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Transcript

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Suzanne, hi, eBay friends, this is your hostess, Suzanne, and this is episode number 191, of eBay, the right way. Today's date is November 13, 2024 and my guest is Mariah. Announcements. This is a personal thing. I had an unexpected road trip this past weekend. My 87 year old dad had a health emergency and was hospitalized, and it wasn't looking good. So my sister Trina, who lives in Charlotte and I made the drive from the Carolinas to Atlanta to see our dad. We stayed with our older sister, Jenny, who lives close to the hospital. The good news is that dad rallied and will be okay for now, and we had a fun family visit, reminiscing about growing up and we got to visit with family and friends that we hadn't seen in a long time. So here's the funny thing, sometimes us three sisters think we have one brain split three ways. Jenny is the oldest. She's 18 months older than me, and Trina is four years younger than me, so I'm the middle sister. And so we were out on Jenny's patio, and I noticed that she has the exact same outdoor rug that I have on my porch. And I mentioned that, and then Trina said, Oh, I have that one too. So that was weird. And Trina and I wore almost the exact same outfit on Saturday. We do that sometimes, like we have shown up to family events dressed alike without planning it, and everyone else thinks we plan to dress alike, and no, we're just on the same wavelength about what to wear. So it's just kind of funny when the three of us get together, Jenny was a wonderful hostess. She entertains a lot, so she's always the Martha Stewart of the group. Trina and I spent five hours on both Friday and Saturday at the hospital, visiting. So that's pretty tiring, just kind of hanging around the hospital. And so it was delightful to come back to Jenny's home, where there was a huge spread of food waiting for us. Also, my son came over and joined us, and that evening, Saturday evening, we had delicious cocktails out by the fire pit. It was a beautiful night, and we just really enjoyed our visit. So we made the best of a not so great situation. And I'm just so glad to be back in the south and close to my family again so I can be there for these kinds of things. Okay, next topic, thank you to all of our virtual assistant clients. You are keeping us busy getting things listed for fourth quarter, and it's wonderful to see the items on money making Mondays, selling that our team of VAs listed, and that includes me, my team is listing between 10 and 15 items a day for me as I rebuild my eBay business. So just remember, it can't sell if it isn't listed, there's still time to get help listing your items. Holiday sales are strong until January, and there's a link below the podcast to the information about my virtual assistant service, so make sure to check that out if you're interested in learning more. Okay, now on to the chat with Mariah. Hello, listeners. I have Mariah with us today, and she was a little hesitant to come on the podcast because she is sort of new to eBay, but that's okay, because everybody's new at some point. So how are you doing? And we are recording this on Halloween. So how are you on the spooky day? It's a pretty crazy day. It's been nuts here, but just weird traffic and strange things that happen only I guess, Monday. A year it's Halloween all the way around. Yes, I did dress up today, but I took my costume off for this. Yeah, and your regular job is what? So I'm a full time teacher, and I've been teaching for this is my 20th year teaching. Oh god, I've taught every level, kindergarten through 12th grade at some point in time. Actually, I've taught pre K too, but I don't like little kids as much as I like high school kids, so I teach high school. I could, I could get on board with that. Yeah, there's less bodily fluids in high school, like no soft, no puke, right time, you know? Yeah, I was a babysitter back in the day, so I feel you on that. So okay, well, thank you for agreeing to come on the podcast and talk about your experience so far. So let's start with what brought you to eBay, and when did you start? So I joined eBay in 2005 actually, not in my current eBay store or anything, but in 2005 I had this friend, my first child was born, and I had this friend who had told me about Gymboree clothing. Yeah, really big thing back then. It sure that it was a huge reselling of Gymboree clothing. People were crazy about it. You had all these adorable accessories, and you needed, like your kid needed the purse and the sunglasses with every outfit also matching shoes the whole nine yards. And so my daughter, who's my oldest, I would buy her all these really cute outfits, but you could buy it on eBay cheaper. And then my friend was like, back then, everything kind of resold via forums, which I know is they've died, but besides the forums, if you couldn't sell it on a forum, you could put your stuff on eBay, but everything was an auction format. So eBay, my experience back then was really different with eBay than what I do now and as a buyer, auctions are great. As a seller. I hate auctions for a lot of reasons, but so that was my first experience, about 2000 I want to say nine to 12. EBay had some hiccups. There were a lot of scam things and different things, and I, my kids are bigger, so I just forgot about eBay until a couple years ago. I have a friend who actually has been on your podcast, Bethany Henderson, yes, Beth she's a right. Okay, so she and I, we actually lived three or four houses down for each other for a while. She's my friend, and we thrift together for years. So she'd always say, I resell stuff. Have you thought about reselling? And I would say, I'm not going to do it again. I did it way back when with kids clothes. It was a lot of work. I hate shipping. And she's like, things have changed. You should try it. So for a long time, I just said no. And then my oldest started college, and I was like, oh, college is so expensive. And as she was still telling me, I should try it, we happened to go to a thrift store one day. And like, I don't know there were five, I think five or six pairs of Tory Burch sandals and, like, Birkenstocks and all these things and everything. Was like, the shoes were like, I think we spent $1.99 a pair or something crazy. So I texted her, because she had been headed home. We had been thrifting all day, and I was like, get your butt over here. I've