eBay the Right Way

eBay Seller Chat with Laura and Rejean - Traveling Resellers, Life on the Road 🏞️

• Suzanne A. Wells • Episode 237

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Suzanne Wells:

John, hello, resellers, welcome to episode 237 of eBay the right way. Today's date is October 1 2025 My guests are Laura and rujaan, who call the open road home for several months out of the year. So let's get started. Welcome back, listeners. I have a couple of sellers here that answered my call for how do you do eBay on the road? So how are y'all doing this morning?

Unknown:

Doing great. We're happy that you're having us on to talk about life on the road and selling on eBay.

Suzanne Wells:

And it's Laura and rajanne. Where are you like, stationed, headquartered, even though you travel around.

Unknown:

So just recently, we purchased a property in Colorado. We're near West cliff, Colorado, that is in the sand. How do you say that Sango de Cristo Mountains? So we're in this in the mountains under southern part of the state, and we have a rural piece of property off grid that we bought a couple acres, and this is our home base. And we come back here a couple times a year, and then we travel the rest of the time.

Suzanne Wells:

Okay, okay, so you heard the podcast and volunteered to share how you do this. But before we get into that, let's talk about when you started on eBay. And you know what? What was the catalyst that got you doing it? Sure.

Unknown:

So I started in 1999 Yeah, a long time ago, basically, when I started eBay was a way for me to refresh my closet. So basically, what I would do is I would take clothes that I no longer wanted to wear, that were still in good shape, and I would sell those, and then the money that I made off of those, I would go to other stores and buy their clothing. So it was just a closet refresh for me. And back in that day, eBay was very personal. It was, it's much different now, back then it was, it's much more like a online yard sale, sort of auctions or Auckland, the auctions, right? Yeah, that when it first started, auctions were everything. And so I did that. And then eventually I just started realizing that I could turn it into a little side hustle, so I could use it to supplement my income that I made from my day job. So I would use that money for vacations and just little things like that that I just wanted to have extra money for. And so it's always been a side hustle for me from that point, and then it became something more, and we'll talk about that, but I would want to give Rashaan a chance to say how he started and when he started, sure. So I started in the early 2000s just buying stuff here and there. And then in 2003 I was in Florida, and I left my job as a mechanic, and I had so many extra things to sell before I moved. So I was like, let me start selling on eBay. So I sold a bunch of tools and car parts that I had, and was did really well with that for about a year until I actually moved. And then after that, for the for the next, you know, 15 years or whatever, I would just sell a random thing here and there and buy things on eBay. But six years ago, when we started traveling, is when we started doing it full time. Immediately, 2020, in.

Suzanne Wells:

2020, yeah. Now where were you living, Laura, when you started

Unknown:

eBay, so in South Carolina. So when I first started, I was in South Carolina, where part at that time, I was in Spartanburg. Okay, I'm in Greenville. So, okay, yeah, yeah. And so when we first started, that's where we were living. When we decided to go full time RV. We were living in a little town called Salem, South Carolina,

Suzanne Wells:

by the lake. Yes, yeah, Lake Huey, yeah.

Unknown:

We frequent Greenville often. Yeah, they go to Greenville a lot, because it's the biggest town, you know, near us. But yeah, that's where we were living whenever we made the decision to go on the road full time. Yeah, so we both had our careers going, and something told us, Hey, you're not going to live forever, and let's do something different. And we sold our home, we sold my business. She, you know, left her job. 15 years, and we hit the road, and at first we just had a feeling of, let's do this for about three years and kind of like a sabbatical, see if we like it and see if we like it. But right away, we felt like we needed to do something sort of like, hey, let's start selling on eBay and start thrifting. And we did that from our little camper, and we maxed out at about 300 items. We rebuilt the camper and made it so that it was mostly for eBay. We had very little possessions, and we had our dog, so it was us and our dog, and we could hold about 300 items on there, and that's what we maintained. And we were able to make our living off those 300 items on the road. What we did was we stayed in a national forest for free camping. We set up solar in our camper. And we couldn't afford to stay at campgrounds, and we didn't want to, so we would stay the 14 day limit in the forest. And during that time, we would go out to the thrift stores that were in the hour, hour and a half vicinity, load up and then every 14 days, go to a new town. And that's what we were doing for five years, consistently. Yeah, yep.

Suzanne Wells:

Well, did you ever run into Bigfoot in those forests?

Unknown:

No, we ran into all types of wildlife, all types of wildlife, but no Bigfoot and no watch those

Suzanne Wells:

reels of Bigfoot and the abominable snowman and like, they're, like, they go to camp grounds and pick up stuff people left behind

Unknown:

where we were is a lot of dark skies. And I always looked out for UFOs, but I never know.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, okay, well, you know, you got to bloom where you're planted,

Unknown:

right? Yeah, we've learned that. We've learned that

Suzanne Wells:

well and without a house payment and all the things that go with it, you know, the utilities, the homeowners insurance, the HOA, if you're in a neighborhood, that's totally doable. Yeah, you're

Unknown:

absolutely correct. We were surprised that our bills on the road were much lower. We also don't eat out, and we don't travel too much like we would during our 14 day stay. We'd go to a couple local hikes, and then our big travel would be to go into the town thrift it, go to the Walmart and get our things, and then get out of there, because it's very crowded in the cities, and it's not for us, but you wouldn't

Suzanne Wells:

even reward yourself for the Taco Bell every now,

Unknown:

every once in, every once in a while, and if a town had a restaurant or something like that that it was known for. For example, in Arizona, there was an area we went to that was known for their Sonoran Hot Dogs. Oh, and so we did try a Sonoran Hot Dog, just little things like that. If it happened to be an area that had a cool cuisine, they would take advantage. Keep in mind, covid was going on. Yeah? Sold our house one month before the covid thing truly happened. We got so lucky. But because of covid, a lot of things were closed, yeah, that's

Suzanne Wells:

right, yeah, yeah, and I'm with you. I don't eat out very much, just because, at this point I'm not paying that. No, it's just so expensive,

Unknown:

and it's

Suzanne Wells:

disappointing. It you know, order a pizza for $30 but you can also go to the grocery store and get a lot of groceries for $30 and make but, yeah, I do have to reward myself with the Taco Bell every now and I understand you're home based right now, you're not traveling right now. Is that what you're saying,

