Thrifter.Me

April 2020 Reselling Summary $112 Per Hour

May 1st, 2020
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:
1. 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.
2. I want people to really think about 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.
3. 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.
Productivity Upgrade: A new mouse provides a huge level up.

April 28th, 2020

I needed a new mouse upgrade desperately as my productivity was suffering badly.

A few years ago I brought a Dell Alienware setup that at the time it was the higher end of the range. It came with a gaming mouse as well which to be honest I never really took advantage of.

I Actually Wore A Mouse Out…

Anyway, after a few thousand hours of gaming in my favourite world of Diablo this mouse had started to show its age particularly the left click hack and slash special button. The clicks were still clicking meeting it’s warranty promise of over one million clicks guarantee but clicking and dragging was painful sometimes working extremely hard against me. There were multiple times when this dodgy mouse almost cost me a hard-core character death which would be devastating after 100 hours on a character.

It was actually listing on eBay which finally convinced me it was time to buy a new mouse to obtain a productivity upgrade. At times when listing books I need to grab the ISBN to add to the listing (to prefill the listing). I currently use an Auto Hot Key (AHK) hot key which opens the snippet app and then the idea is to quickly take a snippet of the ISBN, reduce the window size of the eBay window which allows me to type it in seeing the ISBN in a neighbouring window. Easy process until actually trying to take the snippet with a dodgy mouse. At times it would take two or three times to get it. Eventually I worked out I could actually use the right mouse button to get around this but alas this mini work around does not work in other apps I often use such as Word or PowerPoint.

It’s the type of problem that in the moment its annoying but not insurmountable, so what, it might take an extra 10 seconds on the occasional listing. That by itself was not the catalyst, it was all the other apps that really caused me to take action. Trying to create graphics using office products and not being able to easily click and drag to draw a simple rectangle was downright frustrating.

So this weekend just passed I ventured out into a nearby physical chain store specialist in office products. Alas I can state that the Coronavirus has not improved WAs abysmal customer service. Turns out I should have ordered from Amazon and saved myself a little bit of money. My impatience cost me $10.

What To Buy?

Initially I considered buying another gaming mouse but gaming’s not a huge priority at the moment with a new bubba so I went for practicality with a mouse that has 8 customisation buttons to really apply my hot keys I have already worked on.

I brought the Logitech 910-004792 Triathlon Wireless Mouse M720 and as is always the way immediately wished I had done this sooner, the mouse was set up in less than two minutes and another couple to install the Logitech software allowing the button customisation. Mapping my existing AHK hot keys took only a few moments.

I used an existing key sequence that I already had set up previously using AHK to open the snippet app and instantly create a new snippet and mapped it to the mouse side front button.

For now I have the mouse side back button I mapped another AHK hot key which opens up my custom google To Do List form in chrome. So handy. I think of something, one button press and I’m typing it in and submitting and then its gone out of my mind leaving me to get back to focusing on what I was doing. I love this already.

Some other examples of using the gesture button to create 4 different actions:

But Wait! There’s Still More.

After exploring the Logitech interface further I was actually surprised that the mouse can also do all sorts of powerful operations such as opening apps etc…

As an example (Refer above picture) I could have the same button open the snippet app using this interface to do it instead of my AHK hot key. It won’t be able to set it ready to take the snip like the AHK script can but its still most of the way there.

Get It Done, Now.

If you haven’t already tried mapping some of your mouse buttons to custom actions I strongly recommend it. Even without further augmenting with AHK you will still get a massive productivity upgrade.

On some chance you are still using a seven dollar legacy mouse with the wheel and two buttons you are way behind, spend some money (tax deductible for business) and invest in a quality mouse which can elevate your productivity to new levels.
Live Demo Setting Up Hot Keys Text Expanders Microsoft Word

April 28th, 2020

The below links to a Live Demo Setting Up Hot Keys / Text Expanders using Microsoft Word a program that is available to most around the globe.

