Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about three reasons why your flipping side hustle is not profitable.
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3 Reasons Why Your Flipping Side Hustle Is Not Profitable
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about three reasons why your flipping side hustle is not profitable.
Rob: All right guys, so today we are tackling three reasons why your side hustle of flipping is not making money.
Melissa: So we recently polled our listeners and asked some of their obstacles, some of your biggest obstacles that you have in your flipping side hustle.
And we want to dive through some of those and tackle those really and bust through them. And so we're actually going to do a little mini series on these over the next three videos. So, or podcasts if you're listening on the podcast, or videos if you're watching on YouTube. So, we want to really dive into them.
And so today we're going to dive into three of the reasons why your flipping business might not be profitable.
Rob: So let's kick it off. Reason number one.
Melissa: You haven't started yet.
Rob: This is huge! It totally is big and it is legit, guys. Trust me, it is a real thing. Analysis paralysis, you're worried about all the stuff that could happen, and you just won't take the first step.
You're not the only one. You're not alone. No, I have been there. Melissa has been there. Everybody has been there, but you are in analysis paralysis right now and you cannot make money in your flipping business until you overcome that and you step into it and then you start making money. So that is reason number one.
Melissa: And more times than not.
I've heard it over and over again that from our students or from people, you know, listening that they, it took them a while to start. Once they did, they're like, why did I wait so long? Like, it's really not that bad. And you learn by doing things, you learn along the way. And so getting started really is the, the first step.
So like you said, analysis process is a big one that gets people. And one of the reasons we love this flipping side hustle for so many reasons. So what are some of them? We're going to try to tell you some of the reasons you need to get started today with your flipping side hustle because it's an amazing side hustle.
Rob: But overcoming analysis paralysis, we're going to give you permission guys. You will make mistakes in this business. Definitely start off with baby steps. Don't try and start by jumping a long jump. That is not what our goal is with you. It is taking baby steps so you get the confidence underneath your belt.
So if you are stuck in analysis paralysis right now, don't worry. There's other people there just beside you. All you have to do is take one step in front of the other. And like Melissa said, we're doing this three video series, three podcast series, to where we're gonna give you guys some implementable?
Is that a word? Stuff you can implement. Implementable, yeah. Implementable! Stuff that you can take action. How about actionable steps? I'll, I'll rephrase it. There you go. Some actionable steps to get you results this week. That is our goal, to get you some results this week.
Melissa: So if you need some reasons why you should get started, flipping is an amazing side hustle.
We love it. One of the reasons why is the time flexibility. So you can do stuff on your own time. So when we both had jobs, like regular, we still, like we had weird scheduled jobs, but we could put this into different times that we needed to do it. And it always was our extra money and we could just do it when we needed to do it.
Rob: So, yeah. Give you an example. If you have a nine to five, you can come home and you can take pictures and you can list stuff later that night. In the middle of the night, you wake up in the middle of the night one to do something. Maybe you're stressed about finances and you're like, how do I make more money?
Wake up in the middle of the night. You know, you can't go back to sleep and jump online or jump onto eBay. List some things, jump on a marketplace, list some things, and you can start making money just like that. So, it is very, very time flexible that it does not on anybody else's schedule. Other than your own and in the pockets of your day, you totally can get results in this business.
Melissa: I remember when our kids were so tiny and we, it was crazy. We had three kids, three and under, and it was insane. And so we did a lot of stuff at night. Like once they, we made them, they went to bed early when they were babies, like at six o'clock. And so we had like from six. that we could get some stuff done.
So, and so we worked a lot of nights. So, and another part on the time too, that is why, and we'll touch on this in one of the future videos pretty soon, but this is, the time is also why we've gravitated towards this higher value, higher, higher profit items, bigger items because they make so much more and it saves us so much time and it just gives us more time flexibility in our business.
So.
Rob: For us to do one item that might sell for a thousand dollars, and then to do multiple items at a $10 profit and where we can do one item for $1,000, you were talking about so much time saved on finding those items, on listing, taking pictures, listing those items, and then fulfillment. Actually, once they sell, you got to put them in bags, you got to put them in boxes and you got to ship them out.