Unknown:

We've been improving this property, and we've kind of been scaling our business while we're stationary. So what she was talking about, we had like, 300 items when we're travel. Right now, we have 1000 items for sale. So we've just been taking advantage of all the storage space that we have here, kind of just, you know, building our nest egg so that when we get back on the road and we're a smaller store again, we're planning on getting back on the road in the summer. So yeah, next summer. So what happened was we, as we were on the road for five full years, we said we need to find a base camper somewhere so that we can do the maintenance on our vehicles and do repairs and and just have a place to unwind for a little bit. So we looked all over Colorado, because that was our favorite as we were traveling, and we finally found something that was in our price range that was good. It was private, off grid. And we said, let's try to make as much money as we can. And we bought two sheds, and we've one is for shipping and for listing, and one is for all of our merchandise. And we grew our business this summer, and we're at the best we've been ever doing right now in our sales and the number of items that we have. And while we were here, we said we need to buy a bigger camper, because we've been in this little we have a very small camper, and we've been in it for five years. So we're we bought a newer, bigger truck so that we can buy a bigger camper, and during this winter, we're going to buy. I said, a larger camper, and we should be able to hold at least 500 items in there. And because we're going to selling half of what we are. So now we're used to selling about we sell about 50 items a week. Okay, we've been doing, I would say, about $10,000 a month in sales consistently for these past four months, but we're going to be doing half of that when we get back on the road. And that's the reason we have we started our YouTube channel. It's called our reselling journey. We are going to teach. We we've just slowly starting it off, and we're teaching because we have so much wisdom from what we've been doing. And as I list on eBay and look at comps, I see a lot of poor listings. And as we've been talking to people about what we do, a lot of people mentioned that they've tried it and haven't been successful. So we're like, hey, we could probably teach this and give some people some advice. So that's kind of what we're doing, and we'll be back on the road next summer, and we'll be on the road for several years, and just coming back here a week or two at a time, a couple times a year.

Suzanne Wells:

Let's tackle the biggest question people are going to have is, how do you do the shipping, like, when you're traveling, oh, constantly in a different place? Are you just doing free shipping? And then No,

Unknown:

no. So we used to do free shipping, but as we adjusted over the years, we do the calculated shipping now, because it works the best for us. But you know, so our return address was, yeah, you mentioned that. So basically, the way it works is we do have to update our listings based on where we are located at that time, so it is an ongoing maintenance situation. So for example, let's just say we left this morning and we're going to Phoenix Arizona. I have to update all of our listings, which is easy to do in a bulk edit. Just update the zip code to Phoenix Arizona so that's where our packages are shipping from for that two weeks. So then we have to do a reset for the next location that we go to, so that it's the correct ship from location as far as our return address that we have to change that also, although we'd say that we do not accept returns because of the fact that we travel as we all know, if someone wants to return something, they're going to be able to open up a return. It's up to us if we decide to accept the return, or if we just want to let it go and give them a refund. It just depends on the item. Depends on the value of the item, okay? I hope that makes sense. Yeah. And most of the items that we buy, we average like, a $5 purchase price for our items, and our average sales for items $50 amazingly, and for us, if we buy a $5 item and we spend $7 to ship it a lot of times, it's not worth getting it back. But if it's like a $300 item, what we'll do is we'll, I'll look ahead and see where we're going to be at in the next 14 days. Let's call it and I'll tell her, and she'll update the the address, so that when they print their return label, it'll bring it to a post office that we're going to be nearby in about two weeks, and we have the general delivery

Suzanne Wells:

system. Okay, so let's say you're somewhere in Boulder, Colorado, and you're going to be leaving, and you get a request for return, but they don't ship it back until you've moved on to somewhere else. Can you still change the return address when after the return has been opened?

Unknown:

No, no. Just have to follow you no. And we've had, I mean, it's, I think it's happened maybe, maybe twice before where that is not worked out, so where we actually received a return, but we were already gone, right? And so that we lose it, you know what? I mean, we know they that they return the item. So it is what it is. They're getting their refund because they did with their part. They returned the item. So they are little situations that are going to happen with that time overlap, but you that's just part of it. You have to just weigh the positives and negatives. And I have to say that in our experience, the last five years, the positives have far outweigh the negative. Oh, absolutely. If we're lucky enough to have a buyer that is very community communicated, we can tell them that, hey, we're going to be, you know, we tell them, hey, we're on the road, we'll take your return. Do you think you'll be able to ship it out in the next day or two? And as long as they say yes, then we can provide the good address and it works out for us. And Yeah, as long as you're communicating on both sides, and people, for most for the most part, are very reasonable, and they want to, you know, work with you. And so you just have to communicate with people.

Suzanne Wells:

Just be real. Yeah, that sounds good, but that does happen to me sometimes, and you think the return is not going to happen. And then on the two. 29th day,

Unknown:

by Sure, yeah, oh,

Suzanne Wells:

I need to shift, because they get a reminder. You better return. Nerds, absolutely. Occasionally, something will fall through the cracks, is what you're saying. Occasionally, yeah, perfect science, but Right, so you don't do like an official address change through USPS or anything, you just know, go on to eBay and change your ship address, your location, so that the shipping will calculate correctly,

Unknown:

right from the correct ship, from location. Yep, and you don't. We don't even really need to be that specific at times, because the regions is what matters more. So let's say we're in Phoenix. Even if we're an ounce, an hour or hour and a half outside that area, it doesn't matter. So we don't bother changing the address. So it's not literally, like every two weeks, like I was telling you, we move on to different places, but sometimes we only travel an hour, hour and a half away, so we don't have to update it as frequently as you would think. It's surprising. The zones are pretty large with USPS,

Suzanne Wells:

okay, now, do you have on your calendar, you know where you're going to go, planned out months ahead of time? No, fly by the seat of your pants kind of thing,

Unknown:

in a sense, yeah, we have a general idea of, like, what states we're going to let so let's say we're leaving for the summer, and we're going to be back at our property in five months. So I'll have a route planned for the five months, but just literally, like on Google Maps, like we're going to go from this city to that city, to that state, to there, and while we're at our state during the 14 days, I figure out where we're going to go next.

Suzanne Wells:

So maybe not going to Minnesota in December.

