Scavenger Life

It feels like our store is back in business. We’re selling an average of five items a day. Flow. That’s what it’s all about. Somehow we’ve gathered a huge backlog of items to list. There’s still so much stuff to scavenge out there in the world.

Otherwise, our cafe/coffee company is in full swing. Two cafes open seven days a week. Our wholesale coffee business has exploded where we now roast four full days a week. It’s a lot but it is satisfying. Lots of puzzles to solve.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
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Our Store Week September 1-7, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9662
Items Sold: 37
Gross Sales: $1,667.91 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,099.30 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $163
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $170 (replacement part scavenged from a broken oven)
Average Price Sold: $29.71
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

There’s a growing awareness that algorithms are increasingly controlling many aspects of our lives. Dating apps, Facebook posts, news sites, online ads, google search results… It’s clear to us that eBay also has an algorithm that we must respect.

Sales feel back to normal for us after we abided by eBay’s seemingly new requirement for opting into “promoted listings”. This tacks on about another 15% in fees for us each week. So after final value fees, eBay gets about 30% of our profit. (We’re not bitter about it:) I do wonder where eBay thinks it can get more money from sellers in the future. Each little change they do seems to find a way to get more share of the profit. It’s tiring.

Otherwise, we’ve been having fun scavenging and have been finding a lot of good things to list.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week August 24-31, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9678
Items Sold: 38
Gross Sales: $1,215.46 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $815.82 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $87
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $100 (vintage watch box)
Average Price Sold: $21.46
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

What a difference between this week and the last couple weeks. The difference: promoted listings. It was only a week’s worth of data but almost 80% of our sales can from turning on “promoted listings”. Seems crazy.

So all these items sold were clicked on from someone else’s else’s listing? It’s confusing how it works. All I know is we paid an extra $180 for the ad fees on the items that sold. But if we didn’t do it, we likely wouldn’t have sold as much (like last week). I guess this is just how eBay is continuing to make more money. Thank god we find/buy all our inventory for cheap. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Otherwise it’s nice to be back to selling all the weird stuff we have.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week August 18-24, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9703
Items Sold: 38
Gross Sales: $1,700.04 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,182.61 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $33
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $150 (vintage Apple lapel pin)
Average Price Sold: $31.12
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We love to travel but its also really nice to be home. We’ve lived in our small town for about 15 years and planted roots where we know most people everywhere we go. Much different from when I grew up in a suburb of a large city. Though small towns have their own issues, we feel like we’re actually part of the fabric of the community.

eBay is still slow for us. We’re playing around with promoting items vs not promoting items. This past week reflects not promoting again. Lots of really low offers that we’re just not willing to take. Keep rolling.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week August 11-17, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9742
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $544.47 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $426.17 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $33
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $160 (artwork)
Average Price Sold: $42.61
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

Absolutely brutal week. Probably our slowest week on eBay ever. We’re guessing it’s a combination of our second week with “Time Away” turned on + generally slow summer sales. We also re-listed our entire store of almost 10,000 items which costs us $100.

Good news that we had a great, relaxing time in NYC. I feel like we caught up on sleep and talked about a lot of good ideas away from the daily workings of our life. It’s important to us have space to talk about the future.

But its weeks like these when we feel like “Is our eBay store done for? Has the good times finally come to an end?” Who knows! Let’s see what happens.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week August 4-10, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9750
Items Sold: 15
Gross Sales: $456.05 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $210.67 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $34
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $35 (toilet paper wall holders)
Average Price Sold: $14.04
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 60
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

Brutally slow week for us on eBay. We’re in NYC for two weeks so our store is set for “Time Away”. The lack of sales might be a combination of the delayed shipping option and normally slow summer online.

That being said, we did sell a commercial bread slicer for $1200 on Facebook Marketplace. We bought it on Facebook for $90 several months ago. Very nice flip. We’ve followed the lead from other Scavengers here who buy and sell on Facebook. Cash sales are nice! Because we have a truck and a big storage building, we can flip almost anything.

Our two cafes are cranking along. Our new cafe in Harrisonburg will be interesting to watch as college kids come back from summer break. The town has an influx of 30,000 kids in just a couple weeks. We hope they find our place downtown 🙂

Otherwise, it’s nice to be away with good neighbors keeping an eye on our homestead. We seem to sleep better when we’re not at home with a million things to do.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 28 – August 3, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9701
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $635.85 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $456.24 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $21
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $105 (wall clock)
Average Price Sold: $32.58
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $25
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We had a rare big sale this week where we sold a vintage Chanel purse for $1200. eBay had us send it to their Authentication Expert in New Jersey. Once it was authenticated, eBay ships it to the buyer. This service was free to us and the buyer. Assume eBay is willing to do this so buyers will be confident buying authentic designer goods on their site. eBay’s cut of $1200 (promoted listing percentage + final Value fee) was hefty.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 21 – July 27, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9675
Items Sold: 19
Gross Sales: $2,158.87 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,705.67 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $177
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $1200 (vintage purse)
Average Price Sold: $89.77
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

Slow week? Average week? Good week? Who knows. We’ve lost track of what’s what. We have a store, things are selling, yeah!!

We certainly are not the poster child of how to get rich on eBay, but we can claim the fame to longevity and endurance which counts for something. Health issues? keep selling. Start another business? keep selling. Travel for long periods? keep selling. Steady money works for us.

Fun to read how other people are doing and how they sell. I feel there’s just a handful of us here. A little corner to ourselves without a lot of hype.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 14-20, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9644
Items Sold: 23
Gross Sales: $1,019.94 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $758.89 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $38
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $95 (fishing waders)
Average Price Sold: $32.99
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 20
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about our coffee company here, even though it takes up most of our time these days. Our first Broad Porch Coffee cafe in Luray, VA recently celebrated three years (when we ended the podcast). Our newest cafe in Harrisonburg, VA is almost six months hold. Both are doing well and growing. Our wholesale roasting is probably the fastest part of our business as we get a reputation in the region for high quality roasting and service.

Sometimes we question why we started a brick and mortar business, but it is nice building relationships with people in real life. As we grow older, I’d even say it’s necessary for a good life. Certainly keeps us on our toes. We interact with town employees, the people who live here who hang out in our cafes, and the people who work for us. God bless America 🙂

Below is a snapshot of our eBay sales last week. These weekly sales continue to give us the freedom to pursue other things like own a coffee company (or at least de-risk the reality of running a coffee business).

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 7-13, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9616
Items Sold: 31
Gross Sales: $1,475.95 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $945.14 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $44
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $360 (vintage boy scout patches)
Average Price Sold: $30.48
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 20
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We turned off all Promoted Listings etc this past week so these are all organize sales. Definitely seeing drop in sales but we keep more of the money. It’ll be interesting to see if eBay has decided that sellers must pay for ads to sell anything significant (on top of final value fees).

Other than facebook marketplace for local sales, we still don’t see any serious competitors to eBay’s vintage sales market.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week June 29 – July 6, 2024

Total Items in Store: 9639
Items Sold: 22
Gross Sales: $955.18 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $633.36 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $44
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $55 (vintage dress)
Average Price Sold: $28.78
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 100
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)