When you think about that and you can do one item versus a hundred of the other items, this saves you so much time on doing this type of flipping when you're going for those high profit items.
Melissa: Yeah. And another reason why we love this business and why you should get started. This is one of your favorite ones is this is not a something that is monotonous.
Like it's not something that is the same thing every day. And that's what you personally need. You can't go and do the same thing. You need change. So this is constantly treasure hunting and finding stuff. And.
Rob: Anybody else relate to going and sitting in a cubicle all day, every day is like my definition of yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Torture. Exactly. So that's one of those things that I am so, I love it. I'm just so blessed that we're able to go out, find a treasure hunt every single day, find weird, crazy stuff from Harley Davidson signs to wheelchairs to exercise equipment to kitchen equipment.
Everything under the sun. And that's what keeps me interested because I can keep finding new things and they tweak my interest. And then I start to learn history about things. And then I learn how to fix things or I learn more about those items. It's just so much fun to be able to do this business and to have the variety of everything out there that you have the potential to buy and sell.
You just don't know what you're going to find. You're looking for that cheap item that is going to be an amazing turnaround, an amazing profit for you. And it's just so much fun.
Melissa: I just wanted to add too, and there's a lot of pros to like niching down to one niche and we do talk about like going down, but you still like to do everything because you like the difference.
Like you're not going to only do one kind of item all the time, even though there are benefits to doing that. Like you really know your stuff and in that item, but it's, you just like doing different things cause you like to change it up every day.
Rob: I remember we did an interview with Steve, one of our students just last week and he was talking to me about doing the same way.
Yeah. Doing shoes. And there's people inside of our, our members area that do shoes and they're really, really good at shoes. And he's like, man, that seems like, oh, I can't imagine doing the same thing, taking the same pictures over and over, cleaning the same stuff. He's like, I can't even imagine. And I'm like, man, I can totally relate.
That's how I am too. I don't want to stick to one item. I want to find all kinds of different items because it's just so much more fun and interesting.
Melissa: So, but it also shows how you can do this business in so many different ways, which is really fun. One of the biggest reasons why you should get started is because you can make money quickly in this business because, I mean, just as an example, we were part of the work at home school years back. Like there was all these different online side hustles, different side hustles that you did. And they put them all together in this one big school of, of side hustles, I guess you could say.
So work, work from home, all work from home stuff that you could do.
Rob: And we're talking hundreds of thousands. I think they have like 750,000 people went through this work at home, work at home school with all these different other side hustles that you can make money from and we are one of the, one of the schools inside of the school.
But go ahead.
Melissa: And they would always tell people like to get their investment back from the school to go through our stuff first because you can make money quick like you can make your stuff back right really quickly. So that's just goes to show like how fast you can start making money and I could tease out that we're gonna talk about. And you don't even need a lot to get started. But that's on a future, that's on an upcoming video.
Rob: So this is definitely engineered. These next three series that we're doing is engineered to help you get started, get out of analysis paralysis and get started. Get started with next to nothing out of your pocket and be able to make money. immediately, super, super quick, like today, that's when we're talking about doing this and these upcoming videos that we're going to be doing in, in episodes that we're going to be doing.
Melissa: So, and one other thing that also is kind of relative to timing now, cause the world is just kind of crazy. It's been crazy for a little while is this is a great side hustle to have during weird economic times, like uncertain economic times. You've heard that word a lot, uncertain, whatever that means because people do tend to gravitate towards buying used and we do a lot of used stuff.
We don't do new stuff. So if you're, you know, on here where we don't like go to the store and buy new stuff and then flip it, that's not, we find you stuff at a great deal and then sell it online for a good deal still, but make our money on it.
Rob: Absolutely.
Yeah, no and like Melissa said we're not like clearance shoppers.
We're not going into Walmart We're not going to target and looking for clearance stuff. We're looking for profit and it's typically used items. It's appliances. It's a industrial. It's commercial stuff. It's exercise anything that is high. It's got to have a high retail to catch our attention and then we're trying to buy it as cheap as we possibly can.
So there's room for markup and we do not price gouge anybody. We don't, we're not taking advantage of anybody. Typically what we're getting, we're selling it at probably 50 percent off of retail. So whoever's buying it is still getting an amazing deal on it. And during like recessions or bad economic times, like stores like Walmart and thrift stores and those like lower retail stores, they, they thrive during those times.