Unknown:

Weather is everything, so we definitely Chase good weather. Yes, yeah,

Suzanne Wells:

right, yeah. I hear that with our viewers, that they sometimes they have to change their plan because they don't want to be driving into, you know, horrific rainstorms or mornings and all that stuff. So it sounds like you you have that figured out. Now. How many years have you been doing this, traveling, eBaying?

Unknown:

We started in February of 2020, oh, right, that's right, yeah, covid.

Suzanne Wells:

Okay. Now, have you kept up with how many states you've been to?

Unknown:

We did, but I don't know the number now, but we so we grew up on the East Coast, so when we left, we went straight West, and we've been out west ever since, because we had done so much of the East Coast already, right? So we've probably seen we've done every state out west, none of the center of the country. So, yeah, so probably like the 20 states, let's call it that we frequented out west. Yeah, all the

Suzanne Wells:

you just like it. You like the environment and the shopping and just it all works better for you out west,

Unknown:

no it for us. One of the biggest things that we love about out west is no humidity. Because, you know, being from the East High, and here it's, it's very low. And because we're off grid, we don't have, we have a full solar system and excellent power. Highly recommend solar, by the way, it works amazingly, but we don't have a large enough solar to run our air conditioning. So as an example, during the summers, we try to stay above 9000 feet, because that's where it's the most comfortable. And thus the reason we did Colorado every summer, and we fell in love with this state. There's plenty of wonderful states, but this one happened to be our favorite. You know, when you add everything up

Suzanne Wells:

and there's some good pickings out there in some cities in

Unknown:

that's one of the best benefits of traveling, of being a traveling Rifter, because the thrift stores are always new. You never go, you know, because when we were in South Carolina, we had our regular places that we would go, and that was all we had. Whereas here, every time we go to a new area, it's a new set of thrift stores. It's it's a constant change and inventory. When we do run into a thrift store that hasn't been picked by a reseller, oh, we load up. Oh, yeah, yeah, because there's these little mom and pops, and some of them are owned and run by churches, and they've never been picked by a reseller. You can, you can tell that they've never seen a good pick. And so when we go in, there we are, we're like kids in a candy store. We are just like, this is fantastic. We can if you want. We can bring it up now and talk about, like our best store and why we do so well financially. On eBay,

Suzanne Wells:

absolutely. Let's talk about that.

Unknown:

Our bread and butters are the habitat restores, and one of the reasons is their products are sometimes. Expensive, and some eBay resellers don't have the capital or aren't wanting to spend $25 on an item. But for us, we look at eBay as like an annual thing, so whatever we need to spend, we'll spend, and we know that ultimately, at the end of the year, we get our sales and we get it all back. So the habitat restores. We buy a lot of electrical parts, plumbing items, hardware, appliance parts, all stuff that people need. That's what we've turned our store mostly into stuff that people need and we like. Let's say we buy a plumbing part for a home, like your hot water heater. You need a new thermostat for it. They sell for like $250 Well, we buy it at the restore for $25 and we sell it for $250 so we make excellent profit, but we are spending a little more. Sometimes we walk out of there with a three, four or $500 receipt. But we make up for it because of those sales.

Suzanne Wells:

So experience as a mechanic really helps you. Yes, absolutely, I would be like, Oh, this is a Johnson rod. What does it do?

Unknown:

That's why I we were doing a YouTube channel, because I'm able to teach a little bit of those things on there. People are able to learn new things outside of what they're comfortable with. Because we also had to do that, because at first we had hardly any experience, but I figured out that, hey, I can use those skills that I have because I was a jack of all trades. So I can tell what. Sometimes we're digging in a bin, and you're just looking at some piece of metal, and Google lens is your best friend. Yes, yeah. You just take a picture of it, and Google lens will tell you, Hey, this is such and such. And you dig in and figure out exactly what it is, and then you go and look at the comps and see if it's something worth picking

Suzanne Wells:

up. Do you use, um, chat, GPT? We do? Yeah, I, I'm going to get on board with that this week, because, yeah, I just can't tell

Unknown:

you about that. And we do pay, we pay for the plus version of chat GPT, which is 20 bucks a month. And I find it very helpful. It's, it's kind of like an upgrade to Google lens. So for example, so you can put pictures of your item, up to 10 pictures of your item, and it will dig in and like, let you know more about that item. Like, it'll give you more details than you would get just from Google lens. Basically, what I do is I just pick out the best of its response. So it'll help me create that SEO title. It'll help me out with the description. I do edit the description quite a bit, because I do not want it to have that AI feel. So I So, yeah, so I just pull out the good parts of it and let that that fluffy language, or that flowery language. I leave a lot of that out because I think it could be a bit of a turn off.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh, and I think the marriage of eBay with chat GPT is better than using eBay's AI

Unknown:

just agree, agree. Yeah, that's more

Suzanne Wells:

solid, useful information, and not like this. Since any living room it's like, right? They know they want this rug with this flower on it, and that's what they want. And they don't need to hear how to decorate their living room. They don't need you to be an

Unknown:

interior designer. One thing I can mention about descriptions and the AI is I find a lot, and what I what we're saying here, is what works for us, because so many different things work for different people. And it's easy to say, You should do this or you should do that, but we're really saying what we do here. But when I read descriptions sometimes of an item, like, let's say I'm looking at a mechanic, let's say it's a camera, just a camera is listed, and the description is only the AI description, it doesn't tell you about what you're actually looking at like. Did you mention whether your camera has scratches on it? Do the doors open and close properly on it? Does it power on and take the proper pictures? I'm very big on a good, detailed description, and I tell so a lot of the stuff, not a lot, some of the stuff that we sell for parts only. I'll make sure under the description or under the title to put untested on some of them, so that they know. Okay, it's not necessarily only for parts they haven't tested it, but when I let's say it's a camera that takes film like an old school camera, I'll write partially tested and in the description, I'll write everything that I was able to get to work, and everything that I noticed does not work, and I find the right price for it, and it works for me all the time because of the good description and very good pictures. Out of a lot of the parts that we buy, that we sell, that are hardware and plumbing and electrical, a lot of times they're very dirty. You. So I take the time and I actually enjoy it. I clean the items really well so that they really look good on the pictures, and I give a good, accurate description, because, as we were just saying, we don't accept returns, so we do the best we can so that they know exactly what they're getting, and we don't wind up with returns. When we had the 300 items in our camper. We probably only communicated about once a month with a client, whether you know they were, you know, had an issue, whether it was on our end or their end. But unfortunately, now that we have over 1000 items, literally once a week, now, we're starting to have to communicate issues with people, and I don't want to get into the negatives, maybe later, if you want to, but I really firmly believe that you should truly point out everything you can about your item in the description, and not only the AI description, right?

