(Return of the Mack) Come on (Return of the Mack) Oh my God (You know that I’ll be back) Here I am (Return of the Mack) Once again (Return of the Mack) Pump up the world (Return of the Mack) Watch my flow (You know that I’ll be back) Here I go!
Love that song and hope it is now stuck in your head!
It’s been awhile (a loooong while) since I’ve done a Reseller Summary and there is a good reason for that, simply, I don’t have a lot of time with everything going on in my life, the day job, part part time reselling and the bubba. The data entry was fine as already part of some of the process but the time to get all the sales entered and then all data nicely formatted did take some time, probably minimum a couple of hours each summary, before I write the summary post! This is time that now could be better spent on critical activities like actual sleep… I joke, sort of.
Recently though I was lucky enough to enjoy a single planned day off tacked onto the back end of the weekend (my favourite kind of break, the three day weekend). I had planned to do some sort of eBay work on this day mainly to have a crack at catching up from all the stuff that I’ve found from the two Garage Sale Trail days, maybe list a few things etc…
With some fortuitous timing I got sidetracked talking to a fellow reseller named CaptainOpShopNerd (See Instagram) and we got brainstorming about automation and some ideas that he had been working on himself. After a little while thinking about this I decided what he was suggesting I could probably have a crack at getting done within this day off and to be honest a welcome detour from some of my least favourite aspects of reselling. I fired up the computer and set to work.
There were two simple ideas:
(Note: The full process of all the automation will be covered in another huge post.)
Idea #1 Automate eBay Sales Record
This was the data entry step that I hadn’t gotten around to previously which resulted in me having to data entry to generate figures for the previous summaries. I knew it was possible to automate this through eBays API but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. After speaking with Captain I thought at the time if I could get this working then maybe I could bring back the summaries with figures! This part was actually pretty straightforward and as usual should have done it agggggges ago. This process was completed by using a platform called Zapier and creating a Zap (The platform name for a set of process flows steps) which takes the Sales data from a paid status eBay sale, formats the data how I want and then adds to my Googlesheet.
I get an eBay sale now and it is automatically entered as a line item in my Googlesheet with fees, postage and cost of goods auto calculated. No more data entry.
Idea #2 Semi-Automate Reselling Time Tracking
I wanted to see live data, a monthly summary was great but its not quite the same as being able to see live progress and adjust my time focus if needed. I wanted to see listing rates per minute, $ amounts listed, how much I had spent for the month sourcing, fees, cash flow, etc…
Most importantly I wanted to see that true $ rate per hour to see if my reselling activities are working better than the day job.
To do this I needed a better way to track time. Previously I was doing this by using a google form which worked fine but I also found it a bit clunky in my process flow. An example would be getting to the storage unit and listing a few items. At the end of almost every session I would go to fill out the google form and be like ah when did I start again? This happened quite a few times and resulted in inaccurate times obviously.
This issue came up in conversations with the Captain and I posited that surely there was a way that an app could be used instead, start time, stop time, done?
Turns out after some research there are plenty of apps that track time but only a few that would interface with Zapier.
In the end I went with an app called Harvest. Getting this working took far longer than I would have liked and I learned a couple of little issues that can be created when working with Zaps and Googlesheets.
Within Harvest I created separate tasks for Sourcing, Listing, Packing and Shipping.
An example of my listing process is now:
Open App.
Select the task I am doing in the moment (listing).
Hit start.
Complete x amount of new listings and then when finished hit stop on the app.
The total time is automatically entered as a new line item in my Googlesheet against a listing activity.
There are some other neat little tricks which can be done using harvest as well but I’ll save those for the large blog post.
Recreating The Loot Machine
All of the data is pulled together in the Loot Machine dashboard (Googlesheet). Building on top of the theme that I built for the $5 Challenge alongside 2 Aussie Thrifters (See the published $5 Challenge Googlesheets dashboard here) I went with the same colour palette for the recreated dashboard sticking with the neon green. I wanted a simple layout.
An example from around the middle of the month.
The December 2020 Summary
The December 2020 View Of The Loot Machine Dashboard on 31st Dec 2020
Sales
December was everything that I hoped it wouldn’t be this year, slow, erratic and under performing. I had a sneaky suspicion that my physical location would actually work against me (Perth AU) with most of Australia customers residing on the East Coast and postal speed decreases experienced by AusPost.
Sure enough, in the lead up to xmas my sales were definitely down against some of the previous months.
The sales data in the Dashboard along with the fees, COGS, and shipping are all automated and live now. (With occasionally a shipping element needing a tweak or an addition to a VLookup Table when an old store item sells). I have moved to business policies now so don’t expect to have too many of these instances. The business expenses are still pulled in from a Google form and I still want to have a copy of the receipt for accounting and auditing purposes.
Listing
Its evident from the Dashboard above that I was a bit slack on listing this month however those figures are not truly accurate with some crossover observed as the listing element was only tied in for semi-automation towards the middle of the month. Nonetheless I was well aware that I should have been pushing a little more. I should note however that some of that time does include setting up a few bins for my helper, the listings and value of which wont be reflected until next month. (I have about 40 drafts almost ready to go).
An average of 2.8 listings a day is still pretty low and something that I will be looking to significantly increase throughout 2021.
Sourcing
As shown in the Dashboard above I spent up a little bit this month. It seemed like everywhere I went simply had good deals about. I know when I am spending a lot in a month I am effectively spinning the wheel, that is, investing a lot back into business inventory which is likely going to sit around for sometime. The problem I have is with limited time available I am having trouble getting the throughput to make spending this sort of amount of money worth it, by this I mean having money tied up in stock that’s going to sit.
On the plus side of this months spend (and in conjunction with the Monster Garage Sale trail hauls over the 2 days in November) I really don’t need to be out sourcing for a while.
Check out a December mission with the Aussie VHS Thrifter from early December.
Cashflow and Gross Profit Per Hour
The gross profit per hour is using net amounts, that is after fees, shipping, cogs, etc… I’m still calling it a gross amount because it does not (currently) account for tax still to be paid.
I was interested to see where the GPPH ended up for this month, being I had spent so much time sourcing Vs Listing and Packing I knew (from seeing the same occurrence previously in other summaries) that the rate was going to be pretty poor against some stellar previous numbers. The result was $35 GPPH which I am definitely OK with with the amount of time invested. If you make $35 per hour, that is the equivalent of a yearly salary of $69,160 which is a decent rate for a part time job on your own time frames.
I expect to do basically 50% less sourcing next month so would expect to see this number go up. By focusing on getting more items listed instead of sourcing I also would expect to sell more items. Both should have some positive flow on effects to both the GPPH and cashflow numbers. Now that I have listing recording semi-automated I am excited to see the true reflection to these numbers in the months ahead.
Cashflow was positive for the month but still pretty weak on account of the inventory spend.
January 2021
Whats the plan for next year? Good question, I have a few strategic ides to implement for 2021. I’ll be covering these in an upcoming blog post in conjunction with an appearance on a live YouTube Stream on the 8th Jan 2021.
My primary focus for January is:
To get as many items as I can listed. With basically no sourcing occurring I expect to see some awesome figures come out of this months efforts.
There will be another sourcing mission with Robbie Hollywood (Aussie VHS Thrifter) at the back end of Jan 2021.
A mini goal is to get all remaining clothing items processed by my helper. This should be around 75-100 items. There is a lot of potential profit tied up here.
May a year ago in 2019 had $750 in positive cash flow, was the best month on record at the time with some solid sales in the last few days of that month. Fast forward to The May Reselling Summary 2020 and May once again was another cracker of a month and becomes the new best month on record providing a cash flow of $2624 which excludes a couple of Facebook Marketplace sales and a cheeky $50 Cash bonus from a note found in some pants!
I even managed to meet my own Gold Star mark which I set myself back in the January 2020 Summary where I introduced a goal mark system to track my own score. I honestly didn’t think I would see this mark for some time and now this is the second month in a row where I have hit this target.
G sits above A.
The net profit per hour slipped below $100 an hour down to $85. I am still happy with this as I was a little slack on recording at times over the month and ended doing bulk entries. To ensure I wasn’t cheating (myself) I added an additional 20% to my time calculations, with this considered I’m very pleased with the result.
A side note on this: Part of me feels like a bit of a skite even publishing this number. I’ve even added it into the post title which feels click baity even though it’s not. After all, both where I’m from (NZ) and where I live (AUS) this sort of thing (skite) is somewhat frowned upon. That said, its here because:
I’m proud of it, I had to learn a lot over multiple years and put in the effort and hard work to get this number. I don’t view this number as a boast, I view it as a reflection of my efforts for reselling activities and a reminder that this number always must be better than my day job.
I want people to really thinkabout their reselling business and the time they are putting in vs what they are getting out of it. Even better track and record so able to constantly identify areas for improvement.
I want to put it out there to show what is potentially possible at least on a part time basis. Work smarter and more efficiently to make this number better.
Highlights of the May Reselling Summary include:
Highest amount of sales for any month.
Assisted with 2 Aussie Thrifters in getting the $5 Challenge up and running. (I’ll cover this is a separate post)
Sales
This month was exactly how I’d like to see things continue to progress. I sold 109 items vs 128 last month which, with higher revenue, translates to higher average sale price.
The month before (April) sat on a sell through rate of just over 12% and this month backed it up with a very respectable 10%.
No Sales Events For May 2020
I took a different tact this month by having no active sale events. I managed to generate an even better month but without all the sales I had running previously. It begs the question though, would have things been any better had I run another? There’s no way to know of course but I found it very interesting that I was able to generate solid $$$.