So, so it's great for a side hustle, like a use. side hustle. Absolutely. It's a great thing to do. And we also sell items that people need. So we're not necessarily selling items that people just want. I don't. You know, we do, we do a little bit of everything, but a lot of the stuff we do is things that people need and they just need them replaced and they want to save money on them.
Absolutely. So, anyways, so we're going to go ahead and jump into number two. Two, let's hit it. So, the second reason why your flipping side hustle might not be profitable is because you are scared of losing money on shipping. So.
Shipping is such a monster to tackle and it scares a lot of people thinking that they're going to sell something, they're going to ship it, or they're going to lose money in shipping or just shipping in general, that they can't do it.
They have the the, the mind block of how am I going to get this thing shipped? Am I going to do it the right way? Is it going to get damaged in shipping? What's going to happen? That is one of the biggest holdbacks for a lot of people is getting on eBay, selling and then having to ship it out and you stop before you even start.
Melissa: I mean, I remember one of our members had she would listed some of her stuff, and some of them, half of them were a little bit bigger. She listed them, and then she would pray they wouldn't sell. Like, she told us this after months after that. She's like, I would just hope that they wouldn't sell, because then I'd have to ship them out.
And then they sold, she made a whole bunch of money and then she figured out shipping and the rest is history. So it was a.
Rob: Her first big shipment was over $3,000, $3,000 and she had to ship it. And she said she was terrified of it until it actually happened. And then she did it and she's like, oh, this is a piece of cake.
And she got better and better at it. So yeah, really, really cool. Yeah.
Melissa: And I wanted to add that table and hutch that you did that you bought at an auction for $350. $350. It was a table and eight chairs or 10 chairs and a hutch. Like it was a big old dining set. So you bought it for $350 at an auction.
We sold all of our big stuff locally on Marketplace. So you sold it to double your money at $750. Tried to, or listed it for $750 and nobody bought it. So you started looking on eBay. You can finish that story.
Rob: Yeah. No, I looked on eBay. We couldn't sell it locally. Sold it, had it for a couple months, whatever it was.
Could not sell it. I just wanted to double my money. Make $700. Listed for $750. Knew I could take a discount on it. And I could not sell it. So I started doing some more research. We were selling on eBay where we weren't selling anything big on eBay stuff that had to go onto a pallet. And I looked on eBay and saw other sellers that had done it, had, had actually sold these things.
And the, the common thread was, they were offering shipping. So anybody who had a big dining room table set, they weren't selling if they weren't offering shipping, but if they were, they totally were selling. So that was my moment of, okay, if other people are doing it. I can do it too. I can figure out this shipping thing.
And the other thing is if they're selling online and I have to figure out shipping to get rid of this thing, I am totally going to do it. We listed it, sold it in less than a month. And not only we had it listed locally for $750 we ended up selling it for $2,200 and the buyer paid an extra $500 for shipping, which we got it shipped for under, I think it was around $400.
We got paid for our time, that we actually put it on the pallet and shipped it out with that. So our learning process of it as well.
Melissa: Yeah. But if you had kept that limiting belief of being scared of shipping or scared that you were going to lose money on shipping, you went to listen and we would have lost $2,000, like a profit almost.
So like that, and that is a kind of a big aha moment. Like, okay, I, and there are ways you can also go around not losing money. So a big one that we talk about too, to start with is start with calculated shipping, because you're not going to, your buyer's going to see the price, they're going to know how much it costs to get to them. Yeah, sometimes it shows more than you can actually get it for eBay, eBay discount. But, and so, but that's a way to know that you're not going to lose money on shipping is if you list it with calculated shipping and then you have your buyer buy it that way. And there's also, if you're scared, like you go and you do this thing and it's going to be, I didn't know how much it was going to cost.
It's going to cost me $50 to ship. And I'm, I'm not making any money after that. I do that. You can't always cancel an item like let's not something you want to do every day. It's not something but if something happens like there's always a way out. Was that the word I'm looking for? There's always something the ways you can figure out how to get past it. So if you were to you're not gonna go in the hole, you can be nice to your buyer and cancel the shipment. So.
