eBay

Blame it on the Sunshine!

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Once again, I’ve been MIA, but I can’t help but to be outside in this beautiful 70 degree weather!  One of the biggest perks of selling on eBay is that you can choose your own hours.  When you want to spend your days outside, just work at night.  If you want to go out for a night with the girls, just work during the day.

I have been doing bad.  Real bad.  I haven’t listed anything since March 16.  And it’s hurting, my sales have slowed down to about one a day.  It really goes to show you get out what you put in.

Also, I apologize about not posting my profit screenshots – my computer is temporarily disassembled while I try to replace the fan.  But here are a few of my recent sales:

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Lucky Brand Cargo Pants

Paid: $4

Sold: $29.99 + $6.35 S&H

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Lilly Pulitzer Dress

Paid: $6

Sold: $49.99

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Lucky Brand Jeans

Paid: $4

Sold: $39.99 + $6.35 S&H

For all the men out there – and all the women trying to convince their men to join them in thrifting – I am going to share with you some of my boyfriends recent flips in the next post (his flips are much larger than mine – and he sells some pretty cool manly things!)

Thanks for reading!

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Blame it on the Sunshine!

Feelin’ Lucky

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Happy St Patty’s Day!  I hope there is luck on your side today!  But, eBay selling has nothing to do with luck.  It is about your determination and your willingness to move pass the negative and to constantly learn from your mistakes.  The other day, I had a buyer open a return request for $30, which I have set to automatically accept.  She sent an item back – the wrong item, something that I have never had in my inventory.  I was furious.  I called eBay and complained, which only made the situation worse.  I threatened her with a police report.  I was fuming all day thinking about it.  Then it hit me, why was I going to let this one $30 sale ruin my day and make me consider quitting eBay.  Karma will take care of that person, I just need to let it go.  You cannot avoid the scam artists.  They are everywhere.  I hear so many stories of people giving up after one bad thing happening to them.  As a seller, you need to realize people will try to take advantage of you – but those people are far and few in-between.

Now, aside from the ability to let go, you must really have passion to become successful.  I love clothes and fashion and can often be found reading fashion blogs and magazines.  I sometimes go to fancy stores to look around at the brands they have to offer.  My boyfriend started off trying to sell clothes, but he found his passion in shoes.  We both put time in to research what’s trending and selling.  One of my favorite research platforms are blogs.  Unfortunately, my three favorite bloggers are no longer blogging.

Everyone has a different strategy when it comes to selling.  One of my favorite bloggers who no longer blogs (Maureen) buys things mainly from the Goodwill Outlet and sells them for about 20x what she paid for them, but the total sale is a lot less than what I’m used to (maybe around $20).  I, on the other hand, try to stay far away from the Goodwill Outlet – it can be a very scary place!  I buy mostly jeans, which are usually $6.99.  I started out buying ones that I could sell for at least $20, but now try to stick with ones I can sell for at least $40.  I dabble in shirts, dresses, shoes, purses, and things, but I love selling jeans.  I can crank out a jeans listing in 3 minutes.

As far as strategy goes, I’ve seen people having success having under 100 things listed, while some people have 1000 listing – it really depends on how much you are selling items for and your sell-through rate.  Personally, I am at my all time lowest with around 120 listings – hoping to get to 200 by the end of March.

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Feelin’ Lucky

Updated Jan Profit + Sales + BOLO

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Totally knew this was going to happen….the second after I hit post on my January profit post – I sold another item!  That makes my January profit over $1000!  My goal in February is to list on average 5 items a day.  This goal may seem small to some, but this is my “side hustle” and I still would like to have some time for myself!

Now, we are only less than 3 days into February and I haven’t listed a single item yet (which means I’m going to have to catch up and list 10 today and 10 another day instead of the goal of 5) but I still have made a $90 profit.

 

I wanted to talk about something that I have only recently found to be true.  The quality of your listing < the quantity of your listings.  Now this is only to a certain extant.  I used to spend upwards of 15 minutes on a listing, but now that this is my side business, I try to spend the least amount of time possible (averaging about 6-7 minutes per listing).  I used to use a light set-up, white background, and a Canon Rebel.  I now use my ceiling fan light, hardwood floors, and cell phone.  And you know what?  My sell through rate remains at about 50-60%.  If anything, I now price my items higher because I’m not worried about them selling all that fast and I have went from a 1 day handling time to a 2 day handling time.

I really cannot believe that I spend half as much time on my listings and selling just as much (in proportion to how much I list).  I wish I had known this all along, but if someone told me that, I probably would not have believed them.

Here’s something I sold today (note the crappy cell phone picture):

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GAP Jeans

Paid: $6.67

Sold: $29.99 +$6.35 S&H

Check back for a weekly profit update!

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Updated Jan Profit + Sales + BOLO

End of January Profit Report

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T-2 Hours until February 2016!  The first month of the year flew right by!  I accomplished a lot of personal goals (joined the gym, lost 5 lbs, purged my closet) and had an awesome month reselling.  This month, I’ll be honest – I didn’t list much….at all.  I estimate less than 50 items the whole month.  Regardless of my lack of listing, I still made out!  Mind you, eBay is now my “side hustle” so I’m not solely relying on income generated from eBay.  I will tell you that my eBay income is the only money I use for food, gas, and entertainment.  So if I’m not making money reselling – I’ll be starving and riding a bike everywhere….

Without further adieu – here is my January profit (which could increase in the next 2 hours since its only 10pm!)

Jan Profit

$995.24…So close to $1000!  Also, this is before taxes, so I set aside about $300 to pay taxes down the road.

And if you are wondering about this nifty program I use it’s called easy auctions tracker.  It is the best program I have found so far – it links everything with eBay so you don’t have to do any importing or flipping from excel to eBay.  You can buy it here (this is an affiliate link, I do get $5 if you purchase through this link, but if you don’t wish for me to receive any bonus, I still recommend you buy the program, it’s awesome!  And if you do purchase through this link – thank you!)

Purchase easyauctionstracker -> here

Check back this week for recent sales!  Happy thrifting!

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End of January Profit Report

The Year of the Blog

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New year, new blog!  flippingthrifty.com finally became available and is now my blog!  I had been waiting for this domain to be available for some time now.

This year I am determined to revamp my eBay selling and my blog.  I’ve definitely neglected both towards the end of 2015.  My profits for 2015 are impressive considering I only went full time for a few months, I unfortunately had a very inaccurate profit calculator towards the beginning of the year, but later on, I discovered easy auction tracker and fell in love with it! It is such a great program to compute your monthly and yearly profits.  In 2015, I profited about $20,000.  Pretty awesome considering I went only about 6 months full time, and by full time I mean about 20 hours a week!

Already 2016 is off to a great start!  I have profited right around $700 for the first three weeks.  I probably would’ve done a lot better had I listed some things, but I’ve been rather lazy these first few weeks.  Starting February, my goal is to list at least 20 items a week -not a lot, but keep in mind I now have a full-time corporate job.  My goal with this blog is to encourage everyone that they can find the time to sell on eBay!  It is easy and not very time consuming.  For me, 20 items a week will compute to less than 2.5 hours of actual listing/picture taking and probably about 3 hours of thrift shopping (which, let’s be honest, isn’t really work!)

In February, I plan to have a more structured blog, with weekly profit breakdowns and sales.  What do you guys want to see more of?

 

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The Year of the Blog