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Here are some photos of our backyard where we’re in the middle of constructing a 41′ x 24′ metal storage building. You can see that we’re currently working on building the concrete pad where the building will sit. This is a huge undertaking and investment for us. When complete, the storage building will make our eBay business much more efficient and allow us to grow. It’ll cost us close to $15k (!!!)

But we haven’t always had this kind of money to spend. When we started on eBay, we had very little money coming in because work was difficult to find. We didn’t have much to lose. Because we had time, we simply threw ourselves into listing items we found for cheap. One item, then another, then another. This was back in 2008. Seems like a lifetime ago.

This week there was a good thread on the blog started by a woman who wanted to know how she could get out of debt. As many scavengers shared their stories, there’s a familiar pattern where people build solid businesses through a mixture of being thrifty, cutting expenses, and just putting in the hours.

In those early days of trying to start an eBay business, there really does need to be a leap of faith. We didn’t see results in a week, or even a month. It was probably six months of steady work before we saw our eBay income paying our bills. That kind of commitment is difficult to maintain, but there’s no shortcut that we’ve ever found. The good news is that if you can bridge that gap, you’ll find yourself in a place where you will pay off debt and find that you have many options on what to do with your money. That’s what freedom is. Look at Faith (aka flim), she is full time eBay and enjoying the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, because she can!

Hope you had a good week! The holiday buying season is here.

Our Store Week Oct 16-22, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4032
• Items Sold: 31
• Cost of Items Sold: $70
• Total Sales: $1,375.96
• Highest Price Sold: $500 (vintage rug)
• Average Price Sold: $44.38
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $16
• Number of items listed this week: 0

———-

Bonanza/TrueGether:

• Sold 3 items for $150

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1042
• Items Sold: 6
• Cost of Items Sold: $10
• Total Sales: $218.75
• Highest Price Sold: $100 (Ceramic Elephant)
• Average Price Sold: $26.16
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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We’re flying back on Tuesday and are very happy to be going home. Being away from our daily lives for three weeks is totally refreshing, but it also reminds us how much we miss the life we’ve built. We have a huge list of ideas and experiments we want to try out over the winter. It’s important that we find new ways to stay excited about what could be an eBay grind.

For the past three weeks, we’ve sold 84 items for a total of $4,126.95. Only two people have cancelled their order (for items under $10) after we reminded them of delayed shipping. This is a great method of selling for us when we’re traveling. Regardless of what Amazon says, not everyone needs their item the same day. Remember when you’d buy things on TV and get it in 4-5 weeks? It’s all about setting the correct expectations.

We also mention in this podcast that we’ve working on an update to this very website. As many listeners have mentioned, our commenting system is clunky. It’s very difficult to search for past content. Smart things you say can’t be found. Videos and photos can’t be embedded in the comments.  The goal is to make it easier for all of us to share information. We plan to keep it simple. Though it’s a big job and we thankfully have help, we look forward to what you think. If all goes well, look out in the next month or two for an updated site.

We mentioned the following link in this podcast:
–Flim mentioned this new eBay resource to know the selling history of specific items.
–Is it good for a business to pay workers less to save money? This article says a business makes more money by paying workers fairly. Duh.
—Listen to this short radio story on postal systems around the world agreeing on new terms to deliver each others’ mail. This will effect the subsidized, cheap rates that USPS currently charges Chinese manufacturers to ship goods to the US. Good!

Hope you had a good week.

Our Store Week Oct 9-15, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4060
• Items Sold: 25
• Cost of Items Sold: $55
• Total Sales: $1,485.75
• Highest Price Sold: $250 (vintage jewelry)
• Average Price Sold: $59.43
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

———-

Bonanza:

• Sold 0 items for $0

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1048
• Items Sold: 4
• Cost of Items Sold: $10
• Total Sales: $104.66
• Highest Price Sold: $35 (Men’s pants)
• Average Price Sold: $26.16
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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We’re entering our second week of traveling and are enjoying being away from our day-to-day lives. That is really what it’s all about for us: taking time to think about what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and what we want to do. It’d be very easy for us to fall into a rut where we end us working in a sweatshop of our own making. Without these breaks where we talk about things, we wouldn’t have the fun, varied life that we’ve built so far.

Sales in our eBay store have been surprisingly steady even with our long handling time. Very grateful for this.