Rob: Absolutely. I was just talking to somebody about this and they actually sold an item for $90. And then it actually was going to go to the United States.
I think it was Hawaii or something like that. It was going to go out of the United States continental US and it was going to be like $200 or $300 on top of it and they did free shipping built into it for $90 and they're like it's going to cost me this much money just to give this thing away and so they canceled the transaction. You can totally cancel the transaction if you make a mistake, something happens.
This is where we're going to give you guys permission. You will make mistakes in this business, but it is not the end all be all. You can totally cancel a transaction. If it's a money mistake that you're you made and you do not want to lose money. Absolutely. You can cancel the transaction, learn from that, relist it with whatever you have to do, a calculated shipping or whatever you have to do to straighten it out and then sell it again.
You can totally do that. We've done that. You can do it. It's not the end of the world if you have to do that.
Melissa: And it's all about learning. And this is another thing that is just, the more you do it, the more confidence you will gain in doing it, and you will know that you're not, like, the fear of losing money on shipping was something to, you know, maybe think about and be concerned about, but not enough to keep you from doing this as a side hustle. So, even that, one of our biggest flips are, the bus wash, you bought for $500 and that was the biggest, the longest pallet you've ever made.
And that thing was huge. It was how tall?
Rob: The bus wash. That one was, I think, 12 foot, 12 foot tall.
Melissa: And this thing was huge. Anyways, so we bought it for $500 locally, you know, people don't ship this stuff and that's why we're able to be, to offer that service, ship it and make a lot more money. And we sold it for $14,500.
That's a lot of money. That was a good. A lot of money for one float. You're like, alright, for that money, I'm going to figure out how to ship it, right?
Rob: That's it. And that was a big pallet. It was a big pallet. Took me some time to do. Yeah, I did that through a couple, days it took me, but not full eight hour days.
I just worked two or three hours a day on that and then put that, that's a cool thing. The time thing. Had to pick up the kids from school. I'd take a break. Had to go back and, you know, spend time with the kids at night and that kind of thing. In my pockets of my day, I made that work. So I could have a couple days to actually ship that thing out, and do it.
But it was a big pallet and it was a lot of money. $14,000. I mean, how many, how many months do you have to work to make that on a normal salary, a job right now? It's, it's, that's, that's awesome. So I'm always, I'm up for the challenge. I'll take any challenge somebody throws my way. I want to figure out how to, how to beat it, how to make some money, and we did not lose money on shipping on either on that.
I think he paid an extra thousand dollars for it on shipping.
Melissa: It only cost $700 I think for the shipping label.
Rob: I probably charged him $1,000 or $1,200 and then I actually insured it. You get paid for your handling time. That's it. My time building it, any materials that I bought for that pallet, totally did that. And it worked out in our favor. So, yeah, really, really, really good experience. But I stepped up to the plate. The biggest thing is stepping up to the plate, learning and getting better and better at what we do and got a big payday out of it.
Melissa: And at that level, I mean, that's going into the freight and going bigger, but even it's totally fine if those smaller shipments even scare you. Because you, you know, when you don't have that much money into the profit, you, those, that number, those numbers matter more, like as far as your percentage profit.
So, but doing it is going to be the best way to get past any of those fears and you don't have to lose money on shipping. So keep doing the calculated and then you also will start to know how much it's going to cost to go to different locations. Absolutely. All right, number three. So number three, we're actually going to dive in more on the next video and on the next episode.
But we will talk about it a little bit is spending. You're spending too much money on inventory.
Rob: We want you guys to come back for the next video. We're going to actually teach you guys how to get your inventory for free and start making money, shh, you're giving away the whole video, today, making money today. That's the, that's the goal of this next training that we're actually going to put together. So yeah excited to see you guys on that, but we do have a favor to ask you right now. Guys, let us know, comment. Let us know what you're struggling with in your business. What is it? Is it time? Is it resources? What is it? That's what we're trying to really get together put together ways and to jump over these obstacles that you have.
Melissa: To encourage you to get started, get moving, go make some money in your flipping business. So comment below. We'd love to hear your questions, comments. And yeah, thanks for being here.
Rob: You guys rock. We'll see you on the next episode.