just filled my cart, and you need to get here. I've never seen so much great stuff. So she got there and filled her cart too, and we had all this stuff. And she's like, You should resell some of this. And I was like, no, no, just take this stuff. I can't wear. I don't want it. And she's like, You should resell. Well, that's as the week went on. I finally decided, well, I'll try with these one pair of sandals. I'll see if I can sell them. And so I started a Poshmark account and an eBay account. I had never heard of Mercari at that time, and my old eBay account, I hadn't used it for so long, it had ceased to exist. So like I had to start fresh. I had bought a book that summer off eBay for my daughter for a college class. I had one feedback, which, if you know, is terrible, because I was the buyer, and I had never so no one wanted to buy from me for a while. I guess they looked like a scammer, right? Yeah, but everybody starts with zero, yes. But people, you know, I see it all the time, people post, hey, this person has like, zero feedback. Should I be worried? Well, I was there starting back out a year ago. I had one feedback, and so I listed, I want to say I worked really hard to get 20 items listed. It took a lot of effort to even get to 20, and it took two months before I had my first sale, and it was an eBay sale, and it was a terrible thing. I would never buy it again. They were Kate Spade shoes, but I. Don't buy Kate Spade shoes. It's a bad idea. They don't have a good sell through rate. But I did sell these Kate Spade shoes that I picked up because I was like, Ooh, Kate Spade that looks like a great idea. So I went into it kind of not a lot of knowledge. And if I hadn't had my friend Bethany to be like, You should do this. Watch this person's podcast, get on YouTube and look up sell through rates and videos and stuff, I would have been lost, but I spent a lot of time researching and started to do things better and, like in a better business plan model, because some of the stuff I first listed, you just should never buy. Like, I have things in my closet that I would tell you, do not buy that. Do not take it for free, do not list it will never sell well. I mean, you gotta start somewhere. And I sell stuff all the time, like every season, I'll go through my closet. I hadn't I didn't wear that last fall. I don't need this. And even though probably doesn't have a great sell through rate, I put it on eBay anyway, just like I pay $3 for it at a thrift store, I wear it, and then I don't wear it, and even if I can sell for 10 you still, you know, and you're not you're re homing it. But you know, some people say don't fool with the $10 $20 sales. But I disagree, because I like McDonald's. Think about how many fries McDonald's sells like they have somebody on volume so well. And you did a podcast. So when I first started out, I actually started out, one of the things that my friend recommended was watch your podcast, and you did one with a plush seller right around when I was first starting out. It wasn't the first podcast I watched with you, so I can't remember who it was, but she talked about paying her mortgage in $8 sales. And I remember that because at the time I was listening to all of these resellers who were giving advice and looking at building a business plan. And there was one lady who prides herself in helping new resellers. She really is kind of a Poshmark specialist, but she talked about, if you can't make a $10 profit, don't sell it. And then I loved the lady who goes, I pay my mortgage in $8 sales. And she didn't say $8 profit. She said$8 sales. So any profit is profit, you have to decide, is this enough of a profit margin for me? Because if you can make, like you said, French fry sales, quantity sales, are going to make you a lot more money. If they're small, and there's a lot of them, than $100 sale a month well, and yes, it is more work to list $20 items, but if they're plentiful, and you can get them for one or $2 and it's consistent, I challenge the listeners to go back if you keep records and add up how many of your sales were$20 or fewer or lower dollar sales, and you'd be surprised, and then add that up over a year, and it's significant. So I know some of the, what I call the heavy hitters that sell the really high dollar stuff. Some of them, you know, they have full time jobs. They're gainfully employed. They're kind of doing it on the side. And it depends on your objective, you know, what are you trying to accomplish? And you know, where are you? Do you need to hustle it and make the money? What are you trying? What are you doing with it? Are you saving for retirement? Are you saving for a vacation? You know, when you have a goal in mind, and even some of the heavy hitters have$20 sales, so it doesn't have to be either or it's the mix one you mentioned. You encourage people to consistently list, and I think that so there are some things. Like, if I were to tell somebody, you know, when people say to me, I really want to be a reseller, well, the first thing I tell people is, when you first start out, you are bad at it, so it's really time consuming. So when I first started, it really did take me 40 hours a week to do everything. I wasn't listing a lot, but a listing might take me 30 minutes. And so if I listed four things in a day like that, was a lot of time, and then sourcing is always going to be time consuming. So I had that piece and shipping until I had a process. Shipping took me a really long time, and I started out shipping every day, which is great when you're trying to get really good feedback, because I needed feedback to make sales, but shipping every day will kill you. You will die doing that, because when we get to, like today I shipped, and I didn't have a lot this week, but I had 20 things to ship. And if, if I had 20 a day to ship, that takes me an hour to get 20 things pulled and packed and labeled and so doing it every day, I'd rather. You 40 every third day, what is your handling time? So I have three day handling three business day handling time, and I'm really careful. EBay is one of those. They punish you if you don't keep your handling time. So one of the things is, if I ship every other day, it works for me. I ship Mondays, I ship Wednesdays, I ship Fridays, and that is really easy for my week, the post office is right by my full time job. It's like, just down the street. So usually go on my lunch, which, you know, I have 30 minutes. I can just drop stuff off of the post