Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether reselling on eBay can be a full-time job.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Can Reselling Really Be A Full-Time Job?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about an important question for resellers. Can reselling really be a full-time job?
All right, guys, on today's episode, we are talking about a tough question. More of an easy question for us. Is it really a viable profession, go full-time into flipping?
Melissa: And I wouldn't say necessarily an easy thing for us because this was a hard transition and a lot more stress.
Okay. I take, I take more stress than you do, but it was not an easy transition. So.
Rob: But we have proven that it absolutely can be a full-time, viable, business, job, job, job, whatever you wanna call it. So, absolutely. So yeah, that is the biggest thing is can it be possible to go full-time into reselling if you love it, can it really be possible to do it?
And as for us, we've been doing this for eight years, seven years?
Melissa: Full time?
Rob: Yeah, full-time.
Melissa: Seven years.
Rob: So seven years full-time. And the when we realized that it could be viable was we started keeping track. So it was always a side hustle for us. We did it on the side when we wanted to go on vacation, when we needed a new car.
I buckled down. I went and bought some stuff from the thrift store, some high dollar stuff. We sold it, we made money quick. That was what we did. Never really keeping track of it, but our first full, I guess full year of keeping track, part-time. We ended up making.
Melissa: Well, we, we really started to keep track because we started our blog in 2015.
So true. We started our blog. So we're like, oh, well let's see what we can really do with this. Like, this is kind of fun. We do it on the side. It's a fun little side hustle. So what are we doing? And so, that we are, that we really started. Like keeping track. It wasn't just a hobby, it was our side hustle, part or yeah, our part-time we made $42,000 gross and $33,000 net. So on, on the side.
Rob: And, and we asked ourselves the same thing. is this, can this really be a full-time income? Can we really, really make this into a business? Because we didn't know. We didn't know if it was possible. And once we kept track, $42,000 part-time is no joke.
I mean, that's some, some, some serious money, to be able to make as a part-time business. And you're doing it yourself at your own schedule. I mean, you're going out doing stuff, but you're doing it on the side. So that was when we realized, hey, there might be some potential here.
Melissa: But we didn't really realize it until we were thrown into doing it, a not so fun situation. So, I was pregnant with our last kid, which you probably may have heard this story already, but I was pregnant with our kid number three and I was like, this is insane. We have, we're gonna have three kids, three and under, like, I have to stop my personal training. I have to stay home and wrangle these kids and we were both working like opposite schedules. So we could stay home with the kids, but we like, I just need to stop and just be home cuz it's just insanity at home. So we decided that, and then a month later, like a month before we're due, your job decides to pull your health insurance cut, which is the only reason you really had that job.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: You, you were making more, flipping, flipping than you were, at that job after everything. But we still used it for health insurance. We're like, crap. We about to have a baby. What are we gonna do? They're like, your health insurance stops on March. Was was it, 31st? Yeah April 1st you're done.
So, or March 31st you're done. That's your last day. Yep. And baby was due April 1st, so it's like, crap, what are we gonna do? And then, so that's where we had to make some tough decisions like, do we do this? I was planning to stop working. You were planning to still, you were gonna dive more into flipping and making more because I was gonna stop.
So you're already planning to cover that. Yeah. And then you're like, well, is it really even do I even do this? You were doing reports and what was it? Home inspections and stuff. Inspections, yeah. So is it really worth it to do that anymore? So.
Rob: And the rest is history for our story. Our first year diving full in, full-time into it once we both lost our jobs.
And Melissa actually helped me out a little bit with the flipping portions.
Melissa: I do the listings and stuff on the back end of it.
Rob: Exactly. So, once we did it, the full first full-time year that we did, we did over $136,000, somewhere around there. $133,000. And our first time in.
Melissa: It was a hundred. A hundred K net.
Rob: So a hundred, well, a hundred thousand dollars net, which was, I mean, it was awesome. So that really answered our question for what it was capable for us. But that was the start of our journey as well, because what we did find out was we had to either throw a lot of time into this business.
But we wanted to figure out how to dial back the time and being able to spend more time as a family with the kids doing that kind of stuff, how could we do it?
Melissa: Because they are very demanding on time when they're that tiny. Absolutely. I mean, they're still demanding, but not as demanding as they're those first couple years.
Absolutely. It's a lot of work.
Rob: So we had to figure out what could we do, and that's when our eyes were really open to the larger items, really getting into higher profit items, which typically were larger items that people couldn't move locally, that we could get locally, and then we could ship them.
