How Much Time Do I Spend on eBay?

hey I'm back with another video this one's filled with questions that you've asked I will answer them as always I'll leave time codes down below so if you want to jump to a particular question check the description and if you have questions for me go ahead and ask them in the comments and I will answer them in a future video Jerry lives asks wondering how you often pay up for something and what criteria would qualify you doing so thanks and looking forward to more content so generally I buy low and sell high but sometimes I do buy high and sell higher and when I do that depends on a couple of factors I don't mind paying up for something if it's going to bring a larger net return and or if it's going to sell fast that's where sell through rate comes in to be pretty important is how long is something going to take to sell I'm okay with spending more money if it's going to sell a lot faster and you can tell that by checking the sell through rate uh or if it's going to return a lot of money for example I may not pay $100 to buy something that's going to sell for 200 in six months but I might pay $100 for something that'll sell for $200 in 2 days I'm simplifying it here but you get the idea you definitely want to be checking the sell through rate it also depends on the category too and so for example there are just certain categories that I avoid because they tend to bring problematic buyers or scammers I avoid buying Apple products for example I just don't like the hassle that comes with trying to sell an iPad or a MacBook Pro or things like that even though they're profitable I just don't like doing that type of thing but I might spend more money on a lot of like crocheting gear because the types of buyers that that category brings is not going to be as difficult to deal with so category plays a role in it as well uncle Ronnie asks I've been reselling for 30 years mostly used collectible items with a small sprinkling of new in that time frame new items more and more come hermatic sealed with Holograms and all this anti- theft all over them part of me says I must open the box to take my own photos and ensure the items is still good but the term open box has such a negative connotation that I would be reluctant to I've been burned too many times by assuming that sealed items are good both as a buyer and a seller do you video opening boxes and inserted in the pcks thanks for all you do thanks for the question it's a good question um first I would advise not opening sealed items that's just going to drastically reduce the value right away uh you're going to make a lot less money I'm not saying that scams don't happen but the amount of times that I've been scammed on eBay after literally thousands and thousands of sales I think I've had close to 10,000 sales I can count on one hand how many times I've actually been scammed and every single time that that's happened I've reached out to eBay and they have covered it for me it's never come out of my pocket and so the fear of scams is way overblown I'm not saying it doesn't happen it definitely happens but the fear of it is way overblown and so I just wouldn't worry about if you're trying to sell an item that is sealed uh I definitely would not open it I would sell it sealed and new in terms of taking photo evidence and video evidence none of that matters I would not waste your time doing any of it eBay is not going to accept it as evidence and it's very easy to fake if I wanted to fake me putting a sealed item into a box and taping it up and then sending it off like I could just very easily fake that eBay is not going to accept any evidence like that and so I would not advise you to spend time filming yourself opening or sealing items or anything like that so again don't open the sealed items I would not recommend opening them sell them sealed sell them new don't worry about filming anything it's eBay is not going to take that as evidence anyway because it's way too easy to fake and just trust that everything will go fine and 99.9% of the time everything will go fine wiby asks regarding metrics can you share more of what your typical targets or thresholds are for ongoing metrics like Roi margin and dollar amount sure happy to share that I don't really think of it in that way I don't have a Target Roi for example Roi is not a great metric to use in that regard because it doesn't consider uh your margins it doesn't consider how much money you can make and so you can have a Roi that's extremely high but only make a little bit amount of money and in the reverse you can have an Roi that's extremely low and make a ton of money and so Roi is not a good thing to Target and make sure you're always getting otherwise you'll turn down deals that you otherwise probably should have bought the way I use Roi in my own business is I know what my average return on investment is and if you look at my lifetime data it's usually right around let's look at my lifetime Data before I say that if you look at my Roi over the last year or so it's right around 700% and so that just means if I go out sourcing and I stick to what I know and I just buy the things that I know are going to be resellable and I don't you know lower my standards for the quality of items that I buy I'm basically going to get 700% return on whatever I buy if I spend $100 on stuff at garage sales on a Saturday in my head I can just sort of know okay that's rough going to be roughly $700 coming back to me and again it's averages so sometimes it's going to be higher sometimes it's going to be lower but for me it's just a good like mindset thing it's like okay I know that my average Roi is roughly 700% and so how much