Scavenger Life

This week saw us seriously scavenging high end furniture on Craigslist for our new rental. It took a lot of driving, but we think it’s worth it. Also, check your spam folders for forum messages. Gmail seems to think that noreply@scavengerlife.com is a spammer, oh no! We’re working to fix that. Paypal will soon allow instant money transfers to your bank. It’s about time. eBay reminds us via Youtube that they have a Community Forum. Hope they start to moderate it so it’s no longer a pit of gloom and doom.

Hope you had a great week!

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week June 18-24, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5,784
Items Sold: 56
Cost of Items Sold: $95
Total Sales: $1,614.51
Highest Price Sold: $100 (vintage cigar box)
Average Price Sold: $28.83
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $18
Number of items listed this week: 75
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 0 items for $0
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Store #2
Total Items in Store: 1233
Items Sold: 6
Cost of Items Sold: $24
Total Sales: $146.26
Highest Price Sold: $42 (vintage photograph)
Average Price Sold: $24.36
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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A couple weeks ago, we were talking about our backup plan to eBay. But many commenters on the forum were discussing that eBay IS their backup plan to their current job, which makes a lot of sense since so many eBay sellers sell part time on top of their W-2 jobs and families.

I guess a more accurate question we’re always asking ourselves is “what do we really want to be doing”? Scavenging bought us our freedom from having to work for other people. But once we realized we had created a steady pipeline of money on eBay that consistently paid our bills, was this enough? Did we want to just sell online for the rest of our lives? What did we really want to be doing?

The honest answer is that we don’t really know. I think a lot of us are unsure about what we want to be when we grow up if backed into a corner. Sure, we all want/deserve some leisure. A little freedom from worry. Keep a roof over your head. Be able to send your kids to college. Fix the car if it breaks down. But once you’ve figured out those things, what do you REALLY want to do with your time? What challenges do you want to take on? When you’re on your death bed, what’s going to make you feel at peace?

Our strategy is just to evolve step by step. We learned that we like using our extra eBay profits to renovate houses for rent. We love the challenge of taking a house in bad shape and making it awesome. Design is fun. Scavenging and re-using old materials is so satisfying. And then these rentals are earning us more money to evolve further. Every day isn’t glamorous, but it sure is an adventure of our making.

We talked about buying a new-to-us, used iPhone 5c on eBay (it’s pink!) and hooking it up on Ting. We love Ting, you should use Ting. Digital scavenging is fun!

Hope you had a good week.

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Our Store Week June 11-17, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5,771
Items Sold: 59
Cost of Items Sold: $99
Total Sales: $1,857.20
Highest Price Sold: $110 (vintage brooch)
Average Price Sold: $31.47
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $12
Number of items listed this week: 75
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 0 items for $0
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Store #2
Total Items in Store: 1239
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $50
Total Sales: $366.68
Highest Price Sold: $90 (vintage record player)
Average Price Sold: $40.74
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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With a mild level of panic among sellers because eBay is removing items older than one year, we have to ask ourselves: what’s our back up plan is eBay was no longer feasible for us?  In the early days of selling, we had didn’t have much at all, nevermind a backup plan. Just piles of stuff, a camera, a computer, an internet connection, and lots of time. We put our heads down and listed like our life depended on it. When eBay really started feeling like a real business, it was really exciting to know we made something out of nothing. We applaud any seller who takes themselves to seriously enough to build a steady stream of income from their own wits and sweat. It’s a big deal.

But as we established our eBay business, we knew we wanted a back up plan. eBay is fun for us, but what if someday it’s no longer fun? For us, vacation rental property was something exciting. We took our extra profit from selling old shoes and bought a couple old houses, fixed them up, and now are close to doubling our income. This took eight years, but time takes time. Like our eBay business, we love making something from nothing. We can look back and see that our hard work is paying off.

In reality, the new eBay initiative of ending old listings isn’t the armageddon that some assumed. Here’s the official announcement:

We have identified a relatively small number of unproductive listings and have begun removing those with one or more years of no sales and minimal page views, and are refunding any associated listing fees. We value long-tail inventory – it is what makes eBay unique – and remain committed to helping sellers of all types be successful on our platform.