A nice little $2.50 flip
Time
The time spent this month was definitely up on April mainly due to getting out and doing some sourcing with the COVID restrictions easing. I figured that I might have the opportunity to pickup some bargains when the various Op Shops reopened. It was a bit hit and miss but I do thnk it was definitely worth it overall.
I still would have liked to get more listed. It’s still proving tricky to find the balance with work, reselling and life. Some days it seems truly natural and others it’s a slog.
I can say that this month I experienced the true extent of full time bandwidth utilisation, something that hasn’t occurred for many years.
Negative Nelly Time Sink
This month I received the first negative for quite some time. Infuriatingly it was for a $6 item. To make it even more annoying there was no contact, no conversation, just an angry vent because the buyer had actually damaged the item when they went to open it. Somehow this had become my fault, my issue. So I did what seemed natural and asked eBay to step in and remove the feedback. The buyer had literally stated that they had damaged the item. After an extremely long wait I had a conversation with a rep (chat) and nope, they would not even look at it until I had made contact with the buyer… Sigh. I contacted the buyer, refunded their money and asked for a feedback revision which they did. There’s probably many that won’t agree with this but its $6 and I have been over this before. My time is more important than wasting hours chasing a literal couple of dollars.
Chalk it up as a time wasting loss (tax deductible) and move on.
Sourcing
I did spend a bit this month, $607 to be precise. Things opened up and I really took the opportunity to grab a few bargains that I thought might be lurking with people slow to get back into Op Shopping mode.
I used some 50% vouchers for Good Sammys a couple of times this month. For those wondering how I have so many I received 4 at Xmas time as a gift.
Procured some more free bubble wrap from my active Facebook marketplace advert. I haven’t had to pay for bubble wrap in some time now which has been great.
Start Of A New Collection
I posted about starting my Linkin Park collection last month and am happy to say that everything that I purchased finally turned up after some delay.
As I had hoped in my opinion I got a bargain. I paid $100 for several posters all from the early 2000s in decent condition along with various small items like guitar picks, badges, patches, hats and a couple of T-Shrts all for $100 including shipping.
Poster Snapshot
I turned out better than expected as I had brought the Tshirts unseen. One was a bootleg from Thailand but the other was a 2001 original that goes for around $80 by itself on eBay. Were I to sell the two Tshirts I would have my money back.
Thailand Bootleg2001 Original
The posters are amazing and I might sell a couple of the magazine insert type ones along with perhaps the hat and see if that will be enough to retrieve my money.
Great start.
Listings
I did achieve some listings for the month but after selling so much the total store listings actually dropped again. I fell very short of my minimum daily average goal for the month. I did however list several higher value items which I had been sitting on for some time annnnnnnd funnily sold most of them within 2 days. Such a classic example of where I could have mobilised that money tied up into further use.
This month I have been using the eBay app and I have somewhat changed my opinion on it now that it seems to be functioning better. Most of my listings this month were with the phone and use of the remove background tool.
It’s definitely not quite as fast as using the PC combined with AHK and the other productivity augments however being truly mobile it has allowed me to get a few extra listings up at odd times where I found an extra 5 minutes to do so.
Coming up in July I will Be using a combination of both as I have some incoming pictures and measurements from my contractor. I hope to push through 100+ listings for the month to keep from falling through 1000 active listings.
Reselling Fails
This is not a usual segment. However this month I made a couple of errors. It’s comical really, especially considering how simple and basic these were to achieve.
Wrong Person Postage
I managed to mix up and send 2 different games to the wrong people. This was caused simply by wrapping the items first and then sticking the wrong label on the item. Thankfully the buyers were understanding to some degree and actually remailed the items to each other so they ended up with what they ordered! I also cushioned this by adding a partial refund for each person of $7 for their time.
I lost money and time here.
Pony Pal Fail
I sold a bulk lot of Pony Pal books to the US and had not calculated the postage weight correctly when I set the item listing. This resulted in me just breaking even overall on the account of my Band 4 international discount, otherwise this would have been a loss. I do pay much more attention to this when listing these days and actually overstate the weight on things like Tshirts to 1: Ensure I never lose out on shipping. 2: Make a small amount from the shipping which helps cover the additional time required to go into the post office to lodge over the counter.
Lesson learnt, weigh items if not sure on weight. More dead time here.
The Ghosts of Inventory Past
I had a couple of times this month where I was left searching for items after they had sold. A couple of times they had the totally incorrect SKU which meant I had to have a rough guess at where they might be, resulting in, you might have guessed, more time wasted. Attention to detail on the front end required will result in less wasted time on the back end.
The Return From Italy During COVID-19 Final
Unfortunately there is no good news here.
I sent out an email to the address supplied on the shipping record. Nothing came back so I must assume the worst has actually occurred.
Rest In Peace.
You did your fellow Italian countrymen a great service.
You are a hero.
June Coming Up
Both May and June last year were my best months for reselling in the year 2019. A significant portion of my store is geared towards sports related clothing and winter clothing, mainly jeans. I am hoping this year will be the same if not better than last. With there at least potential for some sport to resume later this year I may see some of these items begin to move.
Tax Time Planning
Tax time is fast approaching again and I need to get a handle on whether I should be looking to make some business related purchases in this financial year to reduce my gross business income. As I only implemented my current custom system on Jan 1 I have a hodgepodge of records to organise.
If you have any suggestions for what might be a good business purchase feel free to leave a comment below. I already have this year upgraded by mouse and keyboard, I already have 2x Thermal printers, I could prepay some postage in bulk, I.E stamps. I have been thinking about a new chair as my current one kills my back after sitting for a while.
Perhaps an Apple Watch? Hmmmm
Investigate A Storage Unit
Things are getting to the point now where it actually might be viable to go out and secure some storage space. I have driven past a newly built storage building less than 5km from my house now for the last few weeks.
It’s a tax deduction and I would also be able to reclaim actual living space in my house which I know my wife would be thrilled about.
April was my best month yet from my reselling endeavours. I even managed to meet my own Gold Star mark which I set myself back in the January 2020 Summary where I introduced a goal mark system to track my own score. I honestly didn’t think I would see this mark for some time. G sits above A.
As you can see above the net profit per hour is still above $100 an hour for the second month on the trot combined with higher volume as well which I am happy about.
A side note on this: Part of me feels like a bit of a skite even publishing this number. I’ve even added it into the post title which feels click baity even though it’s not. After all, both where I’m from (NZ) and where I live (AUS) this sort of thing (skite) is somewhat frowned upon. That said, its here because:
I’m proud of it, I had to learn a lot over multiple years and put in the effort and hard work to get this number. I don’t view this number as a boast, I view it as a reflection of my efforts for reselling activities and a reminder that this number always must be better than my day job.
I want people to really thinkabout their reselling business and the time they are putting in vs what they are getting out of it. Even better track and record so able to constantly identify areas for improvement.
I want to put it out there to show what is potentially possible at least on a part time basis. Work smarter and more efficiently to make this number better.
Highlights of April include:
A new daily reselling high score.
Highest amount of sales for any month.
Highest sell through rate for any month.
Sales
This month was out of control, I sold 128 items over the month vs 69 the month before on a sell through rate of just over 12% which is far superior to the previous 3 months which each sat in between 6-7%.
The Coronavirus was obviously a huge factor in this, people at home choosing to shop online. I did have a sale which ended early in the month and I followed this up with a 30% off book sale on my higher priced items. There were a few sales in there for sure which on a time basis were not worth the reward after the sale amount slashed it but these were only a few and the increased traction through the rest of the store seemed to pick up.
Had some solid sales this month with several items leaving at over $100.
Some interesting YouTube reselling conversations resulted in me joining the #puzzleclub and listing all of the puzzles that I had had lying around for a while. Cheers to 2AussieThrifters and The Mad Tatter for getting me motivated there. As soon as I jumped off the stream I listed 5 Ken Duncan Puzzles before I went to bed. The next morning I sold 4/5 within an hour. Strike while the reselling irons hot! Over the next couple of weeks I sold several other puzzles I made the effort to get listed. Would I still pickup Ken Duncans moving forward? Yes, but only for personal completion.
Time
The time spent this month was definitely an improvement on March, I still would have liked to get more listed. I did find it difficult to manage working at home and getting items listed. Perhaps this is the new normal with a bubba for the moment.
Sourcing
No Sourcing completed for the month, sort of. I didn’t actually go to any Op Shops as they are still closed. I briefly used my Facebook Search Shove a couple times and made a couple of inquires on items. Both were a bust, one I was just too late and the other for some reason the guy did not reply to several messages even when I indicated I was keen to buy. Eventually he responded that they were available just not right at the moment. Bewildered I said ok let me know when they become ‘available’ and moved on. Perhaps it was Covid19 related but will probably never know. Outside of this I did not actively look nor have I posted my wanted ad yet.
I did purchase a bulk lot of choose your own adventure books. I am undecided whether to class this as actual stock yet as I want to compile the collection for Leela over the next few years (or maybe for dad to read with Leela). Anyway I paid just a little bit more than I really wanted to when factoring reselling but I didn’t have much choice as they were located outside my region and with restrictions on regional state travel here still in place I couldn’t pick them up. Still, I had a nice conversation with the people selling and they actually agreed to throw in some other similar books called twista plots as well. I could probably sell these and retrieve 1/3 of the cost leaving me with the choose your own adventures. For now these remain as a personal purchase.