money did I just spend how much money am I probably going to make that's how I use Roi the sort of targets that I do set though are on listing for example and so I have listing targets that's the most important thing for me is that I just trust that I'm going to buy continue to buy decent inventory uh based on what I know I just need to get that stuff listed it's so easy to let it sit there and not list it and so for me the most important targets that I set are listing targets I set five per day I need to be listing five different listings every single day that's my target Reeds Home garage asks please let us know how you avoid the verified rights owner vau so what Reed's asking here is the verified rights ownership program which is a program that eBay does with a variety of Brands uh out there to make sure that people aren't selling brands that they shouldn't be on eBay and so if you sell a brand that you should not be selling on on eBay eBay might notice and they might take that down and that's called a voo request and eBay manages a list of all of the brands that you're not really supposed to sell on eBay uh I'll link it down below this is what it looks like right here but it's really difficult uh as a seller because if you look at this list like almost every single brand is on there and you can go down the list and do searches for brands on on this list and you'll see just tons of items listed so in my experience there's really no good way to avoid getting a viau request or a Tak down request on the items that you sell unless you get one that like once you've gotten it then you know okay I probably should shouldn't be selling that again usually the ones that I get I don't get anymore cuz I don't repeat the same mistakes but for example you know if you list a bunt cake uh bunt b n DT is actually like a term that is owned by the company nordicware and so if you sell a bunt cake that is not nordicware and you call it a bunt cake they get mad and they take it down so that's an example of a Vero that I've I've run into for example but you know they don't they don't tell you that in the documentation on eBay you just sort of have to Discover It Yourself flip it Mama asks I'll try to schedule listings at 8 per day and I have a week's worth of listings ready to go live if I find really valuable items with great sellr rates should I wait until my next week's listings to post them or should I post them right away it's a good question so it's good to have kind of a bank of scheduled listing so that if you don't get around to listing one day you're automatically going to have your goal listings go live for that day but you're asking if you happen to Source things in between should you schedule them out into the future or should you just list them right away and it's really up to you personally I just list them right away especially if they're high value High s through rate like they're not going to sell if they're not listed and so you might as well get them up but it really it's really a personal choice for you if you want to keep that draft Bank going or that scheduled listing Bank going then you can certainly do that but I personally go in and just list stuff right away the love story project asks hello Justin I just sold a mug hey great job I love selling mugs thanks for all the information you share and your videos really useful had a question does size of store matter Beyond more products more opportunity to find a buyer is there any evidence that eBay likes bigger stores and sellers is it worth getting from 250 to 500 products so that's a good question I would say the answer to that is yes you know you are going to sell more the more that you list but I wouldn't think of it as like I just want to indiscriminately get my store up to 500 listings you want to do it in the right way you want to get it up there with good good inventory I you know eBay doesn't care if you have 500 items listed that nobody will buy um they're not going to see that as a signal and suddenly find buyers to buy stuff that has no demand but if you are able to get inventory that is in high demand you know that buyers want get as much of it up as possible and you will make as much money as you can uh so that that's it it's a it's a per item basis eBay doesn't care whether you have one item listed or a thousand items listed it's about the individual demand of those items that you have listed Jeff asks have you thought about using calculated shipping to make more profit I noticed that you charged $4.99 shipping on the little Playmates Disney set but actual shipping was 30 using calculated shipping has been a GameChanger for me the profit on the item was good but could it have been better so this is a great question I'm glad you brought this up uh Jeff's referring to a sale that I had from my last video that was like a Disney castle and I had put $4.99 shipping on that and the shipping was actually $30 so you're asking well shouldn't you maybe you should have done calculated shipping on that you would have made more money and this is you know I'm probably going to get a lot of people that disagree with this because there's a lot of nuance to this strategy I don't recommend the strategy to everyone necessarily it depends on what you said and it depends on a lot of different things but this is exactly why I don't do calculated shipping is because the way I look at it is an item has a total value for a buyer um to get to buy that item and get it delivered to their house and so if I would have put calculated shipping on that castle it would have sold for $80 and the actual shipping cost would have been $30 that would have priced that castle out of market for that buyer you know