Suzanne Wells:

Okay, so do you focus on Smalls?

Unknown:

We sure did while we were traveling. Now we're open to larger items. However, we've noticed that larger items just don't work well, especially because of the shipping, and especially recently the there's some larger items like, uh, let's use a baseball bat. We buy a lot of baseball bats for two,$3 and we sell them anywhere from $25 to some for $200 and they used to be about $10 to ship, but now they're $20 to ship. Oh, so if we buy a $3 bat that we want to sell for $25 but then the person has to pay $20 for shipping, then it's just not working well. So we're learning that the larger items aren't working too well because of shipping, which works out for us, because when we get back on the road, we are going to have to focus on smaller items. And what we've actually been doing is all the small items that we're buying right now, we haven't listed them when we're just putting them aside for when we go back on the road.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah. Okay, so do you and those larger items and just leave them at home. And I think when you end listings, it stays in your unsold folder for 90

Unknown:

days. I believe it is 90

Suzanne Wells:

if you made it back home, you could just, yeah, you know, send it live again

Unknown:

a flea market sale. So we'll go to a find a local flea market, and we'll set up a booth and try to get rid as as many items there as we can at flea market prices, which is very inexpensive. So so we usually either double our money, because, let's say we paid $3 for an item we wanted to get 30 on eBay, but it didn't happen, then we'll sell it for six bucks the flea markets, or at least doubling our money. But not everything sells, and we wind up donating a bunch, which works out for, you know, trying to do our charitable part for a year. And for some of the higher dollar items, we'll leave them here in our storage and then pick those back up when we get to our property again. Yeah, so

Suzanne Wells:

you just save the pictures. Yeah.

Unknown:

Save that long. They don't. So what you have to do is, if you don't want to have to completely redo it, you're going to have to, you know, take that time to save those pictures. And if you want to have something set up

Suzanne Wells:

for that, I mean, you would save the pictures somewhere, not on eBay, yeah, on. So what you could do is, you could end it and they put it in the schedule folder and just not send it out and and you can just keep every every third, okay, so that it stays intact. Yes, keep updating it every 30 days, so that when you do get back, you can just send it out and you don't

Unknown:

have to do any work. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, great idea.

Suzanne Wells:

That's what I do. When I do perfect.

Unknown:

We we did it once, where we ended our items. We thought we were able to relist them, and they all wind up disappearing on us. So what we did the next time was we just took screenshots so we had a general idea of what it was. But what you just said makes sense, and we'll try that.

Suzanne Wells:

Thanks. Yeah, it's a schedule folder. It's no charge to use it. It's just a bucket to put things in. I call it. And you know, as long as you keep extending that, that time, it won't go live. But you know, you're, you're on your way home, you're going to be there in seven days. You could send them out, and they might sell before you even get home. Yeah, I love that.

Unknown:

I wanted to mention another thing, along with what I was saying about the description in the pictures, because I feel it's important when I'm looking at soul comps, let's say I buy a DeWalt drill at a yard sale for$5 and I want to get $40 for it, and I'm looking at comps so many times I see the cord is all tangled up around the in the pictures, it's dusty. You know the they didn't bother taking like, time to clean it. And it's important when you have things to. Do the best you can to make it neat looking. And things that power on. I always power them on, things like a camera that has the the screen on there. I take a picture and I have that the picture up on the camera, so right away they see that it's working and powered on. There's so many little tricks that we like I said we've been teaching that people just don't realize that make a big difference. If you have something that lights up and powers on, by all means, do so when you take your as your main picture. I was going to

Suzanne Wells:

ask you, with all the mechanical stuff, if you use the video feature

Unknown:

I have, but the problem with the video feature is you have to do it on the computer. We do everything from the phone, so I can take the video on the phone, but I can't load it onto the listing. I have to put on the computer first. Okay, yeah, it's a little kind of glitch in eBay. I think

Suzanne Wells:

another issue is and Marlene, the horse lady. I don't know if you heard her podcast, but she was having a typical time getting her videos upload. And she finally figured out, when she improved her internet speed, that problem was her, she's rural farm, and so it wasn't grabbing it. Yeah, so wherever you are, okay, you might have that issue and the video won't upload.

Unknown:

Yeah, internet is I'm glad you brought that up, because, you know, internet's huge for an eBay, your eBay seller. So we used to use our mobile hotspots. So on our phones, I have Verizon. Rajan has T Mobile, but we did upgrade to Starlink, and Starlink has been excellent. Highly recommend, highly recommend Starlink for full time travel.

Suzanne Wells:

So do you have like, a satellite on top of your vehicle?

Unknown:

You do. It's mobile, so it's like a, like, a little, um, it's not large. What would you say the size of it is? It's not really, it's about a foot and a half tall by a foot and a half wide,

Suzanne Wells:

a mini satellite

Unknown:

dish. Yeah, it is, yeah. And it's called Rome, so r, O, A, M, is version for travel.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh, that's right. So I used that when I was out in the Midwest for a little while, kind of a bear, to get it set up. And, you know, pointed, right? And working, yeah, once you are do that a few times, you become a pro.

Unknown:

So years ago, that was the issue. But nowadays, for the past couple of years, it's very easy. So we have it mounted on the roof, and as long as you we park somewhere that has a clear view of the northern sky. Okay, we have to park our camper in a position so that we we know that we have the northern sky available to us. And literally, we flip the switch on, and when it's when we first move to a new location, it can take up to an hour to for it to turn on. But after that, it's fine. When we turn it back off in the evenings and we turn it on in the mornings, it takes five minutes. And we don't have to do nothing. You don't need to go in the app. Literally, you just turn the on button and it comes on and does its thing.