These text expanders can be used across the office suite of products.
March Summary 2020 Over $100 Per Hour Reselling

April 28th, 2020

This months March 2020 summary was live streamed on YouTube.

I also provide some insight into my custom analytics.
February Summary 2020

March 2nd, 2020
Month Summary

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 12^th (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.

Before

Before

I 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.

Anyway if your interested you can check it out here.

Supplementation

These are the current supplements I am taking along with the reason why:
- Blackmores Omega 3 Fish Oil Double Strength – Maintain Heart, Skin Eye and Brain Health, Reduce Inflammation. Currently taking 2g equivalent.
- CurcuMax – Contains Curcumin assist with reducing inflammation.
- Ginko Biloba 2000mg – Improve Memory, Concentration, Alertness, Circulation.
- High Strength Organic Spirulina – Source of chlorophyll, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamins B6 and B12, as well as vitamin K, selenium and antioxidants.
- Blackmores Super Magnesium – Sleep Assist, Reduce Muscle Cramps.
- 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.
January Summary 2020

January 31st, 2020
The Overview

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 12^th 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 31^st 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.

How?

The Keto Diet and 100 Pushups Per Day, that’s it.

The books I have read this month in relation to this are specifically are Genius Foods by Max Lugavere and Beyond Training By Ben Greenfield.

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.
2020 The Year Of The Turtle

December 28th, 2019
Get Rich Slowly

It may seem somewhat counter intuitive but this year I want to slow the growth down a little bit to spend more time focusing on my newly expanded family with the addition of a little one just recently.

Growth for the sake of growth is not necessarily directly correlated with increased sales, profit or happiness, it took me 20 odd years to realise that time is just time, and much more valuable than money.

My own growth this past year whilst not exponential has been pretty steady and I’ve gone from only around 100 listings at the end of 2018 to almost 1000 at the end of 2019.

Rapid growth can also have some other problems particularly relating to cash flow. Some good examples are companies that grow too big to fast without implementing the systems required to effectively achieve sustained growth along with the cash flow required to support it. This growth explosion can often come at the expense of the company with resources stretched too thin or decisions made on anticipation of business contracts which fail to come to fruition. Chaotic growth can cause business failure, particularly with small and medium sized.

I felt this year I have done a reasonable job of managing cash flow with only 2 months of the year being negative due to inventory purchasing, and only slightly so. There’s also been a fair amount of infrastructure been acquired. Items like thermal printers and rolls, post office box, a second phone number, accounting consultation fees, tubs – many many tubs, bulk purchases of satchels to save on cost per item but there’s still a cost up front. All of these things add up probably towards $1000 I would think. In 2020 there will be far less of these which will improve net profit. That saving alone is the equivalent of 2 extra house payments.

Sales this year have been up and down but definitely improving each month. Cash flow has been the same (up and down) and I have spent very heavily on inventory at times, so much so that it might actually be possible to hit my upcoming listing targets for 2020 without even sourcing for half a year (or more).

That’s how big my money pile of unlisted items currently is.

There’s hundreds of items ready to be listed and sold. Just gotta do the work.

If your reading this it may seem like madness to have that much stock, you gotta list things to get paid, your leaving money on the table and all that jazz and yet, this is only partially true.

Maybe you even think it is just laziness, procrastination, hoarding or a combination of all three.

Nope, none of the above.

You see, I had always planned this to occur at this point in time like I had before, when I first started reselling, to have a huge cache to fall back on. On this occasion however it’s all about the upcoming time availability and not the money. I am literally not going to have the time with my family commitments to get much physical sourcing done over the year and honestly of course I would rather spend time with my beautiful wife and daughter.

There will still be the odd sneaky look here and there naturally, I’m only human after all! I am lucky to have 2 locals op shops that can provide cheap quality stock when I need less than a 5 minute drive away. I can also work in some lunch time loot missions during work hours when convenient.