office and be back at school with no problem. But during, like, end of October, I right now I stand in line and I get receipts, and so once we hit, like November through the end of January, when I need a receipt to prove I really did ship that thing that the post office lost, because they're going to lose some stuff that makes my shipping take a little bit longer. But yeah, I do, and you can't do a pickup. Is that not a good option at your house? I could do a pickup, but I think the pickup would probably be I think I am probably better off not doing pickup. I heard some stories in my area about some pickup stuff. My friend does not do pickup at her house. She also goes to the post office. I think if I were shipping like 60 or more items a day, pickup would be worth it, just because I would be loading so much in my car. But I'm also I do clothes and shoes only sometimes blankets and like, miscellaneous stuff, but nothing breakable, nothing in majorly big boxes or anything. So it's mostly small items, like I can fit 20 items, usually in a disposable or a reusable shopping bag. Okay? And you're new, so you're not real confident like that. Everything's going to get scanned in, um, so Well, asked me this the other day. They're like, it's eBay the right way. You should go to the post office and get a receipt and all that. And I can tell you, this is my 21st year, and really, I have never had anything not make it in recent years, because the post office is getting better. Yes, you're gonna hear the horror stories. Because people love to complain when you're on, well, not in my group, because I don't love but you know, when you're on the groups and you're going to hear the nightmares, you're not going to you're not going to hear people say, You know what, 99.9% of my packages get there, and it's fine. So I love, not on eBay, but recently, on another platform, I had a and it was, you know, a bins pull vintage night gown. I sold it. I wasn't making a whole lot of profit, maybe 10 bucks profit, but they it got Mark delivered, and the person swore it wasn't delivered. And because of the platform that I was on, it was Poshmark. They actually sided with both of us. I got my money. She got her money. Yesterday, I got a package in the mail that said, refused returned to send or, like written on it. It was the nightgown, so I ended up getting it back. But that's about the only thing I've had lost in the mail. Um, the other thing that happened is somebody didn't have the right address in eBay, and I got something returned to me, and I had to work with her. I had to make her pay shipping again, cancel the sale and do that. But that was, again, not the post office, so I haven't really had a lot go missing. I just know that Christmas, um, shipping is more, um, there's just more stuff being shipped. So I during that time is the only time I stand in line. I don't get a receipt. The rest of the time here I have a Okay, okay, because I hate to hear people are standing in line. And you know, most of the post offices now have a dedicated window where you can just drop off your stuff, yes, so I have banned them right there. Others will just toss them in a bin and scan them at the end of the day. So it depends on what your post office does. So I there's, like, a window bin thing, and I just throw all my packages in it and trust that my post office is going to scan them, except November 1 through about second week in January, those are the only times that I get receipts. And it's a longer line, and it's annoying, but I just plan for that, because you know what I can say, yeah, hey, it got shipped. It didn't get scanned. I'm sorry, but I do have the receipt. Here we go, you know? Oh, I totally understand that. And you're right, the volume during the holidays is crazy, so you gotta protect yourself. As a seller, I'm kind of trusting because I haven't had anything happen lately, and I do have a pickup. I'm in an apartment, so, you know, I'm not it's right outside my door. It's safe. You know, some people don't have a place to leave it if they're going to work, and they don't have been a packages out where. Or porch pirates can get them. So yeah, for you, and I think I probably would be fine on my porch, but um, my like, I leave for work at seven, and my postal people come by at noon or one. So that's a long time for stuff to sit on my porch, because I would have to stick it out in the morning. But it like I said, it's very convenient for me, but people have to think about that when they start reselling. Like, are you going to do pickup? How do you do pickup? Also materials for like, shipping, so you know, where are you going to get your supplies for shipping? Do you have a printer? What kind of printer are you going to have all of those things? Um, like, I didn't thermal printers are really cool. Thermal printers didn't used to exist. Yeah, is that what you have? I don't have a thermal printer yet, but only because my mother was moving and gave me a printer and ink. And so I have been using her printer with ink for over a year now, and when the ink runs out, I'm going to get a thermal printer, because it'll probably be cheaper to buy the thermal than to replace the ink. But she had a pretty fancy printer, so I was like, I'll just use this. Until use it up, I may resell it on eBay. Yeah, I didn't get on board with a thermal printer. I was kind of a late adopter on that, but I guess 2022 or 2021 but I don't even have a regular printer anymore. I just had the thermal printer, and then at the office, I live across the street from the library, and the office here has a computer and a printer. So I really have to print anything with ink. You know, everything is electronic. You know, you DocuSign your sizzle electronically, like, I don't need to print anything. So I'm just, like, everything's getting smaller and smaller with my eBay supplies, and I have a Rolo, and just like, the size of a brick and used by the labels, and they're like, I think two cents a piece, I get them on Amazon. So my only concern is, um, and I I assume that you can get different size and stuff. But I do ship through one of the platforms that I use. I ship you SPS or you ups, UPS, right? Yeah, so the UPS label prints, like this whole page thing with directions, and so I'm not sure when I get a thermal printer how to set up for printing my ups labels, but UPS shipping, it's just for really heavy things. And I learned this. This is the other thing that's really great. I have a friend