers, so we use a couple as parts to repair others. Lots of broken glass light fixtures or dented items that still hold value to people looking for discounts.
We never know the contents, so sometimes they are slam dunks while other times we really have to grind to break even. I think it’s a numbers game. We haven’t actually lost money on a truck yet..just time.
Biggest constraint is space. We have 3k sqft and are likely signing a lease for 10k that can be expanded to 22k if needed. My wife and I can process 2 trucks in a week by ourselves, but we end up moving stuff 5 times just to make room right now.
I very much so enjoyed the last 2 podcasts.
I started out doing it exactly like you two and was really hammering out auctions full of random old stuff. I found many gems over the last couple years, but really get tired of the research for some of the stuff. It’s just a lot more time consuming researching and packaging some of the weird items. When my other business essentially was shut down in March and auctions were also closed, I began looking for different sourcing options. We shifted into purchasing truckloads of customer returned items. It is a ton of work, and costs a lot more, but I don’t have to research. Most of the items I can simply scan a barcode and price them. Our gross sales on Facebook are absolutely crushing our eBay sales at this point. I’ve had 4 warehouse sales that went pretty well without any advertising, so this month we finally started to use social media…and I am nervous it will be too busy! At our last sale we had 20 groups of people show up each day with 15 of them making a purchase. Our facebook group added more than 600 members in the last 3 weeks. If even a fraction of our group members show up, we will have a very hard time keeping up. On top of that, I actually spent a few bucks on fb ads run over a 30 day period. Previously, I’d never advertised more than 2 or 3 days before a sale. I’m excited and terrified.
We have been purchasing 3 semi loads per month, but are moving to a larger warehouse where we will be purchasing 3 per week and hiring an employee. The real goal here ties into last weeks podcast–I want this to be able to almost run itself. I don’t know that would be possible with vintage.
I really have no way of tracking COGS on a weekly basis. This week we sold a hot tub for $1800, but it was part of a semi load from November. Hard to quantify the actual cost when it was just 1 out of hundreds of items. It just feels like a waste of times, so we keep track of cash deposits vs inventory kind of like a bar would.
Some of the cases opened are currently on hold while I hope the items arrive, but some of them were shipped 3-5 weeks ago at this point and will likely be refunded after the grace period. It seems the defects were a majority auto created by ebay due to tracking, not actual opened cases.
I’ve definitely had better experiences selling the type of item you sell, but NFL merch for Christmas presents has been problematic.
Last 30 days:
14 cases closed, 3 open
Examples: 3 ceiling fans, McCoy pottery, lots of small free shipping NFL items
4 closed returns, 2 open
Examples: Cheap “not authentic” adidas jacket, “too big” 36 inch LED wreath returned right after Christmas, workout bar that they decided wouldn’t work for them, magazine article that he thought was the entire magazine, and a ceiling fan that I made a mistake on.
I did make a mistake shipping the wrong barn pulley and had to ship twice. Also sold that ceiling fan that the customer said did not work out of the box. I got that back yesterday and will test it out.
None of the refunds have been terrible, and feedback has been 100% positive in the last 30 days surprisingly.