Suzanne Wells:

That's wonderful. Yeah, I'm getting ready to move in a couple of weeks, and I've already set up, you know, my internet at the new place. And, but sometimes the tech doesn't come, or it's they reschedule you and so I've already asked the office at the apartments, like, do you have Wi Fi in the office? Can I come up there and use, you know, I've looked at like, where is there a McDonald's nearby? Yes, great internet. So that is my biggest fear of either traveling or going to visit somebody or moving, is like, I gotta have internet, you know? I really kind of have a meltdown if, if I get it, you know, you only do so much from your phone. And I like the the big desktop, like I'm flying a plane, you know. But that is, that is, there's a lot to think about when you're doing this, and you know, as you're doing your YouTube channel, I'm sure you're going to go over all these things. Because for people that are wanting to do this, I've heard this so many times over the years, yeah, just want to get RV and travel and do my eBay, there's things that they don't think about until they're in the middle of it, and they're like, oh, shoot, the internet, and, you know, pointing towards the northern sky and all that stuff that all the details that make you lose your mind when you can't get your internet to work.

Unknown:

Yes, absolutely, I completely understand. And just to come to comfort those that are having that anxiety, there are options, and you can you can get online. You can run your business. We've done it from a lot of different times. We've had to go into a town and use Wi Fi before. We thought we were going to have cell signal, and it didn't work out the way we thought it was. You just got to be flexible. If you want to get things listed, you'll figure out a way to get them listed. And we didn't mention this, but we should mention we have three days handling time, yes, which at first seemed a little scary, because, you know, some people might not want to wait, but still, to this day, we ship twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. And we kind of wrote that in the listing so they know Tuesdays and Fridays is when we ship, and it doesn't. Scare people from buying from us, because we're still just getting a lot of sales.

Suzanne Wells:

Well, I like how you have all these systems in place, and you've had to do this from experience. Plan B, Plan C. How much does that Starlink cost? A month with the roaming 160

Unknown:

Yeah, about 60 a month for unlimited. And then our phones. We have two different phones. I have the Bobo version of T Mobile, which is mint, and then I have visible, which is the low cost version of Verizon. And we both have the lowest plan because we don't use it very often. Mine's like 25 bucks a month, me too, and his is 25 bucks a month, yeah, and we actually pay it by the year, and it becomes $20 a month because it's like $240 a year. So, so between that and our internet, we're just paying about $200 a month to have the full everything

Suzanne Wells:

that's very reasonable. It is, yeah, it is. My internet is AT and T here in South Carolina, and it's $80 a month. So you know, to have it mobile, where you can use it pretty much anywhere, yeah, yeah, and

Unknown:

with your phone, just, you know, to let you know the we're very happy with the mint and her visible, visible. So let's say you have Verizon, and you're paying 6070, $80 a month for your phone plan. If you try the visible, it works well. We don't have any issues for AT and T I believe Boost is the lower the lower value. We didn't have any luck without No, I didn't have any. I did try boost here at the property, because there is an AT and T tower. I did try boost, but it just didn't work out. Well, their customer service wasn't great. So there's just,

Suzanne Wells:

I do have Verizon. My two grown children were on a family plan, but, oh, okay, yeah, ways of bringing that cost down. Because, yeah,

Unknown:

I would highly recommend

Suzanne Wells:

for very much other than check out, visible. Yeah, I like my phone for, of course, taking pictures, checking in on things when I'm not home, texting and calling. Mm, hmm, I don't I all the fancy stuff anyway, but okay, well, let's talk about some of your sales as mobile sellers that you're you're getting great sales, just like any regular person who's not traveling.

Unknown:

Yes, yeah, absolutely, like Rajan mentioned, we do focus on needs, so we are more about buying things to resell that we know people are going to need. But some of the things that really surprised me whenever we started digging into a lot of different thrift stores and had access to a lot of different inventory was what they call new old stock. So we do well with new old stock items, and I'll give you an example. Just recently, we're in a thrift store, and they had a trial size box of loves diapers from back in the day. It was a sealed box of a tri I think it had three diapers in the box. And if the box was an excellent shape, all the corners look great, completely sealed. And when I looked up comps, I was floored, because this particular item cost us $1 and these were selling for 100 bucks a box. And so, of course, I know, I know I was so excited whenever I found that. And so that was a really quick slip for us 100 so $1 under 100 bucks. So it was

Suzanne Wells:

the box, yeah?

Unknown:

No, it had the diapers. It had the diapers in it. Oh, yeah, three in there, yeah. Just it was like a, it was kind of like a promotional thing that I see, okay, so it wasn't like a huge box. It's very small. Okay, so easy. It was like a thing where loves wanted you to try out their diapers,

Suzanne Wells:

yeah, maybe a hospital gift.

Unknown:

You know, here's a, yeah, exactly a hospital gift. Okay, so new old stock, you just want to look for ideally sealed items. And another thing was, discontinued products. Discontinued products do really well for us. So cleaning products, so you have a person that has always uses a certain polish for their furniture, they don't sell it anymore. But if you find it, and even if it's not full, it doesn't have necessarily have to be a full bottle. It doesn't necessarily have to be new to sell. So if you find a furniture polish from bees, is one of the brands that I look for. You can buy very cheaply at the thrift store, and it sells for usually between 30 and $70 depending on what it is. And you'll pick them up for $1 Oh, they're very cheap, yeah, and

Suzanne Wells:

that's the kind of thing you can sell it if it's not completely full exactly, because

Unknown:

it's a cleaning product. It's a different store. Worry when it comes to beauty products, for example, which she finds a lot. Yeah, so beauty products are excellent, but you have to make sure that they're new and sealed, right? So you'll get lucky and you'll find a discontinued product, it is still new and sealed that is a bread and butter item. So definitely look at the beauty section of your thrift store. Don't pass up those sections, because there's some great fines in there. It's pretty easy to tell. Sometimes they'll have a shrink wrap, but other times you just want to open that lid and see if the seal is still intact. So that little seal that you'll see there, make sure it's still intact. Excellent, highly. It's one of my favorite sections of a thrift store, all kinds of creams and lotions and perfume and cologne. You can buy those that are open and sell them, and you have to do it as collectibles, so you

Suzanne Wells:

can actually it's only empty or full on the fragrances.