who doesn't have a lot of thrift stores by her, and so I i Mercury is the one that's ups. And so she recently I bought a bunch of stuff for her kids. And she was like, just tell me how much I'm going to owe you when we're done getting things for the kids for fall. And I said, Well, if I put it on Mercari, you can pay the discounted shipping. And so for the same price as she would have just paid to ship the box. She paid for everything. She paid for the stuff, because she paid me back for what I had bought, but also to ship it to her. So that is nice, because it can weigh a lot and go ups. I think three pounds is like eight bucks or something like that, which is a great deal. So that's kind of good for people to know if you ever have to ship something heavy, UPS is a great way to do it. I just don't ship a lot of stuff that heavy. Okay, good, good to know. But, yeah, the shipping is usually the part of it that makes new people nervous. Just, am I going to do it right? Am I going to charge enough and and you would sound like you've already got the swing of it. So good for you that I knew from 2005 because I had sold, I had resold some of my kids clothes, so I already had that scale. In fact, I had moved to that scale a couple of states and five houses later, still had the scale somewhere in storage. So when I started, I was like, oh yeah. Just got to figure out what box that scales. I still own it. Oh, that's funny. Good for you. Okay, so Bethany kind of pushed you into this and you sell, is it mostly adult clothes and shoes? I sell some kids stuff, but you're not going to make a lot of money on kids stuff. There's certain brands that are brands that are definitely worth buying if you can get them for cheap enough money. There are things that are super big bolos, but I have not found ones that are good. So for example, a Gymboree blanket is a bolo. I think you talk about that. That's how I learned about it. Yeah, good looking, and I found a terrible Gymboree blanket, and I have it listed for about a year now, but I just have one. It's not very decorated. It's not a really fancy pattern. It's just red and white, and it's a baseball theme, one that says Devils on it. So it's not the best of jimbury blankets. I. Think the girls ones probably are the ones you're really looking for. Or the 1980s weird colors. Like, if you can find one of those, people probably collect them. But those kinds of things, like, if there's something that's a major Bolo and you've talked about it, or I've heard somebody talk about it, I'm going to pick it up if I find it someplace. But I'm not necessarily searching for those things. You know, I go down the blanket aisle every time, but I don't spend a lot of time just searching for blankets because I'm better with clothes. Actually, shoes are the thing that I sell the most of just because I'm better at finding them, I know what to look for, learning brands and sell through rates took a lot, and I'm still learning sell through stuff. When I first started, everyone would say, don't buy stuff that doesn't have 100% sell through rate. And here I am going, how do you figure this out? How do you find something that has 100% sell through rate that exists like I can't find it anywhere? Well, I have a alternate opinion on self rates, because, I mean, what is it exactly? How are they figuring this out? Okay, so let's say something has a 90% sell through rate. Is that, because all the sellers are charging a really low price on it, you know, like iPhone cases, people that buy in quantity and sell just because it has a high sell through rate doesn't mean, I don't think it means that anything you know, they could, there could be a bunch of auctions. They started at 99 cents, and all of them sold. So you really have to look deeper than just the sell through rate. Completely agree. I so when I'm picking out something to buy, like if I'm at the thrift store and I just don't recognize this brand. So the first thing is, if you're looking at clothes, so you're going to look for tacked on tags, which means that the tag is attached with the stitching at corners. And yeah, like anthropology brands, the whole yes is sewn on right, yes, and some, and there's all kinds of brands with with these tacked on tags. But you look and you see this tag, and you're like, Okay, I don't recognize this brand, but that tag looks like something, or you touch it and you know that this is silk, or it's cashmere. So then I just get on eBay and I'm going to do a search for that brand. And I actually a lot of times leave it really broad to check myself through rates. So I'm going to look up the brand cashmere sweater, or cashmere top, maybe even, or just the brand and a dress, if it's a dress, and then I'm just going to see how many are listed and how many have sold, and if there are 1000 listed, I sometimes don't even bother looking to see if any of that exactly, how many are out there? Yes, it's very important to look at not just what did they sell for, but how many are out there. But if I get 500 or less, so if there's 500 or less listed, I'm gonna check to see how many sold. Like the thing that I pulled up that I just searched this morning, I have some bed Stu boots, and at once I google search to figure out what the style is called and everything. I put it what's the item call again, if the brand is called bed Stu, B, E, D, S, T, U, yes. Okay. And so I have these boots that I was looking at this morning, and I I, I google lens the boots to see to find the style. And then I searched for the style on eBay, and found that there are two of the style that I have listed. And so then I went to show more in my filters on my app, and I hit the sold and completed listings and discovered that one has sold. So I have about a 50% sell through rate there. But what I was mostly looking for because I already knew this was a good brand. I already own it, and I'm working on listing it is, how much did the pair, how much do the pairs that are listed, are they listed for? And how much did the one that sold sell for? Because I don't trust eBay to tell me what something is worth. I want to do a little research and price things better. Because, for example, those crocs that you that I sold, that you featured that I sold for $80 yes, the comps eBay, the comp said $80 but eBay suggested selling prices $30 and I can I have the space to store them. So I said, I'm going to sit on these for three to six months and see if I can sell them for $80 well, it didn't take