Here are some photos of where we’ve been staying (more to come)–

 

Here are the links we mentioned in this podcast.
–Listen to this great podcast episode where Pete of Mr Money Mustache , Paula Pant of Afford Anything, and a couple other bloggers talk about their journey to Financial Independence. Fun to hear their different strategies and motivations.
—Facebook just launch their “Marketplace”. It’s more of a competitor to Craigslist since Facebook is not handling any payments, but that could always change.

Hope you had a good week. Don’t forget to redeem your free eBay shipping supplies if you have a store subscription: http://wheresthecoupon.com/

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Hello from Dublin. After a week of work, we are now free to roam Ireland for the next 15 days. We went to a flea market today and found some nice items to bring home to sell. Just the process of walking to a flea market is a great free way for us to explore the city and get out of the tourist areas.
We’re working on identifying any car boot sales or auctions we could visit while we’re here. We have two big bags we can check-in for free when we fly home.

It is interesting to realize just how much of a second-hand buying/selling community we have in the US. Seems like any day of the week in the US you can go to auctions, estate sales, yard sales, flea markets, or thrift stores. We’ve found no other country like it yet (or maybe we need ti find out where to look).

Here are the links we discussed:

• Amazon is changing their long term storage fee policy. Now even individual items will be charged a fee every six months.
• ProPublica did a investigation into how Amazon search results are now not showing buyers the lowest price.
• It’s that time of year again to use your eBay coupons to order free packing material. We use David’s free service to get reminded: http://wheresthecoupon.com/
• Susan sent us this article about the downfall of “fast fashion”. As much as we like to think Scavengers are helping keep clothes out of the landfill, it looks like we don;t even come close.
• Sheldon shared this video that explains why audiophiles pay big money for old cassette tapes.

Hope you had a good week.

Our Store Week Sept 25-Oct 1, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4,110
• Items Sold: 16
• Cost of Items Sold: $25
• Total Sales: $651.88
• Highest Price Sold: $275 (vintage fur coat)
• Average Price Sold: $40.74
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: ?
• Amazon total sales: $?
• Amazon FBA Fees, COGS, Returns, Shipping: $?
• Net profit after COGS: $70

 

Bonanza:

• Sold 1 items for $50

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1053
• Items Sold: 9
• Cost of Items Sold: $15
• Total Sales: $646.93
• Highest Price Sold: $300 (Salt and Pepper shaker)
• Average Price Sold: $71.88
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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Hey ya’ll, we just landed in San Francisco after traveling all day, but we were able to record the podcast this morning before we left. So I’ll keep it short, as the time zone difference is catching up to us (Jay is snoring as I write this).

Links we talked about-

• The article Flim sent us, Why It’s Nearly Impossible To Stop This Amazon and eBay Scheme 
• eBay’s 5 day return policy in writing 
• B-Rock mentioned the 401k program for self-employed people. It’s called the Solo 401k.

 Hope you had a good week.

Our Store Week Sept 4-10, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4,142
• Items Sold: 42
• Cost of Items Sold: $90
• Total Sales: $1,564.00
• Highest Price Sold: $160 (jewelry)
• Average Price Sold: $37.23
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $60
• Number of items listed this week: 40

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 11
• Amazon total sales: $210.94
• Amazon FBA Fees, COGS, Returns, Shipping: $100.99
• Net profit after COGS: $109.99

Bonanza:

• Sold 0 items for 0

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1066
• Items Sold: 12
• Cost of Items Sold: $37
• Total Sales: $500.91
• Highest Price Sold: $200 (sink)
• Average Price Sold: $41.74
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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Each of us runs our own store using different techniques. One thing we do is ignore if a listed item has watchers or not. All we do is research the item, list it, and then wait for the right buyer. Every year or so we go through older items to see if they can be tweaked, but we know our items are long tail so just need time.

Why do we ignore the number of watchers on an item? What if an older item has ZERO watchers? Shouldn’t that tell us that we’ve done something wrong?

Let’s look at the numbers.
This week we sold 35 items.
11 of those items had zero watchers.
Most of those items have been listed more than a year.
So that’s more than 25% of our sold items with no watchers, selling at full price.

If we had stared at the number of watchers, fretted and second guessed ourselves, then we may have ended up selling items at a fire sale because we might think no one wanted our stuff.