So it’s good that eBay acknowledges that “longtail” items are important and sell slowly. I guess eBay is reminding sellers to look at old listings. They haven’t touched our old listings. But if they did, all we need to do is relist the items as if they were new. Doesn’t hurt to check them over to make sure they look good. No big deal.

Hope you had a good week!

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week May 28-June 3, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5,724
Items Sold: 58
Cost of Items Sold: $116
Total Sales: $2,154.73
Highest Price Sold: $200 (vintage jewelry)
Average Price Sold: $37.15
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $38
Number of items listed this week: 26
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 1 items for $13
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Store #2
Total Items in Store: 1255
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $62
Total Sales: $470.12
Highest Price Sold: $140 (vintage soap dish)
Average Price Sold: $31.34
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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This week we came up with a new slogan that we hope will ring throughout the online selling world: “The best way to sell is whatever way you enjoy because it’s the only way you’ll keep doing it.” Maybe this will end the debate!

No way! Of course sellers will never stop arguing about the best items to sell and the best way to sell them, but at least let’s acknowledge that nothing matters if you don’t enjoy what you sell and how you sell it. We’ve all seen example after example of people who try to sell online and fail miserably because they try to imitate someone else’s business model. Making money is not enough. There must be love involved if you’re in it for the long haul.

On another note- Our friend, Marc, confirmed that eBay is now taking down old listings! What! It’s a Catastrophe! Let’s Freak out!

Wait, what? Let’s see what actually happened. Marc said that he was eating dinner and received a message from eBay saying they removed 1000 of his listings that were older than 12 months. This is what the message said:

Listings that haven’t generated interest, after being active for a long time, can clutter the site and make it difficult for buyers to find what they’re looking for. This can be unfair to other sellers when their listings are difficult to find. Therefore, we’ve done the following:
– We removed any listings that have been active for 1 year or longer without sales. A list of removed item(s) is available further down in this email.
– Any fees for listings that were ended early for not following policy won’t be credited to your account.

We recommend that you don’t relist these items unless you first take steps to improve the likelihood of sales. Please also make sure that items don’t automatically relist. Listing fees may not be refunded for subsequent removals.

To increase the chance of your items selling in the future, we recommend that you consider the following best practices:
– Reduce the price of the item.
– Add images.
– Include pertinent item specifics.
– Offer free shipping.
– List the item using the Auction format.

To help you, we have compiled recommendations for improving your listings. For more information on listing best practices, please see: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/searchstanding.html

Okay, this looks pretty bad on the face of it. My worry was that eBay was removing listings and he’d have to retake photos and write all new text. But all Marc did was hit “relist” and made all his listings active again. No big deal. There’s no way for eBay to know if you updated info. They just made a hoop he had to jump through.

So why is eBay doing this? We assume eBay wants people to look at their old listings. Great, that’s fine. But sometimes items just take a long time to sell no matter how cheap you make the items. And who cares how long an item is up as long as the seller is willing to pay the listing fee? Unlike Amazon FBA, eBay isn’t storing any of these items. It’s just a giant database in the cloud.

We have plenty of items over 12 months old, but eBay hasn’t taken any action on us yet. But if they do, we feel no stress since we can just relist. I guess this issue gives credence to the sellers who use 30-day listings and then just relist using “sell similar”. The items are the exact same, same photos, same titles, same descriptions, but they just fool eBay into thinking they’re new items. Is this the new game we must play? eBay hasn’t given anyone much info on this new push, so we’ll see. As always, it’s often less a big deal as it seems at first. The wheels of commerce keep on spinning.

Join the conversation on the forum>>

Our Store Week May 21-27, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5,743
Items Sold: 61
Cost of Items Sold: $76
Total Sales: $1,983.49
Highest Price Sold: $120 (vintage lamp)
Average Price Sold: $32.51
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $24
Number of items listed this week: 110
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 2 items for $30
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 1272
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Total Sales: $486.21
Highest Price Sold: $34 (leather wallet)
Average Price Sold: $28.60
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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