Unknown:

Yeah, it has to be, yeah. So I've done

Suzanne Wells:

is, if it's, if it's like, half empty, I'll just pour it out, yeah, and then make it

Unknown:

it has been able to sell stuff that's partially full or three quarters by listing it as a collectible. If you do it

Suzanne Wells:

as a collective actually, the rule is, no, it's just getting through. So gotcha, I'm just gonna, I'm just educating you that if you get caught, that's not good. But the actual rule on eBay, it's an FDA rule, gotcha that they don't want things that could be contaminated. And sure,

Unknown:

yeah. And I get

Suzanne Wells:

that doesn't really fit that, because if it's a spray bottle, sure, right? It's not going to be contaminated. But it just falls under that umbrella of

Unknown:

No, right? Where it's a lot of like, for example, used to be able to sell insect repellents, or we used to be able to sell off products, that was a big seller for us, but they have cracked down on that so we can no longer sell those type of products.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, there I was selling some mosquito repellent cartridges for some kind of unit.

Unknown:

And I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah,

Suzanne Wells:

that I looked it up, and it was all these, you know, red circle, this listing has been removed for policy violation. And on the right, like so many of them that have been removed. And I'm like,

Unknown:

that happens more and more often. I'm gonna do that.

Suzanne Wells:

I'm myself under the bus on that one.

Unknown:

Yeah, so. And sometimes you just have to, like, if I'm not sure about a brand, we don't buy a whole lot of branded items. We're not big into shoes or clothes or things like that, but I do, if I see something, I'll check the Vero list, because some brands I'm not quite positive on, like, for example, on water filters, Whirlpool. That is a bureau. So, yeah, so you have to just be careful. I would just go in and if you're unsure about a brand, if then check that Bureau list, because you don't want to go through all the trouble of, you know, buying it and listing it only for it to be taken down, like CPAP masks for the machines. We've been successfully selling those. We just bought some two weeks ago. We bought five of them for $1 each, and we just listed them right away as one lot of 50 and they sold. And it went smoothly, as long as they're sealed and they're not open, sometimes you can get away with them, but every once in a while, they'll reject the list. But you know, there's things that are marked for RX. Can't buy those, you can't buy those. You can't buy and try to resell anything that has RX only on it, because that's what we look for when, because there's we run into a lot of medical stuff that we wish we mostly you can't, but a lot of it, we can. As soon as we see RX only, we have to put it back on the shelf. Nope, we can't

Suzanne Wells:

do that. I got in trouble with that on one of those. It's like a little cooler with a fan, and

Unknown:

I know your new Greg called Greg,

Suzanne Wells:

and I was like, Oh, this, this would be great. And I listed it, and it was pulled within an hour. Yeah, we had the same, yeah, yeah. So sometimes it's just trial area, you don't know, but it's, it should be, you know, now I'm never selling a medical thing ever again, because so much of this home health stuff. And you know, when people get transferred to an assisted living or, you know, they have all this leftover or on a monthly subscription for something, and you don't use it all every month. It just stockpiles in their house, because they're not going to say, Don't send me anything. There's a lot of products that you can sell. So it just takes a little research. And again, that that guide of if you go look up the price and you see all these this listing has been removed, then I wouldn't take a chance on it? Yeah, can

Unknown:

I run through as quickly as I can? For you, what a typical thrifting day is for

Suzanne Wells:

us? I'd love to hear that. Okay,

Unknown:

so Well, let's say we're in a new town. What I'll do is wait. We have like, a seven hour rule, because we have our dog with us, we can't leave our dog longer than seven. An hours. Let's say so I'll plan, let's say five thrift stores for us. I'll go on Google Maps, and I'll pull up, I'll type in thrift stores and see what the area has to offer. And let's say there's 20 of them. What I what works for us is the restores. I'll definitely look for the restore and go, go there first, and then Goodwills work well for us. And arc in the in Colorado, there's arc A, R, C, arc thrift stores. There's a bunch of them. They do really well. So I'll typically look for those. And what I'll do sometimes, if there's a bunch to choose from, is I'll look at the pictures of the store, of the inside of the store. And if it's a boutique looking store, we avoid it, because we know their prices are going to be a little high, right? I'll try to find the stores that look a little more cluttered, a little more messy, and I'll plan a perfect route for us, where we do a circle, where we hit the first thrift store the next one, and for her and I, once we get into the thrift store, we each get a cart, and we separate. She goes, we try to spend no more than one hour in a thrift store. She'll go through the sections that she likes and is more familiar with, and I'll go through the sections that I'm more familiar with, and those sections would be wherever they have the you know, like automotive and plumbing and hardware. I'll go through the sporting goods section, because we do really well there, I could tell you. Like I mentioned before, baseball bats do well for us. Fins, swim fins, we do really well on we all $5 or under. We sell them easily for 25 bucks, 50 bucks. We sold a pair for $300 the thins that we had paid 20 bucks for those so what we do is, because it's work mode, we don't think about anything that we need for us or for the house. We are literally grabbing stuff off the shelf. And we don't take the time to look it up as we grab the product. We put things that we feel will be good right in our carts right away, and then after an hour, give or take, we meet up together, and one cart becomes what we're going to keep, and the other cart becomes what we're going to go put back on the shelves. We put things back where we got them from, but her and I will spend probably a half an hour in a corner, double checking with each other and researching, opening the item, making sure that what we think is new, truly is new. Making sure what we think is complete really is complete. And we narrow it down. Then we go, we pay for it. And a lot of times we try to go for the coupon, like good wills how the color that's on sale, two colors that are on sale for the week, we incorporate that, and that's typically how we do it. And then we go put stuff in the car, and we head to the next thrift store, and again, full work mode, total concentration, and we do that repetitively. And then we get home and we wind down. And that seems to work really well for us the way we do it.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, I like that. I call it the proofreading step, where you go over to a corner or go sit at a couch or something and go through it again, because I do put things back too, or you find a defect on it, it's like, well, probably would sell, but I don't want fool with that. And yeah, all the things in boxes, you gotta open them make sure it's really the thing that should be in there. And a lot of

Unknown:

times you'll find the old part, yeah, yeah. You'll make mistakes. Yeah. Every week we Yeah. So let's say we hit five stores. We'll probably have two or three items that we bought that will never sell or we made a mistake on even to this day. Yeah, you just have to accept that. No, no one's perfect. You're you're always going to pick up things that you're kind of, oh, I wish I wouldn't have picked that up. But, you

Suzanne Wells:

know, you get home with it and you're like, I didn't see why did I pick that

Unknown:

up? We the more that we we adjust and learn constantly. Yeah, we're at a point now where, when we get back in our camper, we are no longer buying things that don't have soul comps. However, we say that all the time, and we still take chances, but it really pays off for us. I'm telling you, if you see something that you're buying for $5 that potentially sells for three to $400 but there's no soul comps, it's worth taking a chance on it when you have that big of a of a spread. But sometimes they just don't work out for us. But even if we buy$25 items that don't sell, if one of them sells for three or$400 which happens all the time, you're golden. You're still Yeah, right.