Start Of A New Collection
A while ago I had found a Linkin Park tour T-shirt from 2007 in a rural thrift shop. Not long after Chesters death in 2017 I had the opportunity to buy a bulk lot of Linkin Park T-shirts but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s funny, reflecting on growing up when I encountered a situation where someones favourite person / idol had died that they were affected so much. I couldn’t understand it at the time. They didn’t know this person directly, sure it was sad and often tragic in most cases but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Chesters death however crushed me, I still vividly remember finding out off hand in a random conversation and I refused to believe it. I was also shocked just how shook up I was. Their music has gotten me through some seriously dark and shitty times and also really resonated with me through some great times. They are still are my favourite band. Chester’s death also forced me to reevaluate my own life again, after all how could someone who seemed to have conquered so many battles still succumb to the darkness and despair. I felt lost listening to any of their music and even found new meaning in some of there newer music in light of his death. After a while I couldn’t even listen to the music any more as every time I did I found myself upset. What was once a source of great strength for me had turned into anguish. I now finally understood what others had been trying to explain to me all those years ago.
I’m not sure what changed this month but I found myself pulled towards wanting to begin a collection of Linkin Park memorabilia. I already had the tour T-Shirt to kick things off so I began looking around the various platforms.
So far I have purchased a couple of tour T-Shirts one from eBay and one from Gumtree. The Gumtree one will be interesting as I paid via PayPal and specifically asked for a tracking receipt once sent. This was over a week ago. See what happens but I may have to open my first PayPal chargeback as a buyer already, just have that feeling about it.
I also came across a listing in another part of the country and convinced the person to send me these items. They haven’t turned up yet so I’ll wait to share what I got. In my opinion, a bargain, but what I will say is that it always pays to UpSource, ask the question, I’m also looking for X,Y and Z do you have any of these also? In the Choose Your Own Adventure purchase this question turn into FREE extra books to get the deal over the line. In the Linkin Park purchase it actually turned into other Linkin Park memorabilia shipped all together at an extremely good price.
An interesting query fell out of this, could it be possible to claim this collection as office furnishings as I intend to hang T-shirts etc… A grey area I am sure but will be following up with the accountant. I will also be posting a little more about creating collections using reselling in the future.
Listings
I did achieve some listings for the month but after selling so much the total store listings actually dropped by over 50. I just fell short of my minimum daily average goal for the month and also failed to list some of my higher value items that really should have taken priority, shoes for example.
I am reselling things faster than I can get them listed. Good problem to have I suppose. Just tricky to find that balance with working full time, packing what I’m already selling and spending time with the family.
I did have an extra day off scheduled for April but this got put on the back burner. With all of the Covid19 going on it seemed smarter to hang onto any accrued annual leave days for a rainy day… That said with things calming down somewhat I may be able to take the day that I have scheduled in May to attempt to get as many items processed as possible.
I finally got listed the vintage fantasy posters I have been siting on for over a year now. I have 93 at a cost of approximately 25c each and I just sold my first set of 5 for over $80 (figures captured in May revenue). Turns out they are actually vintage Lord Of The Rings so I don’t think I’ll have trouble selling them all over time. This should turn $25 into over $1000. Not to shabby at all but considering I only had to make one listing for all of them this should have been done much sooner.
The Death Pile
The reselling death pile still exists though it is shrinking relatively fast. For the moment I have listed most of the books and random sort of hard goods that I had stacked away. Remaining includes now: a bunch of PS2 systems and games, a box of random DVD box sets, old vintage cameras, various shoes, several guitar hero controllers and some other small items.
I also have a couple of tubs full of cards and other small items. Shrinking yes but still plenty to keep me out of trouble for this month and next.
Business Expenses
Paid entire years PO Box rental. Got this out of the way and accounted for the entire cost in this month.
Brought a new mouse to replace my old one I actually wore out and simultaneously upgrade my productivity. I wrote an entire post about the benefits. You can read here.
The remaining months business expenses relate to purchase of postage mainly – stamps.
A Return From Italy !
The end of the month gave me a return all the way back from Italy in the middle of COVID19.
Needless to say I had many questions as it was unclaimed.
I’ll cover this separately in an upcoming post.
May Coming Up
Both May and June last year were my best months for reselling in the year 2019. A significant portion of my store is geared towards sports related clothing and winter clothing, mainly jeans. I am hoping this year will be the same if not better than last. With there at least potential for some sport to resume later this year I may see some of these items begin to move. If not it doesn’t matter I am happy to wait and have also turned down a few low ball offers over the course of April related to sports memorabilia in particular.
Tax Time Planning
Tax time is fast approaching again and I need to get a handle on whether I should be looking to make some business related purchases in this financial year to reduce my gross business income. As I only implemented my current custom system on Jan 1 I have a hodgepodge of records to organise.
If you have any suggestions for what might be a good business purchase feel free to leave a comment below. I already have this year upgraded by mouse and keyboard, I already have 2x Thermal printers, I could prepay some postage in bulk, I.E stamps. I have been thinking about a new chair as my current one kills my back after sitting for a while.
The Multi User Access Permissions
I noted this in a recent eBay update and have been hanging out for this to be honest. I already outsource my photos for some items and this will allow the draft listings to be created also. This will allow me to stick to the best part of the process.
What a solid month. Remember when you read this that I’m part time and we have a 12 week old bubba also!
This month I have added the net profit figure per hour so I can track how this is trending. The only goal here is to beat my the hourly rate from my day job. On a net basis of both then this figure does.
I hit the combined cash flow goal of $1000 for the month which I’m pretty happy about being less days in February.
On a time basis spent January and February ended up being almost identical. The only thing here that is evident is more time listing is required and less time sourcing!
Sourcing
This month was supposed to be a lean sourcing month. I even joined a separate Facebook group for Sourcing Ban Support. Even so I spent 8 hours actually out sourcing and $224 total.
Any time spent here directly affects my equivalent hourly rate and yes of course sourcing is required but not when I still have hundreds of items that need listing!!!
Still, I made the most of what I did do.
Again my favourite Op Shop delivered the goods which a large clothing haul and a stack of books for the princely sum of $10. If only multiples of this shop existed.
I finally used up one of my
xmas presents (A 50% off coupon for Good Sammys). I had actually gone there to
drop off some baby clothes for donation and ended up picking up a few rugby
related items and some shoes. Saved $39 on face value (shoes were a little
overpriced). Should be able to recoup $180 pretty easily.
This got me thinking, a trip to
some of the other larger stores will be a good idea on one of those up coming
days.
Had a couple of lunch time
loot stops that were quite successful. Visited a Salvos for the first time that
I had driven past hundreds of times and never stopped. As soon as I walked into
this one I was disappointed, this store was huge but had the boutique feel straight
away. I knew pickings would be slim. Sure enough found a pair of Levis and they
were asking $17…, on another (fake) pair the same, I shook my head.
But at the back of the store on the book shelf was a huge stack of Star Trek books and they were only asking $1 each which is a good deal. There were a couple of larger ones which were $3 each. There were 30 books in total and I negotiated to $30 for all saving the princely sum of $5.
Personal Sourcing
One of the reasons I love this business so much is that it is possible to massively over time upgrade your life. Take the below example whilst cruising the Salvos isles one day. A Fat Max Toolbox for $7. I had been looking for a decent toolbox for a while.
$7 From The Salvos
And the equivalent listing on eBay:
A nice little saving of probably at least $50.
Another example, some time ago I took off a light fixture in the Garage. One Friday night I got motivated to clean up the garage and the absence of this fixture made it to my Hot List (read To Do List). Whilst out sourcing everywhere I went I looked for one of these fixtures to replace it. Eventually I found one new in a box at a Vinnies clearance outlet. Total cost $2.
I also scored some white Vans which were dirty for $7 and cleaned them up. Saving the equivalent of around $50. More on those further below.
I my favourite find of the month was the below book from the tip shop. I’m always on the lookout for discarded comics, even totally damaged ones as I use them as christmas and birthday wrapping for my family presents. Something a bit different. I came across this book and originally thought someone had simply pulled out all the comic strips from the book but its actually hundreds of pages of newspaper cut outs which have been painstakingly glued in to this collation. Theres not really any monetary value here at all but I can truly appreciate the amount of time that it took to create this book and am glad that it didn’t just get added to landfill. Eventually these comics will form wrapping paper and the comics will again be read once more, life extended.
Listing
Huge listing start for Feb with a 34 day list inn only a couple of hours – A new PB.
Then listing tapered off a lot in the days following. I was getting towards the end of my stockpiled listing photo bank with approx. 55 remaining.
Subcontractor used to process some further clothing finds from January Providing another 25ish (at a cost which will be captured in March).
Had plenty of small finds that need photographing from the January sourcing missions which I got to one Sunday afternoon later in the month.
Found a block of time on the 12th (a scheduled day off) to get some more listings done and then in the last couple of days I had a huge push on the back of a Facebook group challenge ending up listing 100 for the week.
Combined I smashed my goal of average 3 listings per day and even surpassed the stretch goal of 5 per day average. Lets hope this surge pushes into March sales.
The Return Of The 3 Day Weekends
As I was doing pre-bubba I need to schedule some 3 day weekends to get more items listed! (Which I have now since scheduled throughout the year).
Aside from scheduled public holidays I have booked 8 days, to make 8 x 3 day weekends which still leaves another 12 days free for holidays 😉 on top of the stash that I already have.
There are 2 of these days available to me in March (including scheduled public holiday)
Further Listing Optimising
I spent some time optimising and revising listings to meet seller standards of Top Rated Seller Plus. I had just over 600 listings which weren’t meeting the Plus standard and I modified these to reflect Free shipping, 1 day handling, 30 day returns and an additional express shipping option.