We have a healthy amount of items with large numbers of watchers that haven’t been bought in over a year. If so many people are watching an item, why doesn’t someone pull the trigger? Who knows. What we do know is that someone will eventually buy it. And as long as items are selling each day, it doesn’t really matter what item it is.

This week we mentioned the following links in the podcast:

• Shane sent us this article about “fast fashion”.  Some companies are putting out new clothing lines every other week, creating a huge stream of unwanted clothes. The US is sending millions of tons of good clothes to the landfill because of the lack of demand.
• The eBay 2016 Fall Seller Update is out . Make sure you read it. Takes about ten minutes but keeps you up to date on the small changes eBay is making. These updates come every Fall and Spring.

Hope you had a good week. Happy Labor Day, Trash Elves.

Our Store Week August 28-Sept 3, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4,173
• Items Sold: 35
• Cost of Items Sold: $587
• Total Sales: $2,229.32
• Highest Price Sold: $1000 (artwork)
• Average Price Sold: $63.69
• Returns: 2
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
• Number of items listed this week: 42

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 16
• Amazon total sales: $592.60
• Amazon FBA Fees, COGS, Returns, Shipping: $209.81
• Net profit after COGS: $382.79

Bonanza:

• Sold 3 items for $80

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1080
• Items Sold: 5
• Cost of Items Sold: $10
• Total Sales: $141.96
• Highest Price Sold: $40 (vintage leather purse)
• Average Price Sold: $28.39
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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Cyndi of Amazing*Taste said that her ebay partner/ husband had to go to the hospital last week. As far as we know he’s fine, but she did bring up a good question: what would you do if your eBay partner is out of commission? Could you still run the business alone? Or if you already work solo, how would things work if you couldn’t list and ship?

We certainly depend on each other. Each of us does certain tasks each day to keep the store running. Ryanne could more easily take control of the business herself but at much less volume. Jay would have a learning curve when it came to shipping. Our business certainly would change if one of us got sick.

But if you do depend on eBay for your income, it would be wise to have an emergency plan if something did happen. Maybe find a family member and teach them to ship. Definitely try to put enough away in savings so your expenses would be covered for at least three months. Selling on eBay is living without a safety net unless you build the net yourself. There is no sick leave on eBay.

This week we also discussed an interesting conversation going on in the Retail Arbitrage world on Amazon. Cynthia wrote a blog post that warned that Amazon may be ending the ability to sell retail arbitrage. This means no more going to Walmart, buying out the discounted items, and sending them into FBA. She backed it up with sources and her logic. But then Ryan from Online Selling Experiment (who we interviewed several years ago) responded with a well-reasoned argument why Amazon would continue to let you send in items you buy at retail stores.

The bone of contention is the fear that Amazon thinks that retail arbitrage items are often discounted, clearance items that are not in new condition. Because sellers say they are new, customers are returning these items more frequently and having a bad experience. No one knows for sure what will happen, but it is interesting conspiracy theories are not just in the eBay community. It would be a game changer for many FBA sellers.

For us, we continue to sell used items on Amazon and have learned to list the as such. If Amazon did stop allowing “like new” items to be shipped into FBA, I can only see this as a good thing for eBay since those used items would be sold there. Ryan did say that Target no longer allows him to buy up all their discounted items in huge lots. Not sure if this is nationwide or just his local store.

• We also mentioned some seller’s issues with VERO claims. Please educate yourself on this because eBay does not fool around with accidentally selling counterfeit items on designer labels. Often these claims can be made in error and can still cause headaches fighting it.
• Check out our post this week on how to make your listings mobile friendly This is an evolving situation as eBay slowly tries to get us all to improve the look of our items online. We’re always keeping an eye out on the new practical tweaks.

Hope you had a good week!

Our Store Week August 21-27, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4,171
• Items Sold: 28
• Cost of Items Sold: $53
• Total Sales: $1,201.60
• Highest Price Sold: $150 (Small wool rug)
• Average Price Sold: $42.91
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
• Number of items listed this week: 62

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 9
• Amazon total sales: $161.56
• Amazon FBA Fees: $77.45
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $20
• Net profit after COGS: $64.11

Bonanza:

• Sold 1 items for $20

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1088
• Items Sold: 12
• Cost of Items Sold: $15
• Total Sales: $332.89
• Highest Price Sold: $40 (vintage wall calendar)
• Average Price Sold: $27.74
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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When we started selling on eBay in 2008, we had no idea what we were doing. If there were online tutorials or Youtube videos about eBay, we didn’t know about them. There were the eBay Forums, but they were mainly full of negative stories of how eBay was actively trying to destroy sellers. (It never made sense to us that people were selling on the platform if they actually believed this.)