Started us down this rabbit hole of really turning our business into high profit business to where even just last year, I think we sold a total of maybe 60 or 70 items for the whole entire year to make it's like $80,000. Yeah. Make roughly $80,000. And our profit margins are huge compared to normal resellers.
Yeah, so that's one of those things that we've just been honing, honing our skills to get to that point. Until where now we are only working maybe I would say five to 10 hours is really, really five to 10 hours in our flipping business to be able to make anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 a year.
It's definitely a part-time income. The rest of our hours go part-time, part-time hours, sorry, part-time hours. The rest of our time goes to our family and really coaching, like we're teaching other people how to do this. We do our blog, we do our YouTube videos, we do Instagram posts, we do all this other stuff that's on top of our, and our members, our coaching members. Exactly.
Coaching on top of all that other stuff. So, splitting our hours between all that, we're still able to make a really, really good income, part-time hours. Exactly. Part-time hours, with only working so much at the flipping business, so.
Melissa: And we've seen that too. We actually just interviewed, which I think we're gonna put on the podcast soon. One of our members, Jenny, and she was talking about that too, and how she like after a little while you start, when you start getting good at finding those items and getting, like you just you spend a lot less time in your business because you can spot 'em a lot quicker. You can, and she's doing some of the larger profit items too.
You can spot 'em a lot quicker. You can, you know how, like what they're worth, what you know, how to look up comps. You just know things a lot faster after. And she was like two probably solid years into this. a business model. So, and now she spends a lot less time doing it. And I think it is, it's just learning those things over and over.
So I wouldn't recommend to anybody listening to this if you're just starting reselling. I wouldn't recommend thinking like, let's go full-time next year. Like that's, is it doable? Yes, it is doable, but there's a learning curve involved. Absolutely. So you would rather make those mistakes when it's your extra money than when it's your full-time income.
Yeah, absolutely. So, because that's another thing I would add is when it's your part-time income, it is your extra money. So like that was always our less stress, vacation money or if medical bills are, we're having a baby, we need to make more money. Like things that came up we had, we could make more money and you knew you could do it.
You know, just let's go to the, we're gonna go to the flea market this weekend, we're gonna go to some thrift stores or auctions or whatever it was you. And it was kind of a security blanket, maybe even like, yeah. That we knew we could go make money could fall back on. Yeah. Yeah. And you knew like if we needed it, we could go do that.
Which I still don't know why we never put two and two together. If you knew that you could go do that and make more money, why didn't we do it sooner?
Rob: I know, especially cause I've been doing it for over 25 years. It's not something that I just I stumbled upon, I grew up this way. My parents flipped items when I was a kid, and they sold stuff in the classifieds section and I saw 'em, they'd buy it at a yard sale, they'd take it to a bigger market at classified section, and they'd sell it.
And I watched 'em make money. So I had known this, but never did I really think it was a viable profession. Like is a flipper a real legit? Like is that a profession? Like, yeah, it and it totally is. It's really, really cool that that's where we're at right now. It is. It is a profession and you can make really good money.
The other thing that Melissa and I have talked about too is sometimes you guys and the social aspect of what we do. Social media, when we're doing YouTube videos, when she's doing Instagram and Facebook posts and all this stuff, the haters that we get on some of this stuff is crazy. And we even talked about it going, man, I totally know if I threw full-time hours with what I know now at this business.
Half a million dollars, I could do it in a year. And no doubt in my mind I could really throw down some money, to if I went full-time, hours into this business and really, really poured my knowledge into it. But the one aspect of it is there's something so rewarding, being able to coach and help people on their journey and really showing them what the possibility is.
And then being part of that and seeing them, it's really rewarding. It is clicking that light bulb clipping, clicking in, people's minds and being like, wow, this is legit. This is really cool. And then knowing that you had a portion of, you know, helping them get to that next level. So, it's a catch 22, to, to really dive full-time into it for us and go back into, hey, no more social media, no more doing all this stuff. Or, you know, do you keep doing what you're doing and helping people? So, it's a struggle that Melissa and I have talked about and done, but we know if we really poured full-time hours into it now, like Melissa said, on the learning curve, what we've already learned in the last seven or eight years, just going into these high profit items that we totally could kill it, kill it in income, doing that.
Melissa: So yeah, and every once in a while, I'll say it would be just so much easier if we just did flipping and not all this extra stuff. But it is, it's very cool to be a part of like, and you know, anybody even listening and if you people write us in, in emails and say, you know, I did this and I was able to make this for my family.
