Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how long they sit on an item before it sells.
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How Long Do We Sit On An Item Before It Sells?
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about how long do you have to sit on an item before it sells on eBay. All right guys, so on today's episode we're talking about how long do you really need to sit on an item before it sells?
This is a question that we get all the time, when people are trying to figure out if they want to use this as a side hustle, going to this as a full time business. They want to know, hey, how long am I going to have to sit on this item? Before it's going to actually sell.
Melissa: Yeah, I think some people get afraid that they're going to, you know, invest a bunch of money into into inventory or things to flip and then they're just going to sit there. So, and we obviously are not in the business of just wasting money or having money sit. So we kind of wanted to dive into this question.
Rob: So we have two opposite ends of the spectrum that we're going to give you kind of case studies of what what's happened to us in this is the last two weeks. Yeah, two weeks that we've two sales that we've had and they're the opposite ends of the spectrum and break them down both for you and kind of give you an idea of what is acceptable and why we do what we do in this industry. So yeah, that's the biggest thing. So before we jump onto that, you guys kind of know our business model is definitely the higher profit.
We're selling high profit items. We're not selling Items that are, you know, $20, $50, even at $100, $150. Typically the only stuff, like, my son, I was helping him sell something for, and we sold it for $175. That he paid $15 for? Yeah. He paid $15 for it at an estate sale. This is, it just sold yesterday. Super, he was super excited about it, but he paid $15.
Melissa: And he sold something the other day at, locally too, he sold his punching bag. So he's made some like almost $300.
Rob: He's almost at $300 right now for like the last week. And my son is seven years old, so this is kind of crazy. But anyways, our business model, typically for what we're doing, we're aiming for a thousand dollars to be honest with you guys.
It's like a thousand dollars and above. Sometimes we'll have some things. We're not picky now. Yeah, and we'll have things roll in for $500, $ 200, stuff like that. That's already listed, but typically unless, if we're listing stuff for that cheap, for us that cheap, it's going to be for our kids. We're trying to help our kids build their business and make extra money doing this.
Our business model is to buy the high profit and we don't spend a lot of money on our items either. We're actually spending very, very, the two items that we're going to give you the case studies on today, we spent $60 on one and we spent $40, $42 on the other one.
Melissa: Yeah, that's a huge piece of it and that's really the biggest takeaway I would say on this is we don't have a lot of money tied up. So some of the items might say, so the answer really is, it depends. So, so we're gonna give you, like we said, both of those, examples today. But it really, it depends on the item and it depends on a lot of circumstances. So you could sit on something a little bit longer or you could sell right away.
But we're not trying to tie up a ton of money in them. We're not investing a thousand dollars in an item to make $1,500. Like we're no, we don't have that money tied up. So we're able to yeah, to not have the money tied up in those items. So.
Rob: The first one we'll talk about is the one that we actually listed two weeks ago.
Sold like in a week and a half. I'm actually shipping it out today. It is a cooktop that we bought for $60. We bought it on our road trip this summer. Over the summer time. But you just listed it. Yeah, I just got it listed. Sold really, really quickly. We sold it for $1,500 like I said, paid $60 for it.
Sold it for $1,500. Sat for less than a week and a half. And that's when it actually sold. Quick sale, love those. That's not always the case with what we do. Now, on the flip side of things, we sold one yesterday, no, two or three days ago. This weekend, yeah. So, this weekend we just sold one, that we had paid $42 for.
And we bought this one on the road trip, the previous year. And so we had this one sitting for. No, it was two years before. Two years prior. So, we had this one sitting on eBay for two years that this thing was sitting in our warehouse. And I actually got this one listed pretty quickly because we actually loaded it from Stacy's house. I got pictures at one of our, our VA's house in Arizona. So we bought it, got it listed immediately. The crazy part about this item is it has sold probably three times throughout the last two years. It has sold multiple times each time somebody comes back and says, hey, before I even ship it out, they're like, can I cancel this transaction?