very long, and I sold them for $80 so that's, that's the kind of thing that I do. I'm going to check how many are listed and how many sold it and and so if there's 100 listed and 100 sold, and I have 100% sell through rate, that's probably a great item to pick up. But you're right, if all 100 sold for 99 cents, I'm going to throw that back like, yes, they sell, but they sell for nothing. So I do double check and make sure. Because styles are going to change if you're selling clothing. But also in everything, the things that are really popular right now were not popular five years ago, and the things that were really, really big bolos at one point in time, nobody may want now. I want to sell things fast. So my goal is to not store stuff for a really long time I've sold some things. Like, I sold a dress recently for $50 that it's it was all style, like, the brand has no sell through whatsoever. But I was like, all these teenagers want this, like, it's gonna sell, and you're absolutely right on that research tool that they used to call Terapeak. Yeah, it can go back three years, but it's, it depends on what you're selling. If you have a a rare collectible, then you do want to look at that, yeah, but you're selling trending styles and all these esthetics that are popular right now. You don't know. You don't need to go back three years. I totally agree with that. And it's, it's hard, because there are going to be times you want to go back three years. There are things that you might buy and want to sit on, because you can sell them for a lot more money. I just don't find that stuff. I haven't been doing this long enough to find anything that I'm like, oh, I need to do some really good research on. But overall, I would say that anybody can when you're sourcing, you can use that tool really quickly to just filter your search to see, is this worth buying? Should I pick this up? I buy stupid stuff all the time. Don't say it like that. I mean, you have a gut feeling about it. And one thing that's going to come with experience is you're going to, especially if you're thrifting, you're going to see the exact same things. So it's like, yes, I've sold this lands in bathing suit four times. Yes, I recognize this. And, you know, I don't know, look at sell through rates. I just know, LL Bean lands in swimwear larger sizes that have these lined in front and back, because they're not doing that anymore. They're older, and that's going to come with experience. You're going to you're going to be like, Yeah, I saw that before. But when was it? You know, was it 10 years ago? Why not sell now? But you know, if you recently say, within the last year, sold it, and then it pops up in front of you again, you're just gonna know, and you're right, because I'm already doing that. So there's a cabbie blazer I've sold twice. I don't pick up a lot of cabbie blazers. This cabbie blazer, every time I see it, I pick it up, doesn't sell for a crazy amount of money, but I know it's going to sell. There are certain shoes that like I do. I sell a lot of crocs. I know some people don't like crocs. Now, I don't sell crocs for a ton of money, all of them, but I pick up any crocs I can get for $2 or less. I'm going to sell because I can sell them for at least 15 to 20 bucks, and so I'm going to make a profit no matter what. It doesn't have to be a huge profit, and they're going to sell fast. So that's there are things that I've sold, you know, the same shoe and the same size five or six times because I found it. You can't find all these high end brand brands every single day. But there are other things. When I first started, one of my first sales was soft surroundings, oh yes, uh huh. And you can't, like, you can't give it to me now, like, don't even give me that brand. And I make the mistake sometimes, because, oh, this is a beautiful silk double XL. Oh, it's only 99 cents. Surely it will sell. I might be able to give it away to like Plato's Closet someday, or close mentor, but it's they're harder sells like that brand because of going out of business and everything. It just doesn't have the same following right now, it might, but I might be holding on to these things for a really long time now. I I have stuff I've had for a year that recently sold, and I was like, whoa. It's so exciting. I just made $5 on that sauce surroundings top. But I've held it for a really long time, right? I look for things that have a lot of different criteria. It's I call it the cocktail of attributes, like, like soft surroundings, or whatever brand it's high quality fabric, sequins, maybe a larger size, maybe just something very striking and unusual, like the cabbie blazer. I don't know what that looks like, which one it is, but, you know, I don't just buy every single thing I find of a certain brand, or even Eileen Fisher isn't doing that well anymore. It's gotta be, you know, linen or bull or cashmere. You know, impeccable condition. You know, both sizes. The lagging look is still in, you know, the drapey, loose fitting clothing. Flax is a good brand. It's linen, and those pieces look very plain. So I always look for linen and look at the tag. But, you know, I don't buy, I don't buy black linen, because it just doesn't sell it. It absorbs the heat, like, oh yeah, colored linen reflects the sun. But I put doing black linen because it just, it didn't sell. And that's good to know. I don't think I've come across any black linen, but I will keep that in mind. I do flax. I agree. My favorite flax find ever in a thrift store was, I'm in the 50% off stuff in that and more so this, I'm at the end of the dresses, these things have been in the thrift store for months now to get marked down. And I'm at the very end, I'm going through, and I'm just like, running my hand across it. I'm not even looking at tags at this point. And I touched something that was linen, and I was like, Huh? And I pull it off the rack, and I start looking at it, and I can't find the tag for what Brandon is, so I flipped it inside out because I'm checking if it's 100% linen. And of course, the flax tag is way farther down, and it was two XL flax dress. And I got it for 50 cents, really, yeah, did it sell already? Um, I think it's sold, like, a couple days really quickly, 30 or $40 um, yeah, the flax is a quick flip in the summer. I have a lot of it in my closet right now, and my death pile, which is, right now, it's pretty massive, but I have a way that I do everything so that I always, at a certain point in the