By having all of these
conditions met these items experience a boost in search / best match.
I also made a point to fix a few older items had some errors relating to auto accept / decline values for offers (as I had moved the price down). I would think any error on a listing like that would probably not make it show in search.
A few others had calculated postage and / or pricing errors (mainly relating to shipping) which I amended. Items such as DVDs and games had the shipping as $13.80 satchels which is a legacy dollar figure, I’m not sure how that has actually occurred. Anyway, these listings were NEVER going to sell the way they were so this exercise was definitely productive.
Of course there are the item specifics that require fixing as well but I chipped away at those and now are down to a measly 22 on lower value items (made sure to sort all the higher value items as a priority). The upcoming March Item Specifics update which I will then need to amend another 60 odd according to the app.
Welcome To The Shoe Game
I finally began cleaning some of the shoes I have had lying around for ages. I’ve been putting this off for a while, I think in part, as I’m not 100% sure on what cleaning products work the best and have a real fear of damaging product. This is of course stupid. The ones I have previously picked up are all higher value items, its insane that I have left them so long.
Case in point though, I found some white vans out one day which were dirty for $7 that I thought could be cleaned up.
I attempted to clean and turned one shoe pink… This then resulted in having to find a way to bleach. The end result worked out well but this kind of highlighted why I have shied away from shoes initially.
BeforeBeforeI turned one shoe pick using a combination of Sard Satin Remover and one of those cheap red cloths from Bunnings. They Cleaned Up Like New
Sales
February has been a solid month, improving against January 2020 and also against up 110.1% against February 2019, cant argue with that performance.
At one point my effective hourly rate was running at $80 per hour before dropping off as sourcing and listing time made their respective impacts.
This month I have added the sell through rate to record this trend. The initial result of around 7% is a little lower than others that sell similar (from a previous post this sits 10%) but I’m guessing my prices are a little more elevated also. None the less will be good it I can get this figure.
The first 10 days of February
were amazing in comparison with January, after just this short amount of time
sales were already at 66% of Januarys overall total with almost 3 weeks to go!
A couple of notes here:
I started being a little less
greedy for offers coming in. If I was making at least $15-$20 I was taking them
even if I might have got another $5-10 by holding out.
Spent a little bit of time
sending offers out this month on a couple of occasions which generated one
direct sale and one other sale which ended up being full price but to another
buyer the next day. Coincidence? Maybe but I’m thinking the activity might have
helped boost the item in search.
The Top Rated Seller Plus and
other item tweaks must have helped a lot. Case in point a $50 T-Shirt which had
sat for ages sold a day later after removing the postage charge and adding an
express shipping option.
Upselling
This month I sold a jumper to a buyer who was quite time heavy with message interactions. This was a relatively new buyer who preferred making payments via bank transfers, fine by me. This buyer actually made the comment that another seller had refused to provide bank account details for a $20 Tshirt to which I replied please feel free to have a look around my store for anything else that may be of interest. Result, another $35 sale and no additional shipping cost as both fit in one small satchel. Customer service matters.
Returns
I had one return of some ink
which was sold with a dyslexic title. I swear this killed my sales for the next
few days. I had been happily ticking along averaging over $100 sales every day
and then boom crickets for 2 days following the return request.
Then just when I was getting that sorted with issuing the refund boom another one for an item does not fit. That ones all good as buyer pays return shipping BUT I cant help but think it’s the same issue, if you have a return open it seems like you get punished. I saw a few other resellers on Instagram this month saying the same thing. Conspiracy theory perhaps but there does appear to be some truth to it. Indeed after this new return request came in, guess what, 0 sales for that day…
Random Sale
Random Sale From The Tip Shop. COGS basically $0.
Other Business Improvements
This month I put a Facebook Marketplace post and a Gumtree post asking for free Bubblewrap. I spent a bit of time crafting the message. Amazingly a lady contacted me the very next day and said she had a box available. The amazing part was that a third person who had gone to this lady’s house to buy packing boxes actually mentioned my ad. So second hand information.
Anyway the box was huge and I shouldn’t need bubble wrap for a good long time. I’m still looking for a more regular source though so ill leave the ads up for now and see if anything else comes of it.
Health
I have been looking for
consistent ways to achieve a daily edge, whether that be for work or general
life.
Mushroom Coffee
This was a new one for me but recommended by a friend. I brought some Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee mix. Tastes like coffee he says but gives you a “zing” (his words) without the jitters commonly incurred with excess caffeine consumption. I know I drink too much coffee, but I need something to keep me awake operating on reduced sleep with the new bubba.
The reviews on Google and Amazon were very favourable.
My own experience was reflective of what others have experienced. My thoughts became clear and focused and I found I was even able to effectively concentrate with multiple distractions going on all around, for example people talking really loudly in the office.
I even had a cup 20 minutes before I was due to go up and speak in front of 60+ people (that I wouldn’t recommend as I found myself wanting to actually calm down a little bit) but the speech turned out great in part I’m sure thanks to this coffee.
Definitely worth giving a go if your looking for an edge. Grab yourself some here.
The Daily Stoic Book by Ryan Holiday
Received this book as a birthday present and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Have been posting a daily screenshot of it on Insta. A couple of people have asked about the book itself so here is the link if you would like your own copy.
Personally I am considering adding my own thought notations on each page with the year. Then adding to it each year.
The Keto diet continues in Feb combined with some bouts of intermittent fasting. I briefly touched 86.13 kgs (189.9lbs) and am currently hovering around 86.63 kg. This is almost 50% of my goal acheieved after just 2 months of 2020.
Carb Refeeds
Had first carb refeed on a night out mid month. All white rices combined with some Katsu chicken. Interestingly I lost more weight in the day following this when I switched back into ketosis by fasting again until lunchtime. Perhaps a good way to break the plateau.
The second was at the end of the month with some stodgy Chinese food. This left me feeling like I had eaten cement and again interestingly I had some negative thoughts from the past return not long after consumption. I’m not sure if this was guilt or perceived guilt or somehow the hyper dose of carbs affecting things? The next day another fast till after lunch and feeling much better again. I like the new Keto normal.
Keto Keto Keto
Received another new book again (also for my Birthday). Looking forward to trying out some recipes (especially the one for Almond Bread). Keto is how I have knocked 10kg off in 2 months.
Currently Reading
This book is a true monster.
I’m listening to the Audiobook version and its 42 hours long! That’s more than 4x the standard long form Audiobook.
So far I have been impressed with the content (4 hours in). If you want improve multiple aspects of your life, then this is a great blueprint to use to start with.
As I touched on in last months summary health is a huge factor in overall quality of life as well as directly impacting financial resource requirements with correlations to age.
By spending some more up front now I hope to improve overall quality of life right now and save a huge amount of money over the long term.
I don’t see this as anything other than a win win.
High Strength Organic Spirulina – Source of chlorophyll, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamins B6 and B12, as well as vitamin K, selenium and antioxidants.
Vitamin C – Immunity Support And Reduce Length Of Common Colds.
Yes there are a few there! In reality the upfront expense really isn’t that bad. Just adjust spending from somewhere else to accommodate.
Exercise
Exercise plans for the month were hit and miss.
I continued with the daily 100 pushups for most of the month but had trouble integrating the additional burpees. I think at least for a week I was fighting off another sinus infection so I made a conscious decision to ease off a bit. I did not want a relapse of the 3 month sinus infection saga from 2019 which required antibiotics intervention.
March needs to be better from an exercise point of view, back to the daily 100 pushups and try again to reintegrate the daily 10 burpees.
March Goals:
Continue listing and get those troublesome items listed (namely heaps of cameras and some old posters that I have multiples on).
Suspend Sourcing.
Continue with other reselling secondary projects. Details still to come later.
Welcome to the first Reselling January 2020 summary. This year’s going to be epic.
Straight up if you have read these summaries in the past you will immediately notice a difference in how the figures are presented. I’ve spent a bit of time massively improving some internal systems which as an added bonus spit out these nice summary figures which can be tailored to analyse a number of different business aspects.
In the Year Of The Turtle post regarding goals I had left things somewhat vague other than a minimum listing target. After creating the reporting dashboards I decided to set up my own personal scorecard and give myself a grade each month. For now the grade is based on the overall goal to pay off my investment property in 5 years or less, after which the rent proceeds from this house should allow me to take things semi full time while allowing epic amounts of time with bubba.
Realistically I need at least $1000 net each month to be applied across to the investment loan. To succeed fully this will need to be even more but I have five years and this seems like a great place to start.
So therefore for 2020 the score card will be set like this with totals for the month:
$500 or less: D – Colour Red. If I end up here for the month I probably stuffed something up badly like overspending on either inventory, other expenses or subcontractor costs.
$500-$1000: C – Colour Orange. I would call this range the OK range, not great but towards the top end heading towards the $1000 mark is close to where I’m gunning for.
$1000-$1500: B – Colour Yellow. Minimum target met but a little bit like a B at university, have put in some solid work but could still be improved upon.
$1500-$2000: A – Colour Green. At this level consistently the goal will be easily achieved and ahead of schedule.
$2000+: G – Colour Gold – A throwback to the primary school gold stars. Above this level for this year will make me very happy.
All of the above will have either a + or – added to the grade as well to define which side of the range the result sits on. For example a C- would be $500-$750 where as a C+ would be from $750-$1000.
Also to note is that the total net figure will also include recovered cost of goods sold. I have already outlaid thousands of dollars over the last year and a half on inventory, it Is time now to recoup some of my initial investment here and move it across to the investment property.