that would have made it way too expensive they would have been able to find that castle cheaper than what I would have had it listed at if I is using calculated shipping and so a big reason I don't use calculated shipping is because it does not allow me to control the market value of what I'm selling the market value with calculated shipping ends up being a variable uh dependent on the location of a potential buyer and that ends up in my opinion excluding a lot of potential buyers from ever buying it because it prices the item up to be out of the market value for that item and so by using free shipping or by building in a flat shipping cost like I did with that one in particular it allows me to set the market value that I want to get and you do run the risk in that scenario of selling it to someone where the shipping cost is higher than what you put for the shipping cost but again I I don't look at it that way I look at at a single value this is what this item is worth the amount that I charge my buyers for shipping is more of a psychological decision not a value decision and so that's why I don't use calculated shipping is because I don't get to control the market value of the items I list when I use calculated shipping and it ends up making the price of my it items much higher in certain scenarios for buyers but it's risky I know a lot of people may disagree with that a lot of people will see that as like a way to lose money personally I think opening myself up to more buyers uh outweighs the value of excluding a bunch of buyers and only getting buyers that are going to pay my exact shipping costs so that's it's a trade-off but you make the decision for yourself that's just how I I do it in particular Katherine asks as a new reseller I would like to know when is the right time to start selling internationally it seems more technical or am I being naive so I think you should start selling internationally as soon as you possibly can there might be some restrictions on the eBay side for new sellers not being able to sell internationally I'm not exactly sure what those are you should look them up but if you are eligible to be a part of the international shipping program through eBay you should do it 100% I think it is an excellent program basically what it means is when you sell through the international shipping program you open up the audience of people who can buy your stuff to be across the globe I can't remember how many countries it is but it's a lot um and it's for you as the seller it's the exact same thing as selling it domestically and so if an international buyer buys your item through the international shipping program you don't send it to the end buyer you send it to eBay and eBay takes it they inspect it and they repackage it and they handle all of the fees and the taxes and the forms and all of that stuff you don't have to handle any of it and so it's super easy you just send it to a local Warehouse here in the United States and eBay takes care of the rest also there's no returns on the international shipping program so if a buyer doesn't like it or it breaks or whatever um they may open up a return but eBay doesn't charge you as the seller for that return so I love it when I get a a sale through the international shipping program because I know it's a done deal I know I'm not going to get a return on it as long as you get the item to eBay's Warehouse successfully then you're off the hook for anything else that happens to that item after the fact the only thing I don't like about the international shipping program is that eBay does repackage the stuff for you and so if you are selling stuff internationally through that program that is very delicate eBay does not do as good of a job as you will in packaging your items so they'll open it up they'll inspect it they'll repackage it they won't do as of a good job and sometimes those things are going to arrive broken and again as a seller you don't get you don't have to cover the cost of that if it does get broken eBay covers the cost of it but it still sucks to have your item broken in transit when you put all this effort into shipping it correctly and then they don't they don't pack it well that's the only downside that I have with the international shipping program I think the I think that program is also more expensive for the buyer on the other side of it I think if I were selling directly to buyers internationally it would be cheaper for them but I don't want to deal with the hassle that comes with having to ship it internationally so I'm I'm happy to make that tradeoff get probably get less International sales but they are much more secure and easy to handle through the international shipping program so do it right away if you can all right Stephen asks hi Justin do you fill in item specifics that eBay nags us about in the tasks section I've been filling them all out because I don't want to be nagged about them but I'm not sure it helps with sales and it sure takes a decent amount of time I'm actually let me take a look I'm going to look at my phone here I'm going to open up the eBay app and see I don't think I do this I don't think I keep this up to date at all so if I go into selling yeah I have 687 items that I need to add my recommended item specifics to so I I do not pay attention to that you know maybe if I did update those those things would sell faster I'm not really sure but I've not made the effort to fill in that information so maybe I should try that though Karen asks one question if you Source a VCR DVD player or any remote controlled electronic device in working condition do you pick up whether it has a remote or not so it depends on the device uh the VCRs