I don't know why that's happened, but this item it has happened on. So, this one, what is it? Yeah, explain what it is. It is a bread oven. So it's one of the ovens that you go into Subway and and
Melissa: see the, the bread rising, right?
Rob: Yeah, so it's got a, an oven on top and it's got a proofer on the bottom. So, they let the bread sit, rise, and then they put it in and they bake it in the oven.
So typically it's, it's just what you'd see in a Subway. I think that might even be where this came from. So, we bought it on a lot of items. I was at a lady's, kind of her storage. She had a whole bunch of semi trailers full of stuff from her, her husband, her late husband who passed away. A whole bunch of stuff that she had in there.
Multiple semi trailer loads, trailers full of stuff. And I ended up getting, I think, four or five items from her that I picked out. I asked her how much she wanted for all these, and it ended up being a couple hundred dollars, but it averaged out for $42 an item that we got. And this was one of those items.
So, this one had been sitting on for, like Melissa said, two years we've had this thing sitting on eBay, and it sold multiple times and relisted multiple times, and it finally sold again this last week.
Melissa: And I wanted to say that it's also your, this one is listed for parts. It's not listed as working. So that's probably, maybe why somebody, they, it took longer or why they bought it and then they realized it wasn't working or it's for parts and then they, you know, changed their mind.
So, yeah, maybe that's why.
Rob: It could be, definitely. Because a lot of the stuff that we sell now, we don't sell for parts. We actually show that it's, demonstrate that it's working and it's tested. The problem with it is I don't know how the proofer works. I don't know how you test that. And that's why I listed this one for parts.
I checked the oven and I said the oven's working and we did that. But the proofer portion of it, I don't know how, I'm not that familiar with how bread rises, and if it's like a humidity, I have no idea. So that's why I sold it this way, and I put that in my listing, but that might be the reason why we sat on it for so long is because I don't know how it works, and I sold it for parts or repair.
Melissa: But that also shows that you can sell a lot of stuff for parts, and it will, you can still sell it. You might sit on it longer, but you might not either. You don't know. People need parts for different things, so.
Rob: Yeah, so that was the other one. So we have two opposite ends of the spectrum, but this thing, I just put it in my warehouse.
I put it up against a wall. And it sat in there and it sat in storage for two years now and I sold it multiple times, refunded it because people buy it and then they want the money back for whatever reason before I ship it out. So I'm able to do that. And this one actually sold, paid for it, and he's ready for it.
So we'll actually get it shipped out in the next two days, two or three days. And this one will go on a pallet and the other one that sold will not. But we paid $60 for the one that sold for $1,500 and we paid $42 for this one that sold for $2,000. So that just gives you an idea. I'm not, like Melissa said, We're not going out spending $1,500 and then trying to sell it for $2,000 to make $500.
That's not what our goal is. Our goal is to really make good profit on these items. So we're buying them at the right price. And that is what we do for every single item. We're picky with what we buy because we want to buy it for the right price. If we do have to sit on it for two years. I'm not sitting on $1,000, $1,500.
I'm sitting on $40, which I could scrap the thing for more than I paid for it. And that's the biggest thing is I don't want to scrap it I know what it's worth and I know that the oven is working. So we want to get it to that right buyer.
Melissa: That is one of the things that you always do with your purchases is make sure so, anytime that you buy something, you're like, I could go and get that on Marketplace, what I just paid for it on Marketplace, I could still double my money and I, I'm gonna still make money no matter what.
Or I could scrap it for more, like I, you know that even if you didn't sell it on eBay, you could, you're not gonna lose money on this thing. You're gonna get it scrapped, you're gonna, whatever, sell it on Marketplace for a lot less, or whatever it is, you know your money is still there, so you're not, Taking a risk really if anything, you know, you're not gonna lose.
I mean it was $42. But still like you're not you're always making sure that you can sell it for more even our cars that we buy and and those you know depreciate but still you buy stuff at just the good price. You find it at the right price and then we end up selling them for more than we paid for them after using them.
