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Hey Jay,
Sorry for the delay. Had a response typed a few days ago, but it disappeared when I submitted it.
We’re still looking at amazon as a semi-stable income stream. I still prefer ebay, but having a solid base income is really attractive (necessary).
– Most of the $10mil+ sellers that I spoke (and that were willing to share) with are looking at around 10% net profit. It seems that as expected, the higher your gross sales, the lower margins you’ve got to be willing to accept to get there. I talked to sellers in the $1mil range that were still netting 20-25%ish.
– I haven’t really done much with QBO yet. I’m still working to finalize our 2019 tax figures for our accountant, which is proving to be a bit of a pain trying to get tax docs from our former employers after having no contact for 6+ months, and moving twice.
I’ve heard that QBO can work really well with bank and credit cards, as well as with amazon payouts. My accountant has advised me that there will be a few manual entries needed regarding our paypal payouts, mainly around currency exchange. The majority of our sales occur in USD, but get converted to CAD in our bank accounts. Wouldn’t be a problem if you deal in one currency only though. I’ll report back once I really get into using it.
Meant to come post an update last week, but we were in Florida for the week, and busy.
As of March first, it has officially been one year since I had a “real” job. I’m sure somewhere in this diatribe/thread, I’ve said it already, but thanks to Jay, Ryanne, their podcast, and the whole SL community. I’m confident that we wouldn’t be as far along in our lifestyle/mindset/work journey as we are without you all. THANK YOU.
Updates:
– We’re in the process of switching accountants. With the switch to a corporate structure, and so much of our income coming from amazon, we’re switching to someone that’s more specialized in ecommerce, amazon, and currency exchanges (Canada/US). I still have to finish our 2019 numbers and get them to our personal accountant to get our returns done, and then I’ll work on setting up all of the new corporate accounting. We’ve signed up for QuickBooks Online at the recommendation of a number of other Canadian sellers (and of our new accountant). Hoping it streamlines my bookkeeping processes from excel spreadsheets…
– Ebay stores are currently at 1,950 & 1,296 listings.
– We’re started testing the waters on Etsy with a few vintage/type items. Just crossposting stuff that we’re already putting on ebay.
– We’ve recently made a connection with someone that dumpster dives as a hobby. We had them fill two big boxes for us, and we’ve just started listing everything in the last few days. It’s absolutely INSANE how much completely perfect stuff is going into dumpsters at some of the big box stores. 90% of it is new with tags, and in perfect shape. Clothing, pet stuff, decor, shoes, etc. We’re paying $2/item, and covering shipping costs from them to us. The first batch cost us $400 total (shipping included), and we anticipate we’ll net at least $3,000 after fees/etc (likely more). Some of it will take a while to sell, but keeping it out of the landfills, supporting someone’s dumpster diving hobby, and making money on it all seems like a win/win/win. They’re in the process of packing up two more boxes for us now.
– Last week’s trip to Florida revolved around spending three days networking with other online sellers (primarily amazon focused). It was a VERY informal meetup of about 150 people. Drinks by the pool, suppers together, and talking shop. Met some incredibly smart sellers, and tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible. I talked to ten or fifteen that had gross annual sales of eight figures in 2019. Not something that we aspire to, but interesting to hear of their journeys, processes, and procedures. Made some great connections, a few of which may spin off into business opportunities in the future.
I constantly have either a podcast playing or something on Netflix while I’m working.
Scavenger life, 99% invisible, Timesuck, Dark Poutine, Casefile, e-commerce momentum, freakonomics, planet money, pure hustle podcast, generation why, the indicator, up first… That’s about 1/3 of my subscriptions…haha
Thanks everyone for sharing. I’ll check some of the others here out!
Thanks scott2. That’s been the plan all along. Slow, consistent growth and income. Not looking to set any records or win any awards, just pay the bills.
As for debt, we’re in a good spot, just excited to be free and clear a few years from now.
Yeah, I’ve been pretty picky about our replenishable items. I definitely focus on stuff that is either completely new to amazon (but not the public), or that just doesn’t sell fast enough for the “big” sellers to care about. Most of our listings we’re either the only seller, the only seller via FBA, or in some cases, competing with three or four other fba sellers. Prices stay pretty stable, and once we’ve established what price an item should/will sell for, we hold firm there. If someone comes in below us, we hold our ground and wait for them to sell out and the price to come back up. Most times, it does.
I manually reprice the majority of our inventory. I have no interest in selling stuff at or below break even.
With that said, I do use a repricer for the used books (textbooks/etc) that I’m selling on amazon though. Margins are way higher on them, so competing for the “buy box” isn’t as painful.
Thanks Troy. We’re pretty pleased with how everything has gone. We’re happy to finally be settled somewhere long-term, and to be able to really focus on growing the business and eliminating the remainder of our debt.
I’ve grown our inventory slowly and strategically. We’ve got around 120 skus that we keep in stock at all times. Some sell once a month, some sell five or six per day.
I wouldn’t say that the sales are unlimited, but we could certainly offer a more broad range of products and increase our sales further. We have less control over how many units of an item sell, but we can definitely control how many we offer in total.