week, have a really large death pile. So I source two days a week, like I schedule everything because I work full time, so I ship every other day, but I source two days a week, so Wednesdays and Fridays I'm going to source. And then on Thursdays, I take pictures of anything that's left over my death pile. And on Sundays, I taking pictures. So those are the my two picture days. And then throughout the week, I only list five items every day, so I'm consistently always listing. But when I get to the end of the week, anything left over that I have pictures of gets listed. So on Sunday, I might list 10 to 15 items, but every other day, I'm consistently listing five. Sometimes I draft them beforehand because I have a really busy schedule. So when I get up and I'm making breakfast or lunch or something, I just hit the button to list them, list, list, list, list, and I just listed five items. And then I cross list a little bit in the morning, because I do sell on multiple platforms, and I cross list a little in the afternoon, but I overall like I'm getting five items up on every platform every day, because if you're active, it's going to change how you're viewed in the algorithm. I also, every morning, delist and sell similar for everything that would end that day. And sometimes, like say, I have 20 items, and in a morning, I have too busy of a morning to do 20, because when I delist and sell similar, I look back at that item and I look at everything over again, so I run all the comps and do all my research again. You have a better chance of selling something when you list it again. So it's a new item. The one thing I've noticed, and I like this feature in eBay, when you are editing your listing, and you next to your pricing, and this is on the computer, eBay predicts a price. People are searching for stuff, and if your stuff doesn't appear in the search, you're not going to sell it. Yeah, and the keywords change all the time, yes. And there's in the theme. I think those theme words are really important, but knowing which theme to put with what items can be really confusing. Like, is this bohemian is, and some of those words, like transportation, I sold a bowden top with trains on it, and so I used the theme word transportation, and it sold so fast, like people were using that to search for things that were train themed. I and I just at the last second, was like, I'll just check that. Like, I read through the list and was like, check that. I guess it fits. And it was really a fast sell. And I had two things now that I've put transportation in, in kids things, and they do, they sold quick. I don't know that that's a theme that goes with everything, but I think looking really closely at those theme words sometimes will help. Great advice. That's, See, I knew you had good information, even though you're new, because you sold on other platforms. And you know, it's all about what you're looking at. So the suggested price, you know, and I could go either way on that, because. Because it's an average Yes. So it depends on what you have. If you have a, you know, size 20 2w lands in swim dress, then many of you know what's it. Is it calculating that suggested price based on the exact keywords or the brand, is the size included, like, where, how are they coming up with that is what I want to know, and I completely agree with you. So, for example, those crocs I was talking about that I sold for $80 um, the suggested price was off. I and that's why you do your research. So you have to know what your item is really worth. So you're going to run your comps yourself before you get to that suggested price when I'm first listing. So when I initially create a listing, I look at it and I unless I think eBay is completely off, like their average is not close to what I want for an item, I am going to consider it and think about maybe I might be too high, maybe I might be too low, but I usually, um, I still usually try to be in five, in a $5 range for a lot of things. Now, if I ran the numbers and I have something that's really popular, I can see they're selling really fast, and they're selling for really good money, and eBay tells me to list it for less. I'm just going to ignore their suggestion, and I have not had any time yet where ignoring them hasn't worked to my advantage, and I haven't made more money. You can always lower your price, so if you don't want to move stuff really fast, list it high to start out with, edit your price in 30 days. And that's what I do with a lot of things. But if eBay says I if I've listed something for $60 for example, and eBay says it only sells for 30 I might be too high. Yeah, I have to think about it, you have to keep reevaluating and without getting into analysis paralysis, because, you know, most people have no problem finding inventory, and if you're willing to let it go for a little bit lower than you originally thought, I mean, it's everybody can restock. I don't know anybody who doesn't have a death pile, or at least some items on reserve, you know, 20 items that aren't listed, whatever size it is. So getting impacted is not the problem. It's getting it listed. Yes, well, and usually so by the end of my week, my death pile. So by Sunday of this week, I will have a death pile of stuff from the previous week. It will only be stuff I sourced this week, so I don't carry a lot of death piling but if I have a pile of stuff that I haven't photographed in a week for whatever reason, then I don't source. There's not a reason to and I think that's something really important that people need to understand. The best part about reselling is sourcing. That's the fun part. And love finding cool stuff. That's why I do it. I was thrifting before I started reselling, and so the best part is, oh my gosh, I found this. I've never found this brown before. It's the most amazing thing ever. Even sometimes when I'm gonna leave it behind in the thrift store because I can't resell it, it's so cool that I found that thing. And so that part everybody wants to do. But if you have a death pile that is more items deep than you're going to list the next week, you shouldn't be sourcing because it's just not a good business model. And the idea in reselling is that you're gonna make a profit. I think the thing that I had to wrap my mind around is, yes, it's okay to pay up sometimes for things, um, I'll give you the one time I've really paid up more than bought anything for $10 I bought a pair of red wing boots for $25 and as I was