The other interesting point to make here is that because of this upfront effort in sourcing so much in 2019 leading up to the birth I anticipate that actual net profit for 2020 is likely going to double or more.

This is due to the available time I will allocate to reselling being focused on listing instead of sourcing, the flow on effect of this change is minimal inventory expense. In 2019 I have maybe had the ratio of time utilisation at 70% / 30% in favour of sourcing. 2020 will see the inverse of this with sourcing dropping to 30% or less of my time available .

I’ve learnt a lot during this past year and tweaked things as I’ve gone on the fly. I’ve tried new niches and ideas and gotten some things right and others wrong. I do learn best from mistakes and this business is very forgiving initially with low cost of entry to play the game.

By stepping back a little bit in 2020 I think I can get further useful systems implemented, tested and reviewed to make even more effective use of my limited time. I am a pattern person by nature and have a real passion for process improvements, indeed my university degree focused on just this, information systems. Even in my own little reselling world I have identified several areas I can already improve upon in 2020.

My mission statement for this year:

Clean Up Time Leakage

Conduct Efficient Sourcing

Always Put In The Work

Consistent Listing

What is the figure that I need to hit each day? Really it should equal either the steady-state turnover of the store or sustained slow listing growth.

Being that I’m still just under 1000 listings and paying for 1500 with the store it makes sense to try and get to this max number quickly and then scaleback if required.

I sell on average between 2-3 items per day (when listing consistently). Therefore I need as a minimum to list this amount per day to keep a steady level, ideally sitting right on max free listings if possible. So extrapolated out that’s 1100 listings for the entire year just to spin the wheel.

Really I need to bump this up to 5 per day minimum which equates to 1825 for the year to get some low solid growth.

The initial plan is to set the minimum target each day of 5 listings and then anything above that can either be added to the target of 1500 to get there a bit quicker or scheduled for future days to ensure that new items are getting listed each day to satiate the mysterious eBay algorithm.

Branching out into other platforms needs to become a priority this year also, I have seen too many posts lately about how a couple of small isolated incidents have canned peoples eBay accounts. This is not just isolated to eBay either with Etsy also setting some ridiculous service metrics to be abided by or face suspension potentially triggered by only a couple of misdemeanors.

These platforms also have to look after the sellers or they will go elsewhere.

My competitive advantage vs peers relates to my speed of listing using technology shortcuts including auto complete, templates and use of additional software such as auto hot key to semi-automate listing.

It makes sense that I spend more time cross posting to Etsy, Facebook marketplace and Depop. Indeed I already have Etsy and Facebook Marketplace scripts competed so I can quickly build a listing and replicate it across multiple platforms.

There are other pieces of software such as List Perfectly which can assist with some elements of cross posting but of course they come with a pricetag and limitations tied to price tiers. I get more or less the same functionality as some of these software packages for free as well as other aspects such as the hot strings and other scripts that can help. Still it may be worth a trial of this (or others) service to give some insights on potential improvements to my own script functionality.

Halfway through the year I realised I could shave a few seconds of the way the existing script was operating at the time and I calculated this equated to an extra two listings per hour which doesn’t seem like a lot but when you’re spending hours upon hours listing things it really matters to the bottom line. It’s the equivalent of an extra $20 an hour (assumes $10 per item net profit). That’s $7280 over the year.

Another example from 2019 was setting up startup launchers which make getting into the listing frame of mind easier by removing that initial friction. For example my computer takes only seconds to turn on and get to the desktop thanks to the SSD. I can then double click the auto hot key script then use a single shortcut combination to open all the browser windows and folders I need to get listing instantly.

My current launching script opens instantly and logs into:
- EBay template page
- Sizely template page
- Australia Post business account page
- Working folder containing photos
Sourcing Theory

Peratos Principle

There’s a theory you may or may not have heard of called Peratos Principle which says: 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts.

The most common examples I have seen used for this principle relate to business customers. By focusing on your best customers whilst simultaneously culling your least valuable (in time commitments or problems for example) you can markedly improve your business results.