So without further ado, behold, January’s figures:
A couple of notes:
The store value and total listings is compared against October 2019 values as I did not calculate Novembers and Decembers due to time prioritisation commitments with the new bubba.
The other business expenses for this month are definitely out of the ordinary and include additional shipping associated with the bush fire relief (covered further below) and the purchase of a couple of office supplies including a new desk. All tax deductions of course.
I am aware that this is 30 days and that January has 31 days, this for me is a rolling scorecard and at the moment I don’t feel like I am deriving any extra value from spending the extra time to go back an modify formulas for one day. If anything the results will always be a little better than what is posted.
The Magic of Tracking
This month I started logging time in the interest of continual business improvement. I think it will be very useful to be able to reflect where tweaks could be made to improve profitability or identify potential time sinks in all areas of the business. Indeed there was an interesting discussion on The Australian Resellers group page recently on just this question – What defines a part time seller?
This month across all aspects
of sourcing, listing, packing and shipping I have spent:
28 hours for the month which equates to 7 hours per week which in my view is definitely part time.
Sales Update
It was a very slow start for January, closely I suspect (hope) due to lack of free available funds by many people contributing towards the ongoing bush fires.
Looking back against Jan 2019s figures of $723.15 net on 30 sales against 421 listings with a total listed value of $15889. The Jan 2020s results have been, in contrast, quite average considering I have just popped over 1000 active listings with more than double the total store value.
However, considering that I sold 0 high value items, (that is anything over $100) for the entire month I guess I should actually be pretty happy with this result.
Another factor which may have played a part could be the non-existent listing in December effectively flowing through into early January.
A Failed Sales Run
Tried to run a store sale with a rule, 15% discount on all orders over $40. This would have been my largest sale dollar amount to date and after I created the Sale + Markdown event only 1 listing showed in the sale initially! I check back 2 days later and there were 7. Well below the 326 that should have been in the sale…
I actually followed this up via an eBay chat and was informed that, if the same items were in the previous sale that has just ended then they would have to wait 5 days before being automatically added to the new sale… My previous sale had been 8% storewide so this was definitely true.
Something to keep in mind for future sales.
Changing The Store Name
I finally got around to changing the store name and updated the cover and icons with the new icon set. I’ve listened to Pure Hustle Podcast a lot and distinctly remember them saying with their interview with Sell Quick Ship Quick that it wasn’t a good idea to make huge sweeping changes across the store. Sure enough there was a slight lull but picked straight back up afterwards.
Business Fun For A Great Cause
It was my great pleasure along with the support of my wife and good friend from work that we were able to support 2AussieThrifters and their live YouTube bushfire donation fundraising event with a painting and drawing respectively being put up for auction and raising over $300.
This took place on the 12th Jan 2020 over several hours and featured fellow resellers live from around the world coming together and offering their own items up for auction on the live stream with all winning bid amounts being applied to one of 3 different charities, all of which are directly involved with the ongoing bushfires across Australia. Together as group the total raised was a massive $12,000+ for the cause.
You can see the replay on the YouTube link below, skip to 4 hours 35mins 30secs to see my appearance along with my beautiful wifes Painting and friends drawing.
Skip to 4 hours 35mins 30secs to see my appearance along with the beautiful Painting and drawing.
January Business Improvements
A reorganised packing station is working well, being able to find things easily unsurprisingly leads to improved efficiencies with packing and shipping times.
Buying stamps in bulk has led to some notable improvement with time savings by not having to go into the actual post office.
Setup a new tracking system for the business which will pay dividends in both visualisation snapshots of the business and record keeping for both analysis and tax purposes. I’m still tweaking various workflows but am pretty happy with how it’s come together. Come tax time I will be able to have everything for the year organised very easily which will be in sharp contrast to last financial year where it took hours to get everything organised.
Previously providing the monthly updates were quite time consuming, with the way the tracking system is setup now I can get a snapshot at the months end accurately and extremely easily. All of the figures you see in this months report are from the dashboard of this system.
More on this system later in the year as I believe it could really help others across a number of different areas. Will spend the next few months with further testing and making it even better.
Finally got around to completing the business cards and getting them printed. One afternoon I was, for want of a better word, inspired and just sat down and smashed the whole design out. 2 sided, gloss finish, 100 cards for just under $40 delivered. One side with the usual stuff like logos and contact details, the reverse with a segmented list of reselling items I’m looking for. As previously written about I know most of the local managers, I cannot really see any downside to handing these out, especially when I already have so much stock on hand. Lets see how much sourcing comes to me over the next 6 months. The cards themselves came back from the printer and the text was slightly blurry due to the font sizing. Not totally unreadable but needs fixing for the next run.
So far I have used them twice, one when talking to a staff member in a Vinnies and the second time I handed one to a guy I know quite well at a local Salvos. I am being super selective where handing these out. I think its important to make sure those relationships are firmly established before attempting this. One of the reasons for starting to actually roll this out is that after some reflection it is becoming increasingly clear that sourcing from some of these larger chain stores is becoming an inefficient use of my time. If I get a couple of calls in 6 months about this it will be worth it I am sure. Guess will see how it pans out.
Also it is critical to note that I am NOT doing this at all at the local “honey holes” I spoke about during my 2020 plan, the items I find at those shops are already awesome and cheap to boot. Don’t shit where you eat.
Sourcing Theory
Well this area was supposed to be non-existent, as previously stated I have heeeeaps of items sitting in the death / money pile. But like many a reseller, I broke my own rule and took some sourcing opportunities where they were effective use of my time.
I had a small mission on
December 31st 2019 which was actually quite fun as the stores were
empty owing to New Years eve. I recommend going sourcing on this day, staff
were friendly, places were empty. Thoroughly enjoyable. In my mind this was
technically still 2019 so I wrote this off as my last hoorah at the time.
The remainder of January featured some truly selective sourcing. The following are about as efficient and effective as I think I could possibly get (aside from digital sourced with delivery). I spent a grand total of $157 on a massive 115 items in only 7 hours. This is part time sourcing truly at its best. I estimate there’s easily well north of $700 in value.
Opportunity #1
I had to visit the local tip one weekend on the direction of my wife. Whilst there I took the opportunity to peruse the tip shop they have as this required no extra time to do so. I actually left my wallet at home thinking I wouldn’t need it, always the way. After quickly looking around I came across a good condition Gilbert Rugby body armour set and several vintage PC games. I’m guessing someone had thrown out a big box of these and the guys at the tip had rescued them. Anyway, I had $10 in my pocket, so when I walked up to one of the guys and said how much for all this? I was fully expecting to have to put a few things back. Today was my lucky day however and $10 took it all including over 20 vintage games (all later determined in good condition aside from a couple of broken cases, 1 was a bootleg), the Gilbert gear and a vintage QLD drink holder from the 70s, 80s or 90s (determined from a combination of the phone number and the use of Golden Fleece on the holder (a vintage petroleum brand). For a visit that had to happen (going to the tip), I was very happy to walk away with well over $400 worth of resale value (20x$20 games, excludes the drink holder and Gilbert Rugby Gear). So far I have sold one game for $20 and the drink holder for $45. Well into the money here.
Next time I’m bringing more cash money.
Opportunity #2
I finished work one day
having to go to a shop to buy some items (work related). It was on the way home
and literally around the corner was a clearance outlet, less than a 1 minute
drive.
20 minutes spent and came away with a couple of tennis shirts, 3 hats (including 2 Guinness flat hats) @ 50c each, and 5x 8 Track Tapes! These blew me away, first time I have seen them in physical form – ever. Anyway they don’t appear super valuable but should return an easy $10 profit each. I cherry picked the best 5 of 10 available.
Opportunity #3
The day job resulted in a reconnaissance mission down south through some country towns. Conveniently through towns I have been meaning to get to for a long long time as obviously being so far out, fellow resellers are in much lower numbers and therefore potential treasure likelihood increases.
I utilised my lunch break to peruse a couple and was not disappointed coming away with some bread and butter items along with a couple of gems such as an ACME Sydney 2000 hat and a Pokemon 1996 Bum Belt Bag (Fanny Pack – American). Prices were very reasonable to boot.
Opportunity #4
I wrote about my local “go to” Op Shops in my 2020 goal post The Year Of The Turtle. One Saturday I needed to get out of the house and have some introvert time alone to recharge. After a 5 minute drive I was happily browsing through a shed full of books on a “fill a bag for $5” mission. They also happened to have some bags handy so I found an oversized tote and set to work filling it up. After I had found all I thought would be useful I went inside only to be told that they were closing in 5 minutes. I quickly managed to find 2 pairs of shoes.
For 32 items I spent a grand total of $12.50 which included a $4 extra donation which was all the change I had in the utes centre console. There may have been some other treasures hiding in here as I actually ran out of time when the shop closed at 13:00pm…
Opportunity #5
On a Sunday there was a garage sale less than 100m from my house. I scoured my entire house and could only manage to find $4 in loose change. I considered not going as what could I possibly get for $4? However as it was so close I thought why not. I was pleasantly surprised with the prices when I arrived and I ended up buying my first ever NERF item, an elite pistol with a large supply of ammo. This had $4 on the bag when I saw it so I thought yes I can probably make $10 from that. As I went to pay for this however I spied a Magic The Gathering logo at the bottom of a stack of puzzles. This turned out to be a Plainswalker Board game and had $2 on it! Now I was torn as I now had to get the game but still wanted the NERF gear. I asked the lady if she would take $4 for both and she said yes…Cha Ching.
Listing Theory
Began working through the death / money pile, spending the first couple of weekends of January heavily hitting taking photos for mainly books and media. It’s a good feeling to finally begin to at least start to get on top of it, particularly when it’s obvious there’s literally thousands of dollars sitting there ready to be sold.