We’ve tried to focus on steady, non-seasonal products. That way, there are few surprises, and it’s just a matter of restocking as needed. We’re constantly looking for new items, but the profit margins have to be worth the time and energy it takes to prepare and ship them.
Currently working towards fully paying the house off. We estimate 2-3 years comfortably before its fully paid for.
Then it’ll be killing the loan on our truck.
We have no other debt, aside from the mortgage on our rental property.
Once everything is paid for, we’ll save to possibly put up another building. A new, purpose-built warehouse space to work out of, and the existing garage/warehouse can become an actual garage again.
Looking further than that, we’ll likely save, and eventually buy/build one or two small cottages near our home to rent through Airbnb.
Thanks Jay.
With both of us working on things, juggling multiple platforms hasn’t been too bad to this point.
Amazon has gotten to the point that we’re having to buy in larger quantities (20 units of an item instead of 5) to streamline the prep/shipping/etc work. It’s also gotten to the point that we can’t fit enough stuff in our truck when we make trips into the city. That’s one of the reasons I’ve started opening up the wholesale accounts. We can order in larger quantities, and have them delivered to our garage/warehouse.
Amazon ends up eating a day or two of my time each week on average between sourcing, prepping, packing, etc.
As for eBay/poshmark, we’re using our custom sku system to know where items have been listed. If something sells on poshmark, we quickly remove it from eBay and Poshmark Canada. We’re really only just on the three platforms at the moment, though we are trying to gain access to Mercari to test it out.
Mercari isn’t available to Canada, so we had a techhie friend set up a vpn-type system to run our spare laptop through a us IP address. We haven’t started listing there yet, but will in the near future. Not sure if it’ll stick or not.
In short, no juggling issues or concerns to this point!
Been a while. We’re still alive and still listening though!
Reselling updates:
– Main ebay account has been hovering around 1900 listings for the last month or two
– Second eBay account is around 1250 listings currently
– Amazon is consistently doing $10k+ monthly gross in the US, and $5k monthly gross in Canada. Operating around 40% profit across all items combined.
– Poshmark is up over 500 listings in both Canada and the US. Seeing 4-10 sales per week on each platform.
– Combined across all platforms, in 2019 we did approximately $205k CDN (~$165k USD) in gross sales. Still crunching year-end numbers, but looks like around $80k net. That’s with me full time since March, and my wife full time since July or August-ish.
– I’m crossing the border three times a week at this point to keep up with outgoing eBay/poshmark sales, and to send US bound Amazon shipments. A round trip takes me about an hour and a half from door to door.
– We incorporated a new company in December and started operating under it as of January first. Mostly for tax planning purposes.
– I’ve gotten wholesale accounts set up with a few manufacturers and distributors of products we’re consistently selling on amazon. Should be placing our first orders in the coming weeks. It’ll reduce the cost and the amount of time needed to source/prep/ship these products.Personal updates:
– Rural life is GOOD
– We’ve been visiting family and friends much more often then when we lived on the other side of the country.
– I miss the Rocky Mountains, and a very select few of our friends in Alberta.
– We’ve burned through about 1/2 cord of wood so far this winter (we got about 2 cord with the house when we bought)
– The house has a small leak in the basement during heavy rain/melt. We suspect the drain tile may need to be replaced in the spring. Debating going back to the sellers as it appears to have been happening for a while, even though our inspection didn’t catch any signs of it.
– Having the freedom to do what we want, when we want is amazing. We sleep until we wake up. We go to bed when we’re tired. We take a day off when we choose to.Not sure if I’ve posted it here previously, but I’m on instagram as @TheCanuckReseller if anyone wants to follow the day-to-day stuff
Also currently exploring options for both cross listing and data backup.
We have about 1,900 listings on our main account. For the last few months, we have been manually crossposting all new listings to poshmark in both Canada and the US.
Hoping to find something to crosspost to Posh, and possibly Mercari.
In the same vein, we’re starting to think it might make sense to use a third party service to back up our photos and descriptions. Haven’t explored these services much yet though, admittedly.
As for process when things sell, for us, we use the custom sku field. It contains the item location (clothing rack number, etc). If it’s been crossposted to Poshmark, we add “P” to the sku. When an item sells on one platform, we immediately remove it from the other two.
If I have a similar listing (say a t shirt for a t shirt), I’ll just sell similar on the mobile app and list that way. If it’s something new, or odd, I’ll creat the listing on the mobile app and finish on the laptop to double check policies/etc.
I enjoy when people ask questions. I usually answer with something vague, but will often come up with whatever pops into my head first. It forces me to be quick to think, and I like the brain-exercise. Haha
“My father in law collects these, so my Christmas shopping is done now”
“I’m pretty sure this will fit my wife. Worst case, if it doesn’t, she’ll know someone that it’ll fit”
“I just love stuff like this. I’ve got a basement/garage full of it”
An accurate estimate of fully packed size/weight, and a few calculated shipping options (priority, parcel select, fedex, etc) is all I do. No pre-boxing or the like.
If someone wants it bad enough, they’ll pay for the shipping to get it.
I’ve played with free shipping, but saw no benefit.