Suzanne Wells:

And the way I look at it is, I'm not spending a bunch of money going out to restaurants, and I'm I don't like shopping for myself. You know, when I'm in in a thrift store, I'll pick up things like, Oh, I love this. I would wear this, but I don't. I'm not like going to the mall to shop and all that. And so it's, it's kind of your hobby, your entertainment. So if, if some things are duds and you have to re donate them or trash them, you know. You didn't spend money that you're never going to get back

Unknown:

right exactly, yeah, and that, I'm glad you brought that up, because it is, it's it send your best interest to have a frugal lifestyle, especially when you're doing what we're doing. It helps us a lot that that thrifting really is our entertainment. Is how we that's how we basically, we thrift and we hike,

Suzanne Wells:

and you're also contributing to whatever, if it's a charity,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah, we round up at every store. We feel

Suzanne Wells:

good, kind of anti goodwill, but still, I know, yeah, not just throwing it into corporate America, in little church, thrift stores and somebody's garage sale, you know, you're putting money in somebody's pocket. And, yes, I like that, rather than just, you know, going to Kohl's and buying clothes and making absolutely,

Unknown:

let me mention more on goodwill specifically, because we just talked about that. So it's hit or miss. What store like Goodwill is an example. We can be in one town, and the Goodwill has good prices. We can be in another town, and the Goodwill has absolutely horrible prices. Where we're at now, where we're living, once a week, we frequent the same goodwill, and it's not a good goodwill by any means. Their prices are ridiculously high. And we can go to a goodwill that's just another hour down the road, and they have excellent prices. So for some people, it really stinks if you're in a town that just doesn't have good thrift stores, but you have to be willing to travel. We do an hour and a half is a reasonable for us because of our dog. So we have an hour and a half to drive to the city that we're going if we hit three or four or five thrift stores at an hour each maximum, we're back in time. But it's some cities. If you have a ton of traffic, you're not going to want to drive an hour and a half. So for everybody, it's completely different. But if you do find good thrift stores, it's worth going to them. And I would say, give them at least like the restores, we give them at least a month before we go back to it. Because when we go for the first time and we buy three or $400 worth of stuff there, we really can't truly go back there the next few days and get the same amount. So we give us, we give about a month's worth of time before we go back to Yeah, that's a stationary tip. When we're stationary, yeah, I do that

Suzanne Wells:

too. I have a route, and I put in a spreadsheet what date I went to which place. So I was like, I give it at least two weeks before I go back. So then these are bigger thrift stores. Well, you're familiar with them in Greenville, but you know, let them restock, let some new things show up. And what I do, like that they started doing in the past couple years is putting the date on the tag. Sure, yes, tag. So I don't know if that's the date it got tagged or the date it got on the floor. I don't know, but I find stuff in there all the time that it's like, three weeks old, and I'm like, I can't believe nobody has picked this up. So you really have to be there every single day to get the stuff, the best stuff, because it all depends on who's been there before you what's their business model? A lot of people hate doing clothes. Oh yeah, I love looking through them to find good stuff that doesn't bother me at all. But some people like, I don't have the patience for it. I don't want to photograph them,

Unknown:

right? And that's how you know that's it's not for you, because that's part of the process, and you just have to figure out what's going to work for you. Everybody's going to be different. Some people, the idea of going through rocks and rocks of clothes just is a nightmare, you know, into the another person, it's the best way to make a living. Yeah? You can go through a store that has been maybe picked through the clothing, yeah, but we don't do clothing, and it works out for us because they didn't pick through the other area. And to mention another thing, along with what you were saying, is the color sales too. So if you see some items, you're like, Man, I can't wait for green to be on sale, which is probably next week. I'll come back next week, because I'll be able to get these at half off if they're still there. So sometimes at our store that we frequent. We see, I see things. I'm like, You know what? I don't think anybody's going to buy this. I know next week, Orange is coming up on sale, so I'm going to wait. And sure enough, bam, I wind up scooping it up for half price. So that can work too. It's a little trick that works sometimes, yeah, and for Goodwill, ask for the secret color. So not everyone will have a secret color, but a lot of good wills will have a third color that you'll ask the employee ask what that third color is, and that third color is last week's 50% they actually keep it for another week. They just don't. And it's not every goodwill, though, ours does it here, and one in another city that we go to does it? It's called the secret color, the special color.

Suzanne Wells:

I have never heard that, but I definitely ask about that. If you don't ask, you don't get right, yeah, exactly. Okay, well, we've been going about an hour here. Do you have any final tips for maybe people wanting to do this on the road like you do?

Unknown:

Two yeah things down, yeah, as far as like do. And this applies to anyone, of course, but just because you're traveling doesn't mean that you can treat it like it's a hobby. So if you're wanting to get on the road and make eBay a consistent source of income. Just make sure you're, you're being consistent with your practices. Make sure that you're listing every day. Just make sure that you're you're treating it like a real business. Don't look at it like a hobby. So that's the decision you need to make early on. You know, do you want this to be a consistent form of income, or do you want it to be a hobby? You need to make that decision right up front. And if you do decide you want to make it your your your income, just treat it like a business. You know. Just do be consistent with all your practice. What she just mentioned about listening every day. We truly, truly feel that's the secret to the algorithm. One of the eBay has many little algorithms. And for whatever reason, we're in good standings with eBay because of our we know it because we have great sales. And what we do is this, and what a new person can do is this, we recommend, if you're just starting off, try to, you know, clean out your closet, your drawers, whatever you have in your garage. Get stuff from your friends and family, stuff they might be going to donate. Say, Hey, can I get it from you? Please. I'll try to sell it and gather 100 items before you even start. And then try to list two items a day. Don't try to lock them all out in one a couple days. Do two items a day, because sometimes we miss a day or two because of things life. Yeah, when we notice that our sales drop if we don't list for two consistent days, we notice that our sales drop, literally. So we feel one of the biggest tricks to stay in that eBay algorithm is to list every single day, even if it's just one item. And what we try to do is we go out once a week to thrift so when we come back here with all our items, we organize everything. She grabs what she feels she wants to list, and I grab what I feel I want to list, and I'll break mine down. If I have 20 items, or let's say 21 items, I'll say I need to list three items a day. And I'll list three items a day consistently. And she'll do the same on her end. And even though that sounds like such a simple trick, I really feel it's a big deal to list every single day.