My goal for the moment is simply to list more than 3 items per day on average and 5 per day as the stretch target. I’ll be honest I still struggled with this for most of the month but got pretty close to the stretch goal at 4.93 average per day. Finding time, an hour here or there can prove extremely difficult with the little one. It basically needs to be when she’s asleep so I don’t miss out on the magical life events.
I came across on Daily Refinement’s Insta feed an interesting poll that was run about listing which gave a nice summary breakdown, obviously the sample size is a little small.
I could list over 50+ items per day if I had all the photos ready and did nothing else for 10 hours straight – no interruptions. This little screenshot got me thinking what might be possible on a full time basis. I think I could achieve 30 listing per day on average and without burnout (which is a key consideration). This is based on 3 hour window of a larger 6 hour window. The other 3 hours being for sourcing and photos etc… Could work. Not really applicable for the next few years but interesting none the less.
Problem Childs
Had a couple of low balling peanuts and stupid offers this month.
Had a lady buy a spoon only to send me a message asking if it had been used (listing was for used). Then afterwards sent me a message asking for an additional 50% off as it was used. Cheeky, then she spammed me with messages to cancel the transaction after I said I would be cancelling it!
One to add to the block list for sheer entitlement. Super annoying that this costs me that PayPal fee for interactions such as this.
Thankfully, that was the extent of negativity this month.
Health Update
A new addition for these summaries but I am serious about getting my health in order this year after letting it go over the last couple. Afterall what good is making lots of money reselling if it destroys your health and relationships.
There’s a lot of data around about the increasing costs of healthcare as you age. I am looking to find ways and methods now to stave off poor health and disease later. Ideally I’d like to live past 100 with relative good health all the way. After all I have a little bubba to care for now. She is great motivation for getting my ass into gear.
The below chart illustrates some average costs by age group in USD for generic spending and also in relation to some common illnesses / diseases.
Its plain to see that the longer one can prolong exposure to age related disease the better from both a health AND a financial perspective.
So where to start then?
My initial goals are:
Eat Better.
Exercise More.
Sleep Better. I have already posted about sleeping better here.
Lose 20kgs for the year which is the first time I am documenting this number. This will take me down to 76kg a weight of which I have not been in over 10 years. So Starting weight of 96kgs.
Weight however, is not the primary focus, its about eating healthier, exercising effectively, spending more time with loved ones and living longer, the weight loss is a bonus from the process but a useful metric (one of) to be able to track.
For the month of Jan I lost 6.36kgs, yes 31.8% of my total goal already and not a bad way to kick things off, but a lot of that will be water weight and results from here on will slow to a crawl.
I expect the next months progress to be much slower obviously but this is a great start with some rather unexpected benefits resulting in a Reselling Secret Weapon, more on this in another post soon.
Plans For February
A new side project. January also birthed an idea for a Merch side project which I will be working on that relates to the reselling world. This will appear on my Insta feed (and here) when available. Might roll into March depending on supplier shipping.
Consider scheduling additional 3 day weekends with accrued annual leave, perhaps once a month where a single day can be dedicated to getting as many items listed or photographed as possible. I was actually doing this over a year ago before we received the news about the bubba whereby I then immediately began hoarding leave. These 3 day weekends are great to get focused blocks of work done whilst still feeling like you have a weekend!
Increase exercise for the Health mission, specifically adding a minimum of 20 Burpees to the daily routine in additional to the daily 100 pushups.
I spent most of this month with the final prep of the impending arrival of our new baby who was originally due on December 11.
Not surprisingly however our little bundle of joy had her own plans and entered this world at the end of November about 2 weeks early.
Life changed forever in an instant. That moment (the birth)…after some reflection might be the most beautiful moment I will ever witness whilst truly conscious for my entire life.
I am finding new levels of gratitude every day since.
This months summary will be extremely concise and also absent on numbers as obviously my current priorities lie outside reselling and sit with the family. I will however say they are markedly up on the previous month combined with minimal sourcing leading to some decent profit. I might add them to December’s summary.
Planning Theory
As I alluded in some previous posts I did carefully consider how to manage eBay around the birth itself and extended into the following days and weeks after.
Indeed I had been working towards this very moment for the last 9 months, not just with reselling but on making sure everything was organised, as much as one can prepare for these things.
There have been multiple posts / articles about how changing a store to Vacation or Holiday mode will decimate future sales.
Obviously I didn’t want to do this but I did want to dial back some listings to sell less of these while off work on leave (you read that right). This is because I currently have a couple of locations where items are stored that are around 20 mins drive from home. I planned to keep these trips to an absolute maximum of one or perhaps two a week depending on sales. A 40 minute round trip to pick up a $10 item would not be good. When I’m normally at work this isn’t a factor but when I have no need to go that direction it is.
The items further away were all changed to have a 5 day handling time. I chose this number to allow me to better plan a suitable day time whilst also allowing sales to potentially be grouped and collected / shipped all at once.
This affected approximately 150 listings. The remaining listings are a combination of 1-2 days to keep the visibility and top rated plus seals.
The method to manage this was to simply alter the handling time for all listings using the bulk editing tool.
A relatively simple task with the exception of being forced to update the stragglers with item specifics.
Overall I still got to 980 listings for the month before things dropped off.
Lastly I also outsourced a couple of more tubs to my subcontractor who does some of my photos and listings while I had the time to do this. I’m at a point where I won’t have to do this again for a couple of months (Out of clothes backlog) at least so happy to sink this cost now. See how things go but I may well use the subcontractor in some other areas as well after I clear the easy backlog.
On my return to listing again I will have 75 listings straight up ready to go and a heeeeap of other items that are easy to photo and list.
The New Logo Is Complete
Stoked to have a custom logo finally finished. Created by @francisg.art (insta). Professional service and big thanks for putting up with my several tweaking requests. Send him a DM if you are chasing any graphic design work.
Why a logo now after this time? Well often people start with this type of thing when setting up businesses, logos, business cards, etc… all things that are nice to have but can chew up huge amounts of time and take away from the actual business setup process itself. I have even done this myself on other projects previously. Now that things are established I can see future value from getting this (and then the business cards) created at this time.
Plans For December
Brainstorm, Plan and prepare for 2020.
Finish The Business Cards. I have the new logo, the rest will be easy with a spare hour.
Cruise control for eBay. There’s still 958 active listings at the time of writing and for December and I will not be adding any new listings. It will be interesting to see what sales occur with no listing activity and how the profit looks considering there will also be no sourcing costs.
October from a stats perspective was definitely an
improvement over September with the overall figures coming in at $1004.31 net
profit from 66 sales.
Profit was up, sales were up but inventory procurement doubled against September coming in at $493.40 resulting in an overall net positive cash flow of the month of $310.91.
I was expecting to see more of an increase in sales heading
into Q4, and the overall result is OK but it seems like there has been a direct
impact from the eBay Glitchgate during this month.
Take the middle of the month for the first example where
after eBay pushed the update sales died (to zero) and didn’t really recover for
the best part of 5 days.
This was then followed by a second strange lull at the end of
the month that had significantly less coverage across socials. Whilst logging
into the eBay My eBay page I received an error message that showed along the
lines of: there is a technical error involving populating the reporting on your
account. Funny how this also corresponded with no sales during the time this
was present. The moment I noticed this I jumped on the eBay chat to see if
there was an error on my entire account but I was assured it was all in order…
I remain unconvinced this was the case as if by magic once
this error notice disappeared from the dashboard sales started slowly rolling
in again…
Listing Theory
So this month I managed to add an additional +105 listings
which is honestly the most I think I have added in a month. Really this is the
equivalent of 171 listings when sold items are included with items listed to
replace. This is the equivalent of around 6 per day which, realistically should
be easily achievable for a part time seller such as myself.
I did find though by modifying my listing routine I achieved a
lot more success with getting actual listings up. I batch processed photos for
hard goods into one Saturday (or half of one) and combined with photos and
measurements from the outsourced clothes I found I had plenty to keep me
listing.
Started getting up at 5am, an hour before I would usually to
get ready for work anyway and smashed some listings out. This meant on a few
days I was able to get more than 10 listings completed before even leaving for
work. It is a good way to start the day and also reduces friction on the back
end of the day with taking away from family time.
I will be continuing in this manner moving forward.
Post Glitchgate I spent some time revising listings that were
affected by item specific issues. Frustration ensued when it was apparent there
was no easy way to amend these without having to use a third-party software. I
refused straight out on that principle.
In the end I managed to combine a task that needed doing anyway that also doubled as a way to identify affected listings.
What was this task? Well it was simply updating the SKU to
reflect the item storage location as well as the Cost Of Goods Sold.
Originally, I just had the item location in the SKU but post
tax season after speaking to the accountant I realised I could make an easy way
to download the cost of goods for all active listings if I just added the cost.
This of course was a requirement to complete this year just gone return and was
a pain in the but.
So now my new SKU might look like: MA8 #2 $5
Which is just Bin Number | Label Within The Bin | Original
Cost Of Goods Of Item
Then its as easy as downloading the report for all active
listings to excel and separating the SKU. More on how to do that in less than a
couple of minutes in an upcoming Video.
Anyway, so seems I was modifying each SKU to capture this I would receive an error every time I encountered a listing that was missing an item specific. It wouldn’t let me update the listing without it. Easy simple way to work out what needed amending while at the same time improving a business process.
I still have a few of these left to do but have made good
process.
Sourcing Theory
The plan for October was to reduce the spending aside from the Garage Sale Trail.
