I've been pretty quiet lately. Summer is over and I've been focused on my reselling project. For the most part, things are going really well. As usual, I'm moving slowly. That's just how I work. I move slow, research, learn as I go, make mistakes, learn from my mistakes, and hopefully don't repeat those mistakes, and just try to move forward as I learn. Yes, I approach everything like crypto.
Now in the third or fourth week, I'm just trying to get everything organized. I ran a couple of weeks of test auctions, sourced some items from local thrift stores, started learning Google docs spreadsheets (which I may start using for my crypto trades), and I'm looking at different ways to store and inventory my items.
Another thing that had to get done was getting electricity into my garage. That was holding up a lot of stuff including some motorcycle repair stuff I wanted to work on. This reselling business finally motivated me to get that done. I may use a corner of the garage for inventory, storage, and shipping. For right now and probably until the first of the year, I'll just be using a corner of my home office for storage.
So I'm still working out all the details of sourcing, listing, storing, and shipping my items. I did purchase a scale for shipping after I discovered I get commercial shipping rates through eBay. Shipping is ridiculous now and every bit I save in discounts is more money I can keep as profit. The commercial rate shipping through eBay can save you several dollars on larger packages and decent enough savings on smaller packages too. It was worth buying a cheap scale off Amazon. It pays for itself over the next couple of months.
I'm not going into this completely blind, back in the early 2000s I had an importing business online that did a lot of eBay business. So I have a general idea of how to set things up and how things work on eBay. I will say that A LOT has changed and not always for the better. I'll write more about that in another post, it's not all bad though. There have been some considerable positive changes too. For instance, I love using the app for researching products and it makes listing really simple. Item listing has improved tremendously over the last 20 years or so!
My "list" to "sale" ratio is horrendous. These are the items I'm listing and how many sold vs how many did not sell. I need to get more selective. I'm learning as I go, and the important thing is covering costs while growing my inventory. I did have a couple that worked out though. I can see how this could be a numbers game with the number of auctions, and venues to sell at. Obviously, more is better, but I also want quality over quantity.
I like all the stuff I purchased though. One way or another, I'm confident I'll eventually sell the stuff. I've already covered my costs though, so at this point, I could just sell it off in lots at cost. I probably won't do that though. I'd like to source enough stuff to maybe do the occasional weekend flea-market or swap meet.
The good news is, my inventory is now covered so I can get out and source more stuff.
One good sale though paid for almost all my inventory! I liked this jersey a lot and thought about keeping it for myself. Bought for $4 USD and sold for $58 !!! Triple exclamation marks to show how excited I really am 😊 This covered all my inventory with many other products selling and many more that will sell in the future.
As many of you know The Dood is pagan and I have a pretty extensive collection of books on ritual magick. I decided to list a few and make some room on my bookshelf. While researching titles I discovered this copy of Francis Melville - Secrets of High Magic selling between $50 and upwards of $400. It's out of print and incredibly detailed. I decided to post it for $38 undercutting the lowest seller on eBay and sold it in 2 weeks. It was in mint condition though, I should have asked for a couple hundred. Right now though, it's all about quick flips and building some capital to source more stuff.
I also need to look for higher-return items. Most of what I bought to resell was smaller items that I just planned on making a few dollars each with. I'm changing up that strategy. I want to find items that I can at least 4X to 10X. That's going to take some time and practice though.
Well, I could go on and on but I'm going to end it here. I'll save the rest for another post. Going into this thing all I wanted was to see if I could earn enough to cover a couple of bills and some groceries. After about 3 weeks of selling, I'd say this fits the bill. So far I've made about $177 on eBay for the month and I also sold a few things totaling a little over $100 on Craigslist. So we'll say I earned around $250 after fees and shipping in my first 3 weeks and I had very little knowledge of what I was doing. I could see how this could start rocking and rolling. I'm really happy with my choice of side hustle right now!
I'll keep you all posted with more reselling updates in the future. Thanks for reading, and let's get out there and make that money! I think the best news is, I'm almost to the point where more money is coming in than is going out. That's all I'm looking for here. Cover some bills, and keep a little spending money without dipping into my trading nut!
Thanks for reading and happy hustling!