VCR DVD combos I typically will still pick them up even if they don't have a remote just because they're still worth a decent amount of money but like anything else I just check comps and with something that requires a remote you can very easily see what it goes for with the remote and without the remote and I just do the math in my head at the time to determine whether it's still worth it to do it without the remote I also sometimes just look up to see how much it costs to buy a remote and so you may find that it sells for you know $5 more with the remote but you can get the remote for 15 might make sense to go ahead and do that just to get a little bit of extra profit out of it but it just depends on the device with VCRs I typically do buy them without the remote though SV asks I work in the grocery industry and net profit also needs to include the growing cost of Labor how much time do you spend each week packaging up the hundreds of items you sell I really don't see many resellers talking about this at all good question how much time do I spend on all of this I do have a video it's called how I made 82,000 or how I sold $882,000 on eBay part-time last year where I do give a complete breakdown of all the time that we spend doing this it's not super accurate anymore honestly I spend less time on eBay now than I did then but I'll just break it down really quick in my head this is a side hustle for me it's not my full-time job so I don't track my hours super closely but I have a good idea I have the same processes that we repeat over and over again Mondays the shipping usually takes about an hour uh because of the Weekend sales and then th Tuesday through Friday it's much quicker it's usually maybe a half hour you know so what is that that's 2 hours that's 3 hours of shipping per week uh sourcing you know we go out to thrift stores two or three times per week and spend at least an hour each time so let's call that three or four hours per week so that's four I'm losing losing the math in my head at this point how do I not have any paper around here all right I found some paper so let's see I'm going to go ahead and do the the math right here with you let's see so we ship Monday through Friday 1 hour on Monday and 3 hours the rest so that's 4 hours total on shipping per week and so on sourcing during the week we usually go to a thrift store two or three times and spend an hour you know including the time to get there uh so let's call that you know 3 hours per week sourcing on the weekends uh we do garage sales typically from about 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. so that's another 3 hours that's 6 hours on sourcing that's 10 hours total so far um and then listing and so I list five things per day I typically can bang out about five items in half hour um and so that's uh you know 30 minutes time 7 that's uh 210 minutes that's 3 and a half hours listing per week that's 13.5 hours Let's round it up to 15 hours per week so we spend about 15 hours per week doing this between shipping listing and sourcing all right Colette asks I'm curious to know what percentage of the time you first to show up at the yard sale you go to and do you generally make it a practice to arrive earlier than the start times if so how much earlier thanks um so I very rarely am I the first to show up at a yard sale usually I go out right at 7: a.m. so the first one I go to I might be the first one to show up at uh but I don't make an effort to show up earlier than an advertise time if I arrive at a garage sale and it turns out that I'm it's earlier than they open maybe I'm outgoing and it doesn't open till 8 uh I'll ask the person hey are you open um I don't want to just barge in um but I I try to respect whatever the house owner you know wants from their garage sale if they're okay with letting people in early great if they're not I'm happy to not go in early think there's certain regions around the country I found that you know the garage sale rules are different where uh going early is a big no no around here people don't seem to care if you show up early but again I just defer to the owner all right dreams asks I'm curious about your worst flips if you list them at the price that earns you a low net return don't you already have a good idea at the time of listing that it will bring a low return so are these items you've lowered the price on over time what gives thanks so much for the content so yeah that's a great question most of the time yes I already know at the time of listing that it's not going to bring a whole lot of money in usually in my videos when I express surprise at the value that I had at something it's not when it sold it's like when I sourced it you know that's kind of confusing I know when I say like oh I can't believe this thing sold for this amount like I'm not talking about right in that moment I can't believe it but once I get it home and I'm doing the research that's usually when I'm when the surprise happens is cuz I'm learning the actual value of it by the time it's listed and by the time it's sold I already know what it's going to sell for and so if I have low value items sitting around I will still list them usually uh sometimes I look them up and and the sell through rate is just so poor I know it's going to be sitting for you know a year plus I just won't list those types of things but if I have you know things that'll sell for 10 or 15 bucks you know I'll list them I might as well make a few dollars from them I don't typically go out and Source those things on purpose uh to to buy but sometimes it's either Maybe they came in a lot of different things and there was one valuable thing and a lot of Cheaper things or I