This didn’t quite work out and I actually doubled my spend from the previous month.
Again, I still have a ton of items to list. I can literally see 6x 50ltr tubs full of stuff that needs my attention. I’d like to think I’m good for a while.
My attention for the next few months is going to be getting items listed and optimising processes.
Garage Sale Trail 2019
So this was my first year doing the Garage Sale Trail and honestly I actually really enjoyed it. There were loads of places to go and I spent a total $144 in 6 Hours. I ended up leaving early and starting down south away from the city and i think this paid dividends at least for the initial first 4 or 5 where I had zero competition.
To assist in planning an efficient route I ended up creating a video on the Friday night about how to plot out your own personal trail map using google maps. This could be used for any Garage Sale weekend route also though. You can watch it below. Quite a few people found it very useful with the ability to plan routes or allocate different colours for different start times etc…
I managed to get some really good deals on the day with some highlights being:
A whole box full of PS2 games and 2 PS2 consoles controllers, eye toys etc… for $20.
A guitar hero and rock band haul for $40 which included some vintage books and other games etc…
You can watch the full haul in the YouTube below.
Outsourcing
This month my outsourcing took a detour away from clothes (as I hadn’t sourced many) and included an expansion into hats. I was a little unsure if this was a good idea or not, after all this is adding an extra cost again to the base Cost Of Goods Sold but the photos came back better than I had expected and again it helps me get all the stuff listed.
Play to where your strengths are.
Mine are definitely the sourcing and listings sub systems of the overall reselling process.
To put it bluntly it will never sell if its not listed. Therefore
even if it costs me some potential profit to get this done it is money well
spent.
If you missed the outsourcing concept a full explanation can be found in the month of August Summary 2019.
Auto Hot Key
Nothing too ground breaking with Auto Hot Key this month however I did make a handy little script which helps automating the printing of Dymo labels I use as part of the outsourcing process. Its seems trivial but the script will print a number and then wait and then print another number all the way up until 25. This then saves me time by me not having to manually do each one and wait for it.
Handy, Yes but worth it in time??
Well to actually get this to work properly was very easy with a simple loop. Of course there will be times where this might not function as intended and you would need to restart from a specific number. This proved to be much more annoying to get to work. Finally after I had gotten there I considered was this time well spent?
I actually got angry with myself temporarily as I realised I could have got another 10 items listed in that same time but after a while it dawned on me that I was still learning and still infinitely better than sitting watching TV.
Strange how the mind can punish you like that.
Plans For November
Finish The Business Cards – Still. I have a graphic designer giving some assistance here with a new concept logo.
10 listings a day (or more) for the entire month.
Continue to revise listings to qualify for the top rated seller benefits.
You can now also watch a YouTube version of these Profit Summaries from September 2019 onwards.
September from a stats perspective was pretty poor.
I started off the month with a roar like I intended, listing more than the 10 per day that I was intending to average and then got the flu which hit me like a sack of potatoes keeping me bedridden for more than 24 hours and then several days following of a general terrible feeling. I probably spent the best part of 2 weeks recovering.
In some ways this is what the store would be doing were it only on auto pilot
This was followed by a change of priorities immediately once feeling better to getting several jobs around the house completed for the impending little one in December. I can honestly say I have got more done around the house in one week than probably the last 2 or 3 years.
I channeled my inner eBay demon (I wonder what that would look like) and worked my ass off till 9:30pm each night to get things completed.
3 weeks of effective downtime obviously impacted sales a lot as listing was very limited after the first week but I still managed a positive cashflow after inventory and outsourcing expenses which is great. Reflecting back on 2018 at this time September returned a little less in profit (against waaaay less inventory mind you) and October was dead before a big upswing into November and December.
One interesting point was the $ value listed rose by a massive $4388 against 70 new items listed equals ASP of approximately $63 average. Higher quality items with better returns.
Sourcing Theory
Selective September was the theme for this month. With limited time due to the aforementioned I made good use of the times I did call into an Op shop.
I was lucky enough to even come across a massive chunk of inks on clearance in a Woolworths one afternoon that someone appears to have possibly mucked up on the pricing. I say this as I attempted to call past other supermarkets in the area. All had clearances on some inks but nothing like I stumbled across. Right place right time!
We visited several Op Shops looking for quality baby items and often found a hidden gem each time. This belt below was at a Salvos under a counter at the back. Unless you took the time to complete a crouching squat you would never see it.
I think I have reached a critical mass as far as inventory goes now ahead of the little one arriving which means going forward I will be limiting sourcing, with two exceptions:
If the network contact from August contacts me again.
Other than those I am almost certain I have enough items to get listings to 1500 which is my short goal.
Outsourcing
The outsourcing continued this month again with the clothes photography. If you missed this concept a full explanation can be found in last months August Summary 2019. Thus far I have sold enough from each lot of 25 to retrieve my expense cost. More if you consider the tax deductions for the expense. So its been great really, I have currently 75 items of clothing that are ready to be listed and now that I have gotten through the initial couple of lots where I had some marginal buys I am feeling pretty good about it. I have noticed that I am thinking a lot more about this when picking up clothing items when out sourcing as the outsourcing directly impacts the cost base I find myself being super selective.
Auto Hot Key
I haven’t written about Auto Hot Key for a while now as I have been coasting along with things working well. This month however a new team member started at work (the day job) and in the process of training some new innovations became apparent. This team member seemed excited by the idea of Auto Hot Key so it was installed and they commenced their own basic learning of this.
I installed a watered down version of my own script with some useful functions. Others I removed as I wanted this team member to create a few scripts themselves before moving into the more advanced ones I had created.
I wanted the learning and discovery to occur else there won’t be the motivation (as someone else has simply done it for you).
As an example, imagine in your new job you have a particular task to do every day which requires a few different windows to complete. Every morning you come in, turn on the computer and click through to open each window maybe using a bookmark or shortcut on the desktop.
Like starting any new job, sometimes the fastest way to improve your productivity effectiveness is to simply know where to find things that you need quickly or better – instantly. It’s often the navigation slowing down everything initially and simply improving this frees up time in actually learning the new role.
This formed the idea around the startup scripts whilst I was completing training of the new team member.
The concept and execution is simple.
There is a task A which requires 6 specific spreadsheets to be referred to. All of the web addresses these relate to (google sheets) are loaded in and coded to a shortcut key, say Crtl+Ctrl+G. Hit that key combination and all 6 launch at once instantly.
We repeated this process across three very different tasks, each with separate hot keys opening different variations of windows and programs. The effect was remarkable. The next day this team member after only two days of training was able to come into work and complete the first task of the morning without any assistance.
Another innovation I found useful was 3 key email replies including sending the email itself. There are times that you simply need / want to thank some one or indicate you have received information. Perhaps you need to forward an attachment and write the same text each time.
Now it can be simply use the keyboard short cut Alt+R (reply singular) or Alt+L (reply all) then type “]rr”, the shortcut string and Auto Hot Key inserts the pre-scripted prose and uses the keyboard short cut Ctrl+Enter to send the email.
Bingpot.
How does this relate to reselling? Well I use the same concepts to launch my eBay GUI, eBay itself, Sizely, the folder my pictures reside in all from a hot key. I can be literally listing (assuming I have the photos already) in less than a minute from turning the computer on. Removing some of these barriers helps immensely from a motivational perspective.
I also have a previous post about using this for sourcing on Facebook marketplace using specific search terms and tying them to a one click script (which can also be hot key). That post is here.
Plans For October
Finish The Business Cards
10 listings a day (or more) for the entire month.
Explore future options relating to Amazon. With Aus Posts pricing changes effective 30 September 2019 it appears as though getting inventory to Melbourne may become feasible cost wise.
Update listings to qualify for the top rated seller benefits.
August was a beast, with a huge amount of different things going on.
Overall profit was down more than 30% on the previous month mainly I think heavily due to my lack of getting listing done. I actually made comment on this in the July summary so it is my own fault, 100% evidenced by a huge drop in the number of sales.
Feed the beast or you will starve yourself it seems.
Between some early withdrawals to the bank account, some (much) higher inventory spending later in the month and new subcontractor costs my actual cash flow for the month appears negative.
Still not to worry, I suppose it’s a little bit like spending upfront now to prepare for a big push in the 4th quarter towards Christmas.
To combat this from happening again in September I have resolved to commit to some consistent listing. Indeed in the last day of August and first two days of September I have already added another 50 quality listings adding over $2000 total value. Did this translate into an immediate uptake in sales? Nope.
It doesn’t matter though, my aim for this month is to average 10 new listings per day. I have plenty of listings with photos and measurements ready to go so there should be no issue here.
Facebook below was pretty quiet for the most part. Etsy has been dead, hence why I haven’t included it. That said I haven’t used it to list either.
Sourcing Theory
“No Buy” August was a nonevent, there was just too many good deals around that I couldn’t pass up and I ended up spending the most I have in several months.
I’m not even going to bother with “No Buy” September. With a baby on the way due in December I’m figuring that I’m going to have less and less time to source over the next few months and then immediately after the baby is born I will be taking a long break from sourcing to focus on the family.
The idea is to have a stash of inventory that I’ll be able to list periodically during this time to keep things active. That said I will still keep a close eye on cash flow and reign back in the spending on inventory to a better level.
Sourcing Missions For August
I had a couple of notable sourcing finds for August:
I went out on a Saturday morning to an op shop that I’ve recently rediscovered which had a lot more to it with some rooms out the back that I never knew existed. Anyway this day was very wet and windy. When the ladies arrived to the shop they decided after 5 minutes to close it due to the forecast impending storm. This meant I only had a couple of minutes to look around which I made the most of by picking up a sealed 3-D puzzle.