buying them, this lady in the surf star was having this conversation with me. Aren't you just so excited about this deal? And I am thinking to myself, I am so irritated that you knew enough to price these this high. I would be excited if I got them for $1 but $25 I have a lot of investment into these, and they won't move quickly. I know I'm gonna make I'm gonna make 50 bucks. I'm gonna make 75 something on these, but I'm not going to make it fast, because they're not a fast flip. So as I was buying them, I'm like, Mm hmm, yeah, I'm super excited. She's like, Who are you buying these for your husband? I'm like, yeah, maybe because I hate to tell people, no, I'm just gonna flip these. Well, I love how analytical you are, because normally during this podcast, we talk about, you know, what you sold, and you know, we had to talk about some of that. But I love these tips for flipping things. Faster. And, you know, I used to be a buy and hold person, but, you know, I've switched to turn and burn because, again, it's unlimited inventory out there. And yes, I also used to be, never have anything in my pile person, but the senior day discount changed all that. I was like, that's the only day I go. Now, I go to two thrift stores on senior day to get that 25% off. And if I have a few things in a pile, I'm okay with that, but I'm because I'm getting stuff cheaper. Yes, well, and that's so you started to say this earlier, statistics are, are one of the things that's going to drive you. So whether you want to admit it or not, whether you're a math person or not. I mean, I teach math stats. Run the World. Every single thing on earth is based on an on a formula. EBay is an algorithm, which is a mathematical formula. I don't know what goes into the mathematical formula. I have some ideas. I've watched some videos, but everything that is is online, everything that is out there, it's all a formula. So what you have to decide when you start reselling? And this is what I I did. I had to decide how much money I wanted to make a week, and then I had to stick to that. So if I'm sourcing I have a budget on how much I'm gonna spend. I might break the budget sometimes when I find something that I absolutely have to buy because it is going to be a big money sale, but for the most part, I stick to that budget and so and then I can predict how much I'm gonna make in a week. But I also, you know, I'm subtracting what I put in every week. So every week I know what I'm making. My goal starting out was I wanted to make $300 a week, which meant that if I spent $100 in a week, I had to have $400 in sales. And for a new reseller, that is an astronomical feat when you're first starting out. So I spent 20 to $30 in a week in sourcing. So I had to be really careful. I had to be very selective. I had to shop all those sales that you're talking about. But also, if you haven't goodwill bins near you, that will help, but you have to fall in love with the bins. And if you've never been to the bins, you don't understand what I'm talking about. The first time people go to the bins, they are like, I will never go again. This was the most horrible experience in my life. I was scared. I ran for my life. Yes, people elbowed me. Well, yes, it was probably me elbowing you, but you were taking up too much space. Like, you gotta move on. Yeah, and the first time I went to the bins in years, Bethany took me, and I just stared at her, because she's like, in there with these people, and they're all on top of each other, and everybody's digging. And I thought, I'll just stand here and watch. I'm good, like, this is too much. I don't need any of that stuff. But if you're willing to dig, if you're willing to put in the time, you are buying stuff by the pound, so it's cheaper, so you can get more stuff for less money, which means you're gonna have better turnaround. It's time consuming, though. You can't find a lot of great stuff at the bins if you don't have three hours of time, and so you have to take all of that into consideration. So I would say my biggest advice to resellers starting out is to set an amount you're going to make every week, and set an and you can't source stuff if you're not going to make your profit every week for a while, because what happens is people invest too much money starting out. I I'm I bought dumb stuff, like just things I thought would sell, sometimes that they're never going to sell. I just recently did this. I found 90% off shoes. They're a brand called sporto. They look like knock off Uggs, yep, and they're really in style. But I didn't check the slides. Threw them in my cart. They were 90% off. I'm spending 30 cents on these. This is a great buy. They're size five, too small. Never gonna sell them. Yeah, those small sizes, they sit and so that's those are things you don't realize when you're first starting out as you're sourcing. So if you set yourself a budget and you stick to your budget, you're less likely to make mistakes that are really costly, like you can't buy every pair of Uggs. Uggs might sell for good money, but in the beginning, I actually accidentally bought two really good knock off pairs of Uggs, and one of them happened to be two different size. So one, oh no, I tried them on. I was like, these are so weird. But the others I very quickly realized, were at knockoffs, and I had to throw them away. So I had $14 into boots that I was throwing in the trash, because you make those mistakes. So that's the thing, in setting a budget and kind of doing those things, you're less likely to throw a bunch of stuff that was a waste of money away. Yeah. And now, how many items do you keep list? COVID, so I try not to fall below 250 right now I have about 370 some I because I list five every day. No matter what, my numbers just keep growing. Eventually I'm going to run out of space for storage. So that's the biggest concern that I have right now, is where will I store stuff if, if I don't hit too many before two more kids graduate from high school, I'll have bedroom space where I can just have a whole bedroom of floor to ceiling shelves, like some people do for storage unit space. But right now, I don't have any extra space, so there's just kind of stuff stored all over my house. So I look like I live in constant chaos. And some weeks I sell like there are days where I'll ship 30 things, and if I'm shipping every other day, it's I just had crazy sales. I try to I love it when I have at least nine items to ship, because I'm, if I'm shipping every