thought it was going to be more valuable than it was or yeah I'll have lowered the price over time because it hadn't sold that that's another another good example of that Sean asks he said you do some or a lot of garage sale buys you put on garage sales yourself to sell things that are not selling on eBay or your other platforms just to measure room or recoup some money so yeah I do go to a lot of garage sales I don't hold a lot of garage sales though personally I would rather be out there at garage sales than running my own garage garage sale uh so don't do a whole lot of garage sales maybe once every 3 years I'll do a garage sale Eddie asks two quick questions what do you use for void fill and where do you get it so for void fill I buy from a company called the boxery and I buy it usually through eBay I think they have their web own website but it's no cheaper and so it's just easier for me to go through eBay and and I can use eBay funds to buy it but the boxery has a large rolls of like brown craft paper which is the cheapest I found it is through the boxery I haven't done a ton of research but I'll link it down below you can decide whether that's you know worth it for you for your Void fill I also just keep all void fill that I get from other packaging like if I order from Amazon I take the void fill from there set it aside and use that your second question was am I right in thinking you class an item as vintage if it is more than 20 years old I seem to think I heard once that vintage is 40 years old retro is 20 and antique is 100 that's a good question personally I consider 20 years old to be vintage I don't think there's like vintage police out there that if you use it incorrectly they're going to get mad uh there's certainly people on eBay who will send you passive aggressive messages if you put something as vintage that shouldn't be but you're not going to break any laws doing it but personally I use 20 years for vintage uh retro I don't I don't have never used that term officially retro feels less specific than vintage retro could mean 50 years old or it could mean 10 years old it could be just a style retro style not necessarily an indicator of age an antique at 100 years that sounds about right to me but I don't sell a lot of antique so I'm not 100% sure about that I know there's some of Y who could tell me in the comments though uh so let us know down there Ezra asks hey Justin love your channel your advice is always clear and easy to understand wish you the best thanks you too question did you ever consider going full-time do you think it is a good idea love to hear your thoughts so for me personally no I've never really considered going full-time on eBay for a couple of reasons the first big reason this is a personal reason is I just I think I would get bored and burned out if that was my only Venture I'm someone who likes to have a lot of different things going on and so at any given time I've got probably a half dozen different Ventures that I use you know to make money and to to take up my time whether they're Hobbies or their businesses or things like that and reselling is just one of those and that's personally where I like reselling to be is as a side hustle as a venture I love doing it but I think I would love doing it less if it was the only thing that I did I like making YouTube videos I like reselling stuff I like running my startup but if you're someone who doesn't want that who doesn't mind doing that full-time you definitely can lots of people out there are selling on eBay fulltime and it really just depends on a couple of factors first you need to understand how much your household takes to run how much money do you need to be bringing in in order to survive in order to do that you just want to be tracking all of your expenses over some amount of time two or three months track all money going in and out so you have a good idea of how much money you need to make in order to go full-time on something really should be doing that anyway and then you want to be tracking your eBay sales data as well profit margin is a really important number when it comes to determining whether or not you can go full-time on eBay and profit margin is basically the amount of money that you take home based on what you sell and so if you sell sell something for $100 and you take home $50 that's a 50% net profit margin if you're tracking your sales over time and have a good idea of what your average net profit margin is then you can determine how much you need to sell on eBay in order to take enough money home to live off of and so if it takes your household $5,000 to live per month to play to pay rent or mortgage and food and all that stuff and you know that you have an average net profit margin of say 50% you know you need to be selling per month you know $10,000 on eBay in order to make that amount of money not including income tax I'll let you figure that part out I'm simplifying it here but that's how you would go about figuring that out is track your data in terms of your household income and expenses track your data on the eBay side so you have a good idea of your net profit margins uh and then just figure out how much do I need to sell in order to make that possible and make the decision if whether you can do it or not but lots of people do it it's just not for me I personally just want to have a lot of different things going on all right thank you so much for watching if you made it this far YouTube thinks you might like this other video of mine so check it out

Channel: Justin Resells

Views: 11,535

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Id: 1yaxC1OSojo

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024