I got talking to the lady in charge and she asked me what I was looking for and I replied with PlayStation or Wii games as a soft start. She pegged me straight away though and asked me if I was a reseller on Facebook marketplace. I replied I was, and realistically this is the first time I have really told anyone that I am a reseller at an op shop (though I am sure a few might know). Anyway she replied that she had hundreds of DVDs and PlayStation games and that I should come and take a look in the next hour at her house which, honestly, caught me a little off guard.
So an hour later I arrived and sure enough there were huge cases of DVDs, video games and game systems. I picked a few out that I was sure I could easily turn over mainly due to being sealed and also picked up a Ps2 Slim. At this point I still wasn’t exactly sure what she would even ask for a price as nothing had really been discussed. When the time came to negotiate we reached a deal we were both happy with. She understood that I also needed to make some money to make it worth it and that I can buy in bulk and help her unload some items.
“You can’t take it with you.” was her direct quote.
Truth.
We got talking some more and she had been collecting all sorts of things for many years and done a bit of reselling herself. Her sitting room or lounge room looked like an antique store, with expensive looking statues and cases full of uranium glass (the glass that’s neon green and glows – expensive).
Apparently she had a lot of vintage items stashed away that I would be most interested in selling and we spoke about making that happen either by me purchasing directly in bulk or perhaps even me selling under a consignment arrangement for items I don’t really buy as yet. Could be some promise there, a paid way to learn other niches in effect. I followed up the next day with a thank you and sent through a list of items that I am looking for. I will set up a time to meet again and hopefully make a bulk purchase of items that I like selling and are easy to ship!
This, I hope will comprise most of my purchasing for September. Time will tell, still it was a timely reminder to get those business cards finished to lead to more opportunities like this in the future.
I also had a couple of days where I was able to pick up bulk lots of Jeans and books for good prices. On one occasion at a Good Sammys I picked up 12 pairs of Jeans in the space of 20 minutes of which 80% were Levi’s and the rest Wranglers and 1 Thomas Cook, never seen that before, so many in one place. All were in the woman’s section. It’s getting towards the end of jeans season but still a great score.
Those were the two days that really stuck in the memory but there were several others where good items were found such as toners, ink and huge lots of valuable books for minimal cost. These are the best kinds also with solid completed items so I know they are guaranteed sales.
Premier Live YouTube Appearance
Nothing like throwing caution to the wind.
Early in the month I responded to a request by @2aussiethrifters for resellers looking to do a live interview session on YouTube. Initially it seemed like a token gesture at the time of something that would be great to do but it soon became an apparent reality with a scheduled booking less than a week later, which, of course sent fear coursing through my veins. Fear is a good reminder that whatever your doing is challenging and has risk but this doesn’t inherently mean what you are doing is bad. On the contrary, great personal growth comes from these types of endeavours.
I had been meaning to get onto YouTube as an extension of this site and this had simply fast tracked the process albeit with minimal room for error in a live setting.
Doing this really made me think that I need to get some more content out there as I could probably be helping people that actually want to be helped grow their business improve the processes and maximise their time spent on growing on either a part time or full time basis.
I actually enjoyed this process so much that I will be taking the monthly summaries to YouTube also. In may ways it will likely be faster to generate that content than it takes to write it!
Anyway here is the recording, please enjoy.
Outsourcing
This month I outsourced my most hated task – photographing and measuring clothes.
The process to get this up and running was interesting to say the least. I simply created a Facebook post in a local community group I am a member of and let it run. The only real stipulations I made were that they must live locally, have camera that was better than my own and that it was part time ad-hoc work for now requiring the person to have their own respective business number ABN so invoices can be generated and I can claim this process as an expense.
I was quickly inundated with messages and after only an hour with around 30 persons interested and actually had to comment to say that I would not accept anymore submissions. To be honest I found it a little difficult to pick someone to complete this task from the pool of potentials, its not exactly a common task. I quickly discarded anyone who led with “how much will I get paid? as their opening message then followed by removing anyone with multiple spelling errors (details!). From the remaining pool I ended up settling on 2 persons who had taken the time to put a bit more effort into their initial introduction. I figured by selecting 2 persons in case one didn’t like it or wasn’t very good I would have a backup.
The setup process of getting this started was a little bit more involved than I initially thought. I needed an itemised sheet to record the details on. Creating the sheet was fairly straight forward however my own desire to have this sheet look aesthetically pleasing resulted in this taking longer than it really needed to. This was followed by creating a basic set of listing instructions, basically making a mini eBook to ensure that things run smoothly whilst having minimal impact on my time. Its not rocket science as the saying goes but a bit of extra care upfront to save me time later should I have to change subcontractors later.
The actual process itself at this time looks like this:
Find items.
Get a new empty bin / tub.
Create Bin SKU labels for bin / tub outside to stick on. (SKU System)
Load items into tub and record onto the listing sheet. I actually do this by using the dictation on my phone in Bear (A notetaking App). I then email this to myself and add it into the listing sheet and then print out. All nice and neat and really doesn’t take long at all.
Add the bags that clothes get wrapped in.
Add the “Thank You” stickers that also hold the item SKU number.
Add the listing instructions (first time)
The best part about this is it frees me up to get listing and removes the bottleneck created by my least favourite aspect of this business, clothes listing.
So going forward, there should be no reason why this doesn’t massively help build this business. I was thinking about this the other day where I have previously talked about buying bulk lots and having a couple of items pay for everything else within the lot. This concept effectively rings true for outsourcing these items as well. At the moment I am sticking to 25 items per bin, there’s a couple of reasons, at a price of $4 an item for photographs and measurements x 25 items obviously makes $100 which is a nice even number to keep track off. The other reason is the physical size of the bin where 25 items is almost maximum they would fit depending on item size of course.
Anyway the benefits of using a subcontractor have been apparent already with the first lot of photos coming back having several that were of higher quality than I would’ve been able to take myself. This was a nice surprise indeed. The other immediately obvious benefit from my perspective is that it forces me to keep listing, I already have 50 clothing listings ready to go all I have to do is list them, I also have another 50 that will be ready this week so I am always having items ahead of me to keep me pushing.
Basic Maths on Outsourcing
So obviously outsourcing is a cost which impedes on margins whilst conversely increasing the velocity of sales (in theory) by allowing more items to actually get listed and therefore sell! Still I was curious to work out where I needed to be to make this work, bearing in mind the subcontractor has to make a half decent hourly rate to make it worthwhile also from their perspective. I already had a rough idea of what my own throughput per hour would be doing this task so that is where $4 an hour comes from, photographing and measuring 10 items an hour approx. This might include the odd bit of spot cleaning / ironing also.
My own thinking is this: I can pay someone $40 per hour (equivalent) which will save me 1 hour of my time. I can then use that hour now to make $100 per hour by listing items (assumes 10 items with average net profit of minimum $10, all listed in that hour and all sell eventually). So on this basis, I am coming out ahead every time. I haven’t included the setup time which will get faster and faster every bin and also excluding the tax deductions applicable for simplicity.
Running the numbers on what is currently been outsourced, so 100 items at $4 equals a $400 subcontractor expense. 100 items sold with an average price of $10 net profit per item yields $1000 net.
I want to work this backwards to work out the effective hourly rate, I want this rate to be better than the day job rate.
$1000 Net – $400 Expense = $600 Net profit. I estimate that it will take between 4 to 5 hours to list these 100 items. Factoring also in a 5 min average to source and 5 min average to ship. 100 items x 10 min = 1000 minutes. Divide this by 60 to get time in hours equals a total of 17 hours (Rounded Up). Add this to the listing time of 5 hours to get a total of 21 hours.
Thus the equation becomes $600/21 = $28.57 per hour.
It is important to note that this is the base hourly figure and that the actual figure will be higher than this due to finding those higher quality items. For example a brand-new with tag Harley Davidson shirt I will be making at least $30 net profit on.
After listing the first few items and working out the estimated net profit it became clear that I should probably be using $15 an item which returns a much better result of $52.38 per hour. As an example the first 10 items from bin one I estimated net profits as $19,$29,$14,$16,$29,$19,$29,$29,$19,$10 which has an average of $21.
It also should be noted that this is only a rough calculation to work with. There are several items in each bin like the Harley shirt mentioned but conversely maybe there are some items which take forever to sell or never sell at all! Some of these initial listings have items found during my early ventures into clothing that I would no longer pick up now in my travels. Some of these I may sell at fire sale prices just to make some space.
What Else Got Done This Month
I did finally make a start on the business card and have basically finished the initial design. Really I was trying to incorporate what I look for as a list on the card in some way. The chance meeting last weekend forced me to create a list of sorts so I have this now. I will have them sent off the printer within the next couple of weeks when a decent sale comes in.
After watching some YouTube and coming across a Daily Refinement episode which mentions customer specific coupons I created my own unique coupon code, turned it into a QR code able to be scanned and now are adding those to items being sent out. I have been getting great feedback for existing packaging, now maybe this will boost some repeat customers!
Plans For September
Business is all about synergies and harnessing skills or situations which create advantages. I have been lucky enough to access to some lockable storage space. Part of this month will be to move some of the inventory out of the house into this space, thereby allowing more of the house to return to normal function whilst simultaneously allowing inventory expansion / business growth. Exciting times.
10 listings a day, for the month.
Create YouTube content, starting with the August 2019 Summary, Reselling – One year in review and a generous introduction.
Thrifter.Me 