other day, that means that I just beat the algorithm. I sold more than I was supposed to good. So that's it, you know, and we've, I forgot to ask you, even I know you live near Bethany, but where you're located, I'm in Oklahoma. Okay, so And Oklahoma is a great place to thrift, because we are a market where things are not priced up insanely. But I don't do like my best thrift finds have not been in Oklahoma. I travel with my kids a lot, so I Nashville was great. I was going through Nashville on my way to North Carolina, and then we went thrifting for three hours, and I found some really great stuff, and I spent $30 and I sold each of those things for, like, close to $50 one of them for 70. So I bought five things. And I was like, Hey, this is great money for the $30 I spent. I was just in St Louis last weekend, and I bought some noble tennis shoes, and I spent $5 that's N, O, B, U, L, L for the list. They're like, weightlifting shoes. I there's some kind of athletic shoes. Um, these are specialty, yeah, yeah, and they're women's that are the ones I picked up, and they're pretty, they're floral. But I was walking through, I was in a goodwill, and all the shoes were priced at like, $15 and, you know, $20 and I was like, Oh, I'm not gonna get anything. And I walk by and I see these $5 nobles, okay, I'll take those because I can sell them for 50. So I, when I travel, I thrift and I write off my trip. Absolutely you should, yeah, road trip, uh huh. So all my kids travel, which I was already doing, I'm now writing off. So that helps, because we travel every weekend. I'll be in San Antonio this weekend. Very good. Well, good for you. Okay. Well, that was a quick chat. Our time is, Oh, I'm so sorry. I know. Do you have any final parting words for the beginners? Because Why don't you're not really a beginner, because you've been selling on other sites and you sold on eBay back in the day, you've just kind of rejoined the reseller workforce. Yes, I so I wouldn't quit. You know, like a lot of people get discouraged, you want to quit, like it's not. It took me an entire month to sell one thing, Mercari. I sell on Mercari a little bit. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I do sell some stuff sometimes, but it's not great. It took me five months to sell something on there, really, yeah, I just like, it's probably just me. Now eBay, I'm pretty consistently selling on feedback is really important on eBay, so when you're first starting out, I hate auctions. I think they're stupid, but I would say do a few auctions to start out with, because your items will sell 99 cents. You're giving it away. I get it, but those people, you're going to ship it really fast, and they're going to leave you feedback. And so I did my first five sales on Ebay. I did auctions. I just did 99 cent auctions. And then I had, instead of one feedback, I had six, which now I can do better and sell more, was the theory behind it. The other thing, I have a store now, but I didn't start with one. Don't get a store until you need it, if you have, if you can do that minimum listing in a month, do it because it's free, but as soon as you can't pay for the store. So I've done all of those things. Come up with a really fun name for your store. I took a like generic name that. With my email. And so I had to think of mine. So mine is, like, my email address is purple elephant. And so, like, eBay gave me purple Ella when I got my new username. And so I was like, Okay, let me see, Emporium will sound great with that, you know, so absolutely come up with something that people are going to remember, they're going to come back to their you're you're in competition with other sellers, so you want to give really good customer service. I don't ever argue with somebody on returns. I think you should, everyone should do returns. Do your 30 day returns. You're going to sell more stuff because people want to return stuff. I like people will say the stupidest things, and I'm just gonna accept the return. Like, I don't, I don't care. I will accept your return. I'm gonna sell it to somebody else. I've had people tell me something was damaged, and I get it back and I'm like, It's not damaged, but I'm fine with that. Like, I don't disagree with you. I don't argue with you. Well, sometimes they pick a reason that comes with free return shipping, yeah. Like buyers have that figured out. And it may be a complete lie, but they pick that for the free return shipping, it's better, and that's just the way they do life. And they're gonna, they're gonna do it. And so you just deal with them the best you can and let them move on to somebody else, yes. And so that's for new resellers. I think that's the biggest thing. Like, don't take it personal. Like, just provide good customer service no matter what. Okay, well, thank you for your advice and for agreeing to do this and so quickly, and we will look for you on the money making Mondays, and I'm hoping to hit over $100 sales. That's something I don't consistently do, so that's always my goal, but I'm usually under 100 on most of my sales, and I don't take it like, you know, that's just a goal. Like, let me find I want to sell something for 500 bucks. That'd be great. Yeah? Who doesn't? Yeah? So for the listeners, um, her name is spelled Maria, but pronounced Mariah, and then last name is just SC, so they can look for you on Facebook group. Well, thanks again, and we will see you on the group. Okay, okay, bye, bye. Some great information from a newer seller. Now it's time for parting words, and this is just a quick factoid. Did you know that the Rubik's Cube celebrates its 50th birthday this year? Does that make you feel old? Or what Hungarian design teacher and serious puzzler Erno Rubik assembled his first cube puzzle in 1974 and called it the magic cube, after a toy agent pitched the puzzle to Ideal Toy and novelty company. It renamed the puzzle Rubik's cube, and began putting it in stores in 1980 So, er, no, Rubik is still with us. He was born in 1944 so 80 years old this year, and I was always amazed by people who could solve the Rubik's cube so quickly, my brain just doesn't work that way. Good for them. So today's factoid is the Rubik's Cube is 50 years old. Invented may 19, 1974 next week, my guest is Deborah, who has an unusual specialty. I won't reveal that now, you'll have to just tune in next week to find out. Thank you all for supporting this podcast and have a profitable and productive week on eBay. Bye, everybody you.