So because we were ignorant, we were looking for a low risk way to begin. This meant we chose to spend very little on our inventory. We found local church thrift stores overflowing with donations that had “bag day” sales to move their inventory. We found yard sales with many items for under $1 because people just wanted the stuff gone. We found auctions where entire households were sold off in a couple hours, and we could buy boxes of stuff for under $10. We found estate sales that discount 75%+ on the last day, allowing us to fill our car for the cost of a meal.

This is why we called ourselves Scavengers because we often were buying the items that no one else wanted. But this didn’t mean these items were worthless. If we did the research and put these items in the right context so the right buyers would find them, we could make serious money. We became very good at selling something for $30+ that we bought for $1 or less. And every month we would even sell items for over $100 that cost us just as little.

Since we’ve always been frugal and rarely go out to eat in restaurants, we always have $30 to spend on inventory. We’ve never wanted to buy an item and not had the money. We’ve never been in the position of needing to liquidate inventory so we could have more cash to buy more items. We’ve never put inventory costs on credit cards. This is how we discovered our “list it and forget it” strategy. It doesn’t matter to us when any particular item sells, as long as something sell each day. We learned that if we had a large enough inventory, then items do sell every day. Our experience since 2008 has proved our strategy to be effective.

Time is our big investment. It takes time to take a pile of “junk” and figure out the value of each item. Takes time to photograph. Takes time to write a proper description that will attract the right buyer. This is certainly much more work than just scanning and sending into Amazon, but the profit margins are incredible with very low risk.

One question we’re always asked is: “If you could buy an item for $50 and make $500 quickly, wouldn’t you do it?” Of course! But we find these opportunities very rare. Could you jump in your car right now, go to a thrift store or auction, and buy up these miracle $50 items that will sell for $500? For some reason, people are willing to give away items worth $30, but items worth $200+ have too much value to just let go. We do find these deals from time to time, but they’re rare for us.

Some sellers really know a particular niche and have learned to pay big money for lots of specific items. They know how to part out the gear, or refurbish it, or simply know the items true value. They may pay $1000 for a box of items, knowing they can make $5000. Knowing a niche deeply is a real advantage.

Our point is simply that not spending much money on inventory takes one less stress out of running a business. Your miles may vary.

Here are the links we mentioned in the podcast:
–This is the blue tooth scanner we just bought to scan books for Amazon:
KDC200i
—Chris the Dollar Flipper sent us a link to this video of a kooky eBay seller.

Our Store Week August 14-20, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4,134
• Items Sold: 32
• Cost of Items Sold: $55
• Total Sales: $1,315.81
• Highest Price Sold: $175 (Golf Bag)
• Average Price Sold: $41.11
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $25
• Number of items listed this week: 80

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 16
• Amazon total sales: $209.35
• Amazon FBA Fees: $71.31
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $25
• Net profit after COGS: $113.04

Bonanza:

• Sold 0 items for 0

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1104
• Items Sold: 2
• Cost of Items Sold: $3
• Total Sales: $139.99
• Highest Price Sold: $100 (vintage lamp)
• Average Price Sold: $69.99
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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Our success on eBay is due primarily to one key factor: finding the right balance between scavenging and listing.

Here’s the deal if you’re new to scavenging- it’s easy to find stuff to sell. You can complain all you want about thrift stores raising their prices or yard sales getting hip to researching their items online, but you will not find a nation on this planet that has more abundance and waste than the USA. If you are creative and put in the time, it’s easy to get a carload of scavenged goods for little money. You could fill a house full of junk in a couple weeks. Some sellers just sit at home on their computers and source items on eBay or online auctions!

Don’t believe us?  Just go on Youtube and watch the thousands of “haul videos” that show people bringing home bags of stuff from Goodwill, yard sales, auctions. Though it still takes some skill and experience to scavenge the real treasures out there, the bar is still pretty low. Finding items that will sell for $20-$30 is easy. This is why we like “What Sold” videos because it shows the reward of the work you do.

