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We made our highest sale of all time this week, a piece of Loro Piana cashmere and cotton fabric. $1800! Wow!
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Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.
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We made our highest sale of all time this week, a piece of Loro Piana cashmere and cotton fabric. $1800! Wow!
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We enjoy doing a weekly podcast and running this blog because it often feels like we’re all shopkeepers sharing the same street, interested in what each is selling and happy we’re all in business. Instead of being isolated in dark rooms across the country, we’re helping each other. Camaraderie over competition.
It’s the deep of winter where we are. This is Jay’s favorite time of year. Since there’s no yard sales or flea markets to distract us, we continue to get a lot done. “Death piles” (boxes of unlisted items) continue to disappear in our house. We are working on three years of stuff we have put off photographing. We keep mentioning “death piles” because they are the thing that often paralyze sellers who shop way more than they list. Attack those piles since it’s money just sitting there waiting to be sold.
We continue our Amazon FBA experiment, sending in 431 items in the past two weeks. About 25 items have sold. After in-bound shipping and final value fees, we’ve made about $145. Lots of low dollar items. We’re learning. We’ve become scan monkeys.
If it wasn’t for one very large $1500 commissioned art sale, we would have had the slowest week we’ve ever had. As others have said in the comments, sales trickled in for us. But we made the money we needed to make. When sales are good, keep listing. When sales are bad, keep listing.
Here are links we discussed this week:
Our Store Week February 7-13, 2016
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Bonanza: $0
Amazon: $160
Vangoe: $0
Etsy: $0
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One of my favorite sales was four yards of Laura Ashley fabric for $100. If you can find it, grab it!
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With the help of fellow Trash Elf, Vic, we finally started our FBA experiment and it was quite fun. Jay even started calling us Scan Monkeys, since now we’re looking for FBA stuff during sourcing. I even bought a barcode scanner on eBay. So I guess that really does make us Scan Monkeys. So far it’s fun and we’ve even sold a bunch of stuff. Hope you’re all having a good week so far with lots of sales.
Links we mentioned this week-
Our Store Week January 31-February 6, 2016
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Bonanza: $20
Amazon: $160
Vangoe: $0
Etsy: $0
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Check out completed Vintage Pyramid Bookends. Amazing if you can find them!
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Good week for us. No drama. Just an unglamorous steady stream of sales.
Here are links we discussed during the podcast:
Hope things have been going well for you.
Our Store Week January 24-30, 2016
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Check out completed listings for Vintage LL Bean Duffle Bags, ours sold for the lovely price of $200.
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The big East Coast blizzard came and went. Honestly, as long as we have internet and the mail lady picks up packages each day, we could go weeks without leaving the house since we have plenty of food and firewood. We had a productive weekend while taking breaks to shovel paths around our property.
We had an average week of eBay sales, but also we did a below average amount of work. After having family visit last weekend, it always takes us a while to get back into our routine.
Jay drove 10 hours round trip to North Carolina to pick up a huge load of heartwood pine flooring for our new rental. 400 square feet for $350. Wow! Never know what you’ll find on Craigslist. Ryanne stayed home and took care of business.
We just booked flights for a month of travel in May for some video jobs we’ll be doing. This means we have about 2.5 months to get any eBay work done before our store goes on auto pilot. If you’re in the Seattle, Portland, or New Orleans area, we’ll be there soon.
eBay officially updated all our Seller Dashboards to their a new, cleaner look. Supposedly “more objective standards” will be used to determine defects. The new dashboard will tell you where you stand with these new requirements.
Marco and Mike emailed us about an app called Mile IQ. It’s a phone app that uses GPS to track your mileage for business so you can easily keep records for tax deductions. We haven’t used it yet but plan to check it out.
And lastly, Dan (who we interviewed recently) and I have been talking back and forth about keeping track of COGS or Cost of Goods Sold for tax purposes. He sent me the IRS rule that we think lets small businesses deduct inventory costs as you buy them vs as they sell. This is huge if it’s true. Another listener called this the Cash Method. Here’s the rule Code Sec 471.
IRS exception to required use of accrual method for small businesses:
The IRS has provided two exceptions to the otherwise required use of the accrual method by certain small businesses that account for inventories. One exception applies to taxpayers with average annual gross receipts of $1 million or less and a second exception applies to taxpayers in certain types of businesses with average annual gross receipts of $10 million or less.
Under the first exception, a qualifying taxpayer that has average annual gross receipts of $1 million or less is not required to use the accrual method or account for inventories under Code Sec. 471. Thus, such qualifying taxpayers will be allowed to use the cash method instead. If the qualifying small business does not want to account for inventories, then the taxpayer must treat inventoriable items in the same manner as materials and supplies that are not incidental.
Comment
Allowing qualifying small businesses with inventories to use the cash method is intended to simplify the bookkeeping requirements for small taxpayers.
Please note that we are not tax experts. Research yourself or take this info to your CPA. Might save you the time of keeping track of COGS and just deducting inventory as you buy it.
UPDATE: Please read this thread to see different seller’s opinions on the issue of COGS.
Hope you had a good week.
Our Store Week January 17-23, 2016
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Bonanza: $15
Amazon: $35
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In a parallel world, there’s a whole community of people working towards Financial Independence. Or Early Retirement. Or Extreme Retirement. Often they’re working high paying jobs, taking on no debt, and saving enough where they can quit their jobs and live off the interest of their index funds. Some are getting out of the job market as early as 30, like Mr Money Mustache. The goal for many of them isn’t to never work again, but the freedom to do their best work.
One of these voices in that community is JL “Jim” Collins who wrote a great post about having F-You money. We mentioned him last month when we talked about savoring the freedom of having enough F-You money to do what we wanted and say no to boring jobs. This is different than being financially independent, but our eBay profits have solved the problem of being forced to do work we hated.
Jim recently reached out and interviewed us for his readers. Check out his “case study” on us. He links to an hour long interview with us where he lays out our lifestyle and motivations. Many of you know much of our background, but he does a good job pulling out nuggets we’ve never shared here.
Jim also wrote his famous “stock series“. If you’ve ever wondered about how successful investing could work, this is a great place to start. Thanks Jim!
For those of you on the East Coast, the snow has just started. We made black bean soup and two huge quiches. We have a huge pile of oak firewood for the woodstove and a tub full of water if the power goes out. Cross our fingers that the internet stays on!
This is essentially an Open Thread. Let’s solve problems and share tips. There’s no crying in baseball.
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Check out completed Shell Cordovan Mens Shoes, they can sell for a lot!
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