This same principle can be applied to reselling. I have been to a huge number of different Op shops over Perth city in 2019. It became apparent that a select few tended to yield either better high value items on occasion or were consistently better priced than others.

So you can probably guess where this is heading. By focusing on just these high yielding shops in 2020 I can dramatically reduce my physical sourcing time whilst still maintaining good returns.

Digital Sourcing

It makes total sense for procurement to be completed without leaving the house.

In 2019 I set up search shoves automated using Auto Hot Key. The script when triggered automatically searches Facebook, Gumtree etc using predetermined search strings running all queries instantly. This all allows quick survey of relevant results without wasting time with the inputs.

2020 will also be more of the same but expanded upon to capture more specific niches and key words. I will also be adding some additional text expansion to assist with procurement questions.

The other addition for this year will be online auctions. I will be very selective with what I pick up but it is an option.

Garage Sale Sourcing

I will potentially check out convenient local sales if driving by.

I will however complete both days of the garage sale trail coming up in 2020. 2019 was a great example of what could be achievable when routes can be planned with efficiency. I only did the one day in 2019 and came away with a full ute load for minimal cost.

Network Sourcing

Another aspect I will explore will be sales leads by networking with op shop‘s and other previous contacts made. This was originally the reason I wanted to get business cards made up so I could get some deals coming to me. Over the last year and a half I have gotten to know quite a few people who work at some of the op shop‘s including managers and some know that I am a reseller and some may correctly assume. I’m still a little bit undecided whether I will make this known at the op shops I intend to frequent for the year but this will be very relevant for ones that I may happen to pass by for example during a lunch break on a work day in a suburb that I wouldn’t usually go to. I can certainly see less harm or risk coming from doing this this way. I’ll add a side note here that I have set up a separate Skype number that relates just to the reselling business, and this way I can still use my own phone and the number will go to it.

Patterns Identified In 2019

Inventory Management

It became apparent over the course of the year that I was running out of space in the room I was operating out of.

I spent up big when the stock was there, but found myself begin to forgo larger items due to space issues.

It got so bad that I was literally stepping over stock to even get to my computer or exit the room. This of course also meant that when I had to find something to ship I knew what tub it was in thanks to the SKU system but I still had to move a whole bunch of items including unlisted stock also in tubs to get to it which is hugely inefficient.

I felt physically pained when having to do this and having to continually move multiple tubs to access one costs precious time. Every time I faced this problem it wasn’t a huge time sink in isolation but the cumulative easily aggregated into at least a couple of hours of dead time. Dead time is the devil to be vanquished.

Some plans for 2020 include:
- Transition more items into the shed. I can still fit another few tubs here.
- Install a new racking system outside that I can put tubs on. I’m thinking of using this as my death pile/money pile to give me a visual reminder of what needs to be listed and also stop me from more sourcing until this is done.
- Implement regular consolidation of existing tubs to maximise tub usage and therefore overall physical inventory footprint. This can be easily done visually, consolidated then the SKU updated. I’ve been toying with a digitised way to manage this but more on this another day.
Streamline Packing

Another process I identified during the year that needs tweaking was improving my packing processes. This thought mainly revolved around the efficiency of getting items picked and packed to just be better organised with where required tools and equipment are located and how work spaces are set up. I cannot convey how frustrated I have been sometimes when looking for a pair of scissors that have been misplaced by someone and not returned. This results in walking around the house trying to find where the scissors are and failing that trying to find an alternate pair, as crazy as it sounds I’ve probably spent over two hours this year just gone looking for some combination of scissors, tape, boxes, eBay tape, dymo labels, measuring tape, etc…

The fix, well a few fixes actually:
- Wall mount some hangers where the common tools will hang. Like the back of the door.
- Create a secondary emergency caddy as a backup.
- Ensure that point 1 is remedied ASAP should items become missing.
- Pre Printing Thank You Labels. As it sounds, simply have these printed from the Dymo ahead of time.
Of course being better organised also has the benefit of identifying earlier when stock levels are running low on consumables. An example is bubblewrap which can be brought in multiple places nearby but usually at a higher cost along with the required time value to go and pick it up so it makes sense to better plan ahead this year and order early.