I, it's so cool to be a part of that, and that makes it totally worth it for sure. Like you can, you've, maybe you helped somebody pay their mortgage this month because they couldn't, like they had a hard time or whatever. And that was another cool thing about our flipping gig before it was full-time. It always filled the gaps.
So like, I remember when we first were married, I was changing jobs to a personal trainer, and I didn't have, like, I got a base pay, which was like nothing cuz they were paid off commissions, so they would pay you like, just as little bit for like learning and working and whatnot. And so I didn't, like, commissions didn't start coming in for several, like a month or so.
And so like, you're just like, all right, lemme go flip some extra stuff to make, fill the gaps. So, it always has filled the gaps, I think, for when we've needed it, so. Absolutely. So, and one last thing I was thinking of is, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Rob: No, absolutely.
Melissa: I think some people think what you were thinking, what you said earlier is, is it a real, like, is that considered a real job?
Like what would my friends think of me? What would, if that was my job, what would they think? And I think you have to get to a point where you don't really care what others think for the most part. Like you probably will have family and friends that say it's not like a real job, but we know personally that resellers are hard workers.
Like it's not easy. It's a simple business, but it takes work and effort. So it's not easy. And they're hard workers, especially if you're doing a lot, a lot of volume. Like it's a lot. But I think you just have to kind of be like, well, you're not paying my bills.
Yeah, I am.
Rob: And you'll be so surprised when you go to your friend and you're like, hey, I spent a hundred dollars on this and I sold it for $2,000.
People would be like, what the heck are you doing? How did you do that? And they get so excited about that stuff too. So.
Melissa: You know how many of our friends have now like wanted to start flipping just because like they see what we're doing, stories, stories of what we do and it's fun and it's just interesting. And anyways, so you, yeah, you can't let that, it's kind of a status thing, I feel like.
So you have to kind of be like, yeah, you're not paying my bills, I guess. Yeah.
Rob: I also, I just was thinking about the interview that we did with Jenny, recently, her talking about that, she had the decision to either go back to work or go do something when her kids went back to school, they went into brick and mortar school.
Should I go get a job? Should I go do something or should I go really hard into flipping? And she was making crazy. I think she was averaging like $5,000 or $6,000 a month. Yeah. By doing this and realizing hey, this is an awesome profession. This is awesome that I'm able to make this kind of money doing this, and on my own timeframe when I want to do it, I can go do it.
I can spend it after the kids are in bed at night, I can, you know, be sourcing and doing stuff when they're at school, I can do stuff. So it's not like you're limited to, hey, you gotta work from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM You don't have that. You can do this at any possible time that you have in the day, the pockets of your day, which is really, really cool.
Melissa: Yeah, that is a really cool, because she was debating going back and we're gonna have to share that interview on the podcast soon. Yeah. Going back and finding a job and then it's like, well, what do you, what? I'm gonna have to work all these like, Set hours and it's, you know, I'm finding treasures and having fun doing it.
Absolutely. So I guess to answer the question, can reselling really be a full-time job? It absolutely can.
Rob: Thumbs up.
Melissa: We, but just know that once it is full-time, like you have to pay, that's probably the biggest thing I would say about it going full-time. This is what's paying your bills. So you have to be treated as a full-time, yeah.
It has to be a business. Like you can't, it can't be a hobby anymore if you're going full-time. Like you have to have some system in, in place for sourcing and listing. You have to have, you know, know that you have to work at it and make sure that you keep it up. It's a good point. But also don't be thinking that everything has to be perfect before you jump in full-time. Like if you know your numbers part-time, you know what hours you put in. Like that's what we determined off of like, oh, other hours. We did not have $50,000 to $100,000 sitting in savings in the bank before we went full-time.
Like we did not have a, like a cushion at all. Yeah. So when we decided to jump in, we're like, all right, it's this, and if it doesn't work, I guess we're gonna go find another job or something. But, but yeah, so we we're kind of forced to make it work, which I guess yeah, kind of makes it better. But, so don't wait for everything to be perfect, cuz it never will be perfect.
But just know this is going to be your income, so you've gotta work at it.
Rob: So if, if you are contemplating this right now, what can you do? What resource can we provide? Where can people go to find out more about flipping?
Melissa: Well, if you're just starting now, we have a free flipping course, freeflippingcourse.com.
You can check that out. There's some good tips on there. We'll put it in the show notes. And thanks guys for listening.
Rob: You guys rock. Have a great day until the next episode.