Suzanne Wells:

I agree with you, and a tip for staying on track with that is something I do, and maybe you hadn't thought of this either, but always keep some items in your schedule folder so you can, like, if you you're packing up to go to your next location. You're not going to have time to list that day. You can just send those out live and you're there. So great. I always keep like my goal is three, three items a day. Mm, hmm. Doesn't sound like much, but you know, that includes taking the pictures, whatever I need to do to it on top of everything else I'm doing. So if you just, you know, if you know a Day is coming up where you're not going to be able to list, put some things in there and just schedule them. And they're it's free, so you can schedule it for you know, the fifth if you do, if you know you're gonna be traveling that day and it's gonna be busy, gotcha schedule them and they'll go out automatically, but there's no charge

Unknown:

that's all right, yeah, thanks for letting us know that incorporate that

Suzanne Wells:

I'm with you. Like, if I don't, if I don't, list, if I miss a day, I was like, oh, Uh huh. I gotta get on it. Do twice as much tomorrow, and then I forget. No.

Unknown:

Just schedule things out. So two more things to mention real quick that it made me think of a lot of times in the stores, when I google lens something and or I find a comp on eBay, I take a screenshot of it, because sometimes you have a hard time finding it again. So when you're looking at items in a store, you know at the end, when you're going over your cart, we try to take screenshots of everything just really quick, because it's just a simple button on your phone and or if it's something you're not sure if you'll be able to list or not, like the CPAP max that we talked about. She actually started a listing in the store and made sure it went through, and it did, so then she, you know, put it back as a draft. That's a little trick too, sometimes. So I'll find a cop, and I'll just do a quick draft, draft listing. So it kind of, it's kind of set up for whenever I do get started.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, and whatever you can do to shave off seconds or minutes, is, is great. I do that screenshot thing too, if I find something, and I do a little quick research, and I'll just screenshot that research, and it's, you know, I'm kind of halfway there when I go to list it. So, yeah, um, anything

Unknown:

else, I think that was it. But I just wanted to thank you so much for having us on. Let me do mention one more thing that I just thought about. So another thing that has been good for us with our store is our resale rate. So we have 1000 item listed. Right, and at the 90 day mark, we sell 500 items. So we have a 50% sell through rate a lot of times. When you're looking at comps, let's say you're looking at a water filter, or you're looking at ink for a printer, if you see that, there's 200 listed, and when you look at the soul comps, there's only 10 soul comps. You should probably stay away from that item, because there's a lot more sellers than there are buyers. So it is also important to look at, when you're looking at the soul comps, to look at the sell through rate. That's another little trick that we do in the store.

Suzanne Wells:

Or look at the actives, like, how many? You know, if there's 1000 of them, I eat with that. I want the astrological zodiac, Leo, the lion, you know, embroidered thing that is very specific. And there's, like, none of them, I guess, less than five. Yeah, something that I sell all the time as a bread and butter. And I just know if it's an LL Bean or lands in swimsuit. It goes in my store, because that is eBay knows to send people to me for that.

Unknown:

Yeah, do you look at linens? Because that's one department

Suzanne Wells:

I do pillow cases and baby blankets and small things, the the giant comforters. I just want to do that, unless it's like in the bag and it's the new brand new one with everything in it. For me, it's about how hard is that going to be to photograph? Some people don't care, but it is time. It's all about time. It is going to take me 20 or 30 minutes to set all that up and photograph it. And so I like the small things, yeah, double runners and place mats and like, Crate and Barrel and those are fun. Yeah? Pop barn,

Unknown:

absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some good brands that people are pretty loyal to. Well, it was nice meeting you. Very nice

Suzanne Wells:

meeting. Oh, thank you guys again for coming on and do you want to share the name of your

Unknown:

store? Sure, yeah, it's our reselling journey, right? Okay, so that's our store and our YouTube.

Suzanne Wells:

If people want to look up like, well, what kind of things do they sell? Absolutely, absolutely. You're not traveling right now, but you will be again. When do you hit the road again?

Unknown:

Yeah, so in the summer, when we hit the road again, we'll be doing more on the road videos on our YouTube channel, so we'll be going and showing you inside the stores, and it'll be a lot of cool content on our YouTube channel. Yeah, well, we were traveling for all these years. We were documenting, blogging on just on Facebook, and we had our little Facebook audience. But now, when we get back on we're just learning with the with the YouTube, and it's going to be half eBay and half of our travels, because the people that we do follow on on YouTube, that we're learning from ourselves on eBay, we also like to see their personal lives and what they're doing. So we're incorporating all of our travels and off grid tips and camping tips along with eBay. That's that's that's exactly what we're going to be doing as our as our channel grows, but we know it's going to take years keep going.

Suzanne Wells:

Just do a few every week. And I think I'm up to over 1000 videos, but, you know, I don't pump them out like a lot of people. Do something every day, but so it, it accumulates over time, just like everything else,

Unknown:

three a week we do, okay, one video real quick of all the buys that we got that week. Then we do one video of all the sales that we got that week. And then we do one video where I teach three or four listings and how I listed it, and the stuff that we did fun for the week, hiking and some of the off good stuff. So that's how we do it. Three videos a week,

Suzanne Wells:

yeah, I think people will love that, incorporating your nomadic lifestyle or whatever you call it, okay. Well, keep up the great work, and luck with your moon. Oh, thank you, yeah,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah. I hope that goes smoothly for you. Movies never fun.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, thanks a lot. Bye, bye. Next week, my guest is Holly, who was last on the podcast three years ago in 2022 she has an interesting favorite product line that you will have to tune in to find out about. A little teaser there to keep you coming back for more. Thank you for listening and make it a great day on eBay. Everybody. Bye for now. You.