Another goal for the coming years to see if I can source a cheap supply of bubble wrap and other packing materials. I have seen some previous posts on some of the reselling groups which may have some good leads on this, for example places which carry a lot of parts, car service centres, bike shops, etc…. may have excess materials that can be sourced for free or minimal cost. Anything that can be found in this matter will be a direct cost savings to the cost of goods sold.

Going Green

The rehoming items often second hand is great. I love the idea of rescuing items that might otherwise become trash. Even more so that I can get paid to do it. The packaging of these items to get them to where they need to go does however create a lot of plastic waste.

So I’ve been researching how I can improve this aspect of my business.

There are compostable bags, etc that can be used and even bubble wrap.

More research is required but I will be making this a priority this year to get some some (if not all) of these implemented. Looking to create a sustainable business.

More on this soon.

Get Help

At the moment I am just one man band on a part time schedule with the reselling due to full-time work commitments. I am a little envious of other reselling couples who it is obvious to see have some synergies in their work processes and practices to get things done. This coming year I would like to get some extra help with the business. I already started in 2019 to outsource some of the photos for clothes and other items which has already helped a lot but this is still a cost as I am paying a sub contractor to do this.

If only I could convince my wife that this could be a viable alternative to traditional work which would still allow her to stay home and look after our baby girl….

So she doesn’t know it yet and she probably won’t read this post either but I’m going to try and get her involved this year in someway, likely taking photos to start with for easy items such as media, books etc and then go from there. I guess the other thing that would probably help me a lot would be the odd trip to the post office or even helping with shipping.

Indeed this is part of my own five year plan to grow this business enough, to a point where perhaps she could go back to work full time and I could stay at home do the school drop off‘s etc and fit all the reselling in between a school day. That right there is the end game.

Health And Wellbeing

This one is pretty straightforward.

Whilst working away doing FIFO I was a nice trim 80 odd kilos doing double boot camps and eating whatever I wanted to. Fast forward to the job back in the city which has been predominantly desk bound for the most part combined with minimal exercise and a couple of really nasty flus this season has left me overweight and extremely unfit a combination not experienced since the early 2000’s when I used to smoke and drink too much combating undiagnosed depression at the time.

Now I have some extra motivation to get this area of life in order as within a year I will be chasing my little one around!

The remedy to repair the damage is:

Do exercise

Eat better

Sleep better

Just as I need to make time for my own business as in the reselling I also need to make time for my own health each and every day to work out a balance that works for myself and the family. Easier said than done but I’ve already started.

Collaboration and Innovation

So there’s a couple of collaboration projects I will be working on this coming year, details are sketchy at the moment.

I also have some meetups with fellow Resellers planned, the first of which will be late January.

I’m planning to get more YouTube content created as well but yet to see where I can fit this in just yet.

As far as innovation goes high on my priority list is creating some google forms which can function as registers of sourcing, returns completed, inventory consumables purchased etc… the point of setting this up is to make tax time far simpler. A google form can be easily used on mobile and can make that record keeping that little bit easier.

Conclusion

2020 is shaping up to be an exciting year. Although the only metric I have locked down is the 5 listings a day I have a feeling that even my turtle growth plan is going to reap excellent results.
The House Update 2019

December 13th, 2019

If you are here for the first time reading this, I have a small investment property. The proceeds from my reselling endeavours are being used primarily to hasten the repayments on this property. Initially this property was interest only with the loan for the fist 2 years which have passed and has now switched over to principal and interest repayments.

The ultimate goal is to pay this off somewhere between 5-10 years realistically.

