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:

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 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 $$$.

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.

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.

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.

More on this to come.