But scavenging is only one leg of a successful eBay business. The second leg is listing. ALWAYS BE LISTING. (The third leg is good customer service.)

When we first started selling on eBay, we spent 75-90% of our time scavenging. We’d go every day to buy stuff. Sometimes twice a day. It would drive us crazy thinking there was good stuff out there just waiting for us to find. Plus, we had no inventory so acquiring was important.

But very quickly we had more stuff than we could handle. An entire roomful of clothes piles, bins of shoes, junk. It was overwhelming. After three years of running our eBay business, we had over thirty huge plastic bins of unlisted items. Death piles everywhere. We realized that there would always be “stuff” out there, and that listing had to be our priority. It’s now taken us over a year to photograph and list these items. AND MAKE MONEY SELLING THEM.

Death piles can cause family and marital strife. Death piles can sap your morale and paralyze you. Death piles can be a sign of a shopping addiction. Death piles can keep you from having anyone visit your home. Death piles can make you feel like a fool. When there’s too much stuff, you can often not know where to start so you never start. Acquiring stuff is not the same as selling items online.

We now list 90% of the time and scavenge the other 10%. We do one big scavenging trip each week where we come home with a carload of stuff. It takes us the rest of the week to process it all and get it online.  We’ll be the first to admit that we aren’t always successful listing enough to keep up with our scavenging, but we feel much better about our eBay business and our lives. And people can visit us anytime and think that we’re just eclectic collectors.

Here are the links we discussed in this podcast:
–Crystal pointed us to this site that shows the different Woolrich tags and the manufacturing dates.
–Ryanne mentioned Promoted Listings on eBay. If you have an Anchor store subscription, you get a $25 coupon to use each quarter.

Hope you had a good week!

Our Store Week August 7-13, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 4078
• Items Sold: 35
• Cost of Items Sold: $190
• Total Sales: $1,202.92
• Highest Price Sold: $200 (vintage art print)
• Average Price Sold: $34.36
• Returns: 1
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $60
• Number of items listed this week: 137

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 12
• Amazon total sales: $320.65
• Amazon FBA Fees: $84.72
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $15
• Net profit after COGS: $215.93

Bonanza:

• Sold 1 items for $80

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1107
• Items Sold: 6
• Cost of Items Sold: $10
• Total Sales: $147.71
• Highest Price Sold: $30 (vintage purse)
• Average Price Sold: $24.61
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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Anyone that runs a business of any type or size deals with self doubt. When you’re the boss, no one tells you if you’re making the right choice or the wrong choice. Maybe the next decision will ruin everything! Maybe it’s better to do nothing? Who knows!

And if you’re just starting your eBay business, it truly is a leap of
faith. Often you must list several hundred items before you see if
you’ve scavenged the right items and priced them appropriately. The big mistake is to only list a couple items and then judge your success on whether those two or three items sell quickly.

Even though we’ve successfully sold on eBay since 2008, self-doubt still creeps into our eBay business from time to time. Usually this happens when sales are quiet, or when we get a series of unexpected returns. Luckily we have each other to talk through these times. We know that we must look at our numbers over the entire year, and not judge our success on any one particular slow week. We listen to the experience other sellers and research (and more research) to make sure our methods are still reliable. The worst thing we can do is get paralyzed.  Having fun and constantly experimenting is our cure for self-doubt.

These are the links we mentioned in this podcast-

• eBay has a new podcast called Open for Business. It’s hosted and produced by a cool, independent podcast company called Gimlet.
• eBay has posted recordings from sessions at the recent eBay Open event in Las Vegas. It’s free, but you have to sign up to watch. Maybe they’re also on Youtube.

Hope you guys had a good week!

Our Store Week July 31-August 6, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3974
• Items Sold: 22
• Cost of Items Sold: $61
• Total Sales: $745.87
• Highest Price Sold: $125 (vintage painting)
• Average Price Sold: $33.90
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
• Number of items listed this week: 70

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 12
• Amazon total sales: $241.36
• Amazon FBA Fees: $104.03
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $15
• Net profit after COGS: $122.33

Bonanza:

• Sold 1 items for $25

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1112
• Items Sold: 11
• Cost of Items Sold: $13
• Total Sales: $220.85
• Highest Price Sold: $25 (five items at this price)
• Average Price Sold: $20.07
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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