After this event occurs I will have the rent coming in from this property to offset my mortgage repayment on my house that I live in. This offset should be enough whereby I could transition into reselling as a full time lifestyle gig or wind back normal work to perhaps 2 days a week (enough to cover the mortgage and some) and have reselling provide the expenditure for the household.

1 Year In Post Interest Only

It’s been a while since I last wrote a post about the house specifically and to be honest its been mainly business as usual which is pretty boring and boring equals good. I had a few maintenance issues to contest with back in May and had to replace a small oven, a washing machine and cop all the fees associated from getting the property relisted.

This trend continued with a broken TV antenna repair (I know right) and a new Air Conditioner also to top things off… As this property generates only a small income compared to a four bedroom house expenses such as these impact much more on cashflow.

The good news is however that I have now replaced pretty much every appliance with new so moving forward there should be a return to normal.

The Stats

I am happy to report that the the current status is now: 9.75% of the loan paid off. When I logged into my account this morning this figure kind of caught me by surprise. I have been chipping away at this and diligently moving eBay profit across into the offset account.

So logically extrapolating this trend there should be no reason to go over 10 years on even this current trajectory which has been waylaid by those extraordinary expenses.

Combine this with the consistent push in eBay listings (and profit) I am still aiming to have this done in 5 Years.
November 2019 Summary

December 11th, 2019
November was truly amazing.

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.
Should I Fight A Reselling Return Or Case?

November 27th, 2019
Over the last few months I have seen a few posts within various reselling groups about dealing with returns and potential scams and how best to navigate these often unique situations.

I’ll admit in the early days when I was first getting started hitting my first return was a little stressful. Initially I didn’t even offer returns as an option. Fast forward a year and I’m happy to say I get very few, I make it a point to try and take quality photos and add quality descriptions to every listing.

As I have written about before I can quickly and easily do this with my Auto Hot Key hotstrings. You can read more about that here.

Even so with all my extra details I still have had a couple of curly ones including a buyer who claimed I had sent him a fake book and who threatened to cross the Nullarbor to bash me. This particular case I defended with honour (as the book was not fake) and the result was a small financial loss on the postage but in my own opinion a colossal waste of time. You can read about that saga buyers book remorse here.

Then there was the time I found an RM Williams Jacket at a Salvos and later sold it for over $100 plus postage. I remember receiving the offer on a Saturday morning and it was a great start to the weekend. Later however I received a negative feedback just before the 30 day return window and had that successfully removed. Cold hard logic and again correctly describing the item helped. This was actually easier to deal with than the fake book as I didn’t have to deal with the buyer. You can read about how I got that negative feedback removed here.

So with a little context given I now provide my own view which will likely be polarising and even piss a few people off but stick with me, you might have an epiphany or at least something to mull over when future requests arrive.

I’ll use an example of my own.

I had a Sims game I sold for about $10 I think it was, it specifically stated in the listing title PC only (as the original game would have had the MAC code also). When I initially picked this up sourcing I had missed that the MAC code was gone so sold it as just the PC version (after all it could still be used).

Anyway I received an offer, took it and sent it. Some time later the dreaded return request appeared on my eBay app after I had arrived home from work with the usual accompanying stupid message.

I’m pretty sure the buyer thought it had the Mac code… It’s funny how often the stupid returns correlate with lower value item sales…

Now what would you do here? Here’s what I did:

I took less than a minute to be done with it. I instantly refunded, wrote this item off as a loss and got on with my evening spending time with my family. No further thoughts required.

Total loss? $4.5 most of which is still tax deductible including the cost of the item, fees and shipping.

Total time spent: The 1 minute to deal with the issue.

Is Your Ego Owning You?

It seems many people would rather give up their time (which is a finite resource) to fight with a buyer often for a measly few dollars.

But it’s the principle of it many say! Oh the calamity!

I was wronged and I must wage war at great personal cost just to win, just to prove a point, just to say ha, I told you so, I was right.

If you need to be right your Ego is owning you at the cost of your very own time.

This is madness. This isn’t life or death or some other cause even remotely worthy of martyrdom.