So kind of almost everything you buy really.
Rob: We're always in the mindset of being able to buy something to know that we're going to make money on it. Even the vehicles, like Melissa says, we drive them for years and turn around and sell them for more than what we actually paid for them. That's kind of what our motto is.
That's what we try to do with everything we do is get it for such an amazing deal that we know we can use it or we can sell it and we're making money. Worst comes to worst, we use it for years and then sell it for exactly, yeah, I think about a baby stroller we got like that. We paid like $60 or $80 for it, used it for three or four years for the kids, and then we sold it on Marketplace.
After we were done with it, it was in way worse condition, we sold it for the same price that we paid for it. And we've done that, like I said, for almost everything that we do. That is kind of what our game plan is. That's what we want to do with that.
Melissa: I think it's just keeping your eye out for those deals.
And once you train, I know a lot of people, like, look, I know this is kind of off topic, but looking for items to add that right price. It does take a little bit of practice, but once you get it, like you just can't, you can't unsee it anymore. So it's like, it's a skill you developed, but once you do it, you just do it consistently over and over again, like on Marketplace or when you're out thrifting or whatever it is, you start to see the deals there.
Rob: So, yep. So to wrap this one up guys, yes. It depends on the item that you're doing and it depends on like if you do not have a warehouse to store something for a long period of time you can still get one high dollar item and put it in your garage. Put it somewhere where you can store it and wait for that thing to sell and then still do some smaller items in the meantime. But it all depends on what you're buying and how quickly it will sell for, yeah, if you're looking to figure out how long do I have to sit on an item.
Guys, we've sold stuff in less than 12 hours listing them on eBay. Sold them immediately once you list them. We have students that have done the same exact thing. They go to bed, listed it, you know, before they go to bed, they wake up the next morning and it's already sold and they get shipped out. It's not uncommon for that stuff to happen, but sometimes it will go like this oven.
I went for two years on this, but the profit is huge that I'm okay with doing that. So it all just depends on what you're selling. And yeah, how you sell it.
Melissa: And I think too, like talking about storage just for a quick second that, the storage part people do get like nervous about getting a storage unit. And that's something we say never start out with getting a storage unit or whatever, but at some point it might make sense for you that you're making, if your storage unit is $150 a month or whatever, you know, if you have one item that, you know, covers that, like that, it makes sense for you to do that if that's going to allow you to have a little more space for your business.
Rob: So it can have a higher, oh, man, I just slipped my mind. The higher, more stuff's listed on eBay. So a higher inventory amount by getting one item to sell a month, to pay for that whole storage unit. But then you have $50,000 worth of inventory. It has the potential to make you more money every single month.
Now, we never tell anybody to jump in and go get a storage unit, go get a truck and trailer. We don't ever tell anybody to spend money like that. Until you start doing it and you progress. That's exactly how we did our business. We progressed slowly with what we've done. We put a shed in the backyard.
Exactly. As it made sense, we progressed and that's kind of how we built our business. That's how we teach everybody else to do theirs as well.
Melissa: Yep, so just when it makes sense for your books and then, and it might help you like take this thing more seriously. If you did get a storage unit. So, and maybe put some more effort and get your stuff listed consistently.
Cause you never know things are going to sell tomorrow. Things are going to sell next month. But as long as you're consistent, the sales will come, keep coming in. As long as you're consistent with keeping listings.
Rob: So, yep. Awesome. You guys right now, we've created a live workshop. If you guys have not checked it out.
Takes you into a little bit more detail about how our business plan works, our business model. Go sign up for it. We got a link below. You guys can go check it out. Freeflippingworkshop.com
Freeflippingworkshop.com. Go check it out. We'd love to see you guys on that. Like I said, live this week we'll be doing it.
So jump on, see if it's something that might be a good fit for you. Guys, thanks for spending some time with us. We greatly appreciate you. We know your time's valuable and you could be doing other stuff with it. Hopefully got some nuggets. Guys, we definitely appreciate you. Have an amazing day today.