Are you really that selfless you fight to protect others from scams or bad buyers?

Perhaps motivation stems from a fear of loss (financial)

But consider again is it: I AM RIGHT!

Check your ego.

Risk Management

If you could win every time you would be trading stocks surely. Even the best stock traders on the planet lose regularly, it’s part of the process.

There’s even scams and shams in this world too, penny stock pump and dumps, insider trading, bot trading, shell companies. All part of the game. Navigating this world is extremely convoluted and infinitely more complicated that a reselling return request.

Losses by successful traders are indeed planned for with effective risk and money management and the same principle can be applied to reselling as a business.

Returns and dodgy buyers part of the cost of doing business, incorporate it into your modelling, you can write the loss off.

Choose which battles to fight. Don’t waste your time fighting for trivial amounts. Your time comparatively is almost always better spent on a resource generating activity vs debt recovery. With reference to my own example, not that I actually thought about like this (as I knew it would be a waste of time) there needs to be a calculation of its worth spending time on to go through the whole returns process including the inspection and relisting.

Assuming I can make on average a conservative $50 per hour (approx 83c per minute) from my reselling activities by actually listing current inventory on hand, how much time can I allocate to this return before it becomes ROI negative?

At $10 sold I am already in for $4.5 including shipping and fees (which doesn’t factor in time listing either). I have $5.50 profit to play with leaving approximately 9 minutes to deal with this before it becomes counter productive Vs listing other items on hand.

When thought about in this manner the decision is easy and the emotion / ego can be removed.

Obviously a higher value item allows more time to deal with an issue without becoming a negative return. However, consider that the resolution time value is always an unknown variable also. As an example my own experience with the fake book buyer, I spent time :
- Replying to this buyers messages on several occasions, including having to deal with physical threats.
- Multiple chat queries with eBay representatives for direction / confirmations / and protecting my account.
- The return when it finally arrived to visually record the opening of the item (Scam Protection).
I probably spent more than 3 hours in actual time with fighting this, the equivalent of a loss of $150 against a $50 sale.

Some of you reading may be thinking but somebody’s got to fight the good fight, keep people honest, after all these same buyers will continue do do this to sellers right?

That’s exactly what I chose to do in the fake book scenario but my motivation stemmed from protecting my account against the claim I had sold a fake item. Would I do that again in the same situation?

Hell No. I should have just refunded and moved on. I would have still had to contact eBay to protect my account but I would have saved a huge amount of time and angst.

I arrive at this conclusion because there’s another element which is not talked about at all, it’s a concept extremely difficult to quantify and value eroding.

Mental Bandwidth The Ghost In The Return

There’s measurable time itself spent dealing with a return as per the example above, replying to multiple messages, consulting with eBay, waiting for eBay, physically checking returns, relisting, etc…

However a truly sinister villain exists hidden within the mental bandwidth chewed up by thinking about the return itself.

Mentally sifting through a myriad of different scenarios, possibilities, outcomes all to determine the best course of action. The problem is in my opinion there are often too many variables to consider involving the buyer and eBay and while the brain is engaged with the management of the return it is not being used for other productive endeavours such as creation of value.

The lying awake in bed thinking about it, how is the best way to reply to this message whilst still remaining professional should eBay read these messages (which they will). What happens if old mate did try something physical, he had my return address after all (whereby I soon transitioned to a PO Box), was my family potentially in danger? Probably not but thoughts were required to assess this and potential responses.

This hidden cost also has a value but again hard to accurately quantify. With the fake book example I know I spent a lot of time thinking about all of the above.

I estimate that there would have been likely another 3 hours of thoughts processed during this saga at varying times that spanned multiple days. There’s another $150 loss vs listing. That’s a $300 theoretical loss so far.

Lastly, all of this mental bandwidth is processed with a negative overtone which of course bleeds into the rest of the day(s) like an infectious disease subconsciously impacting the day to day life of you and the people around you.