Rob and Melissa Stephenson share an interview they did with the eBay For Business Podcast about how they use social media in their flipping business.
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Melissa: What's up guys, welcome to the Pro Flipper Show. Today we have a fun interview that we did with Griff on eBay For Business podcast a little while back. It was pretty cool. They reached out and it was a fun interview and just cool to get and sit and talk with people in eBay and this actually was the interview that sparked us doing our podcast.
We had talked about doing a podcast kind of, you know, hit or miss, like, should we do it? Should we not? Whatever. And we were talking to Griff and they actually sent us a microphone and headphones and that's the microphone we still use. We use now for our podcast. That's all we needed was somebody to send us something.
He told us we should totally do it. And yeah, so that was kind of the start of the Pro Flipper Show podcast. So hopefully you enjoy this episode and yeah, take some good nuggets.
Rebecca: This week on the eBay For Business podcast
Melissa: I think we went into it with some false expectations at first.
So we had all these big expectations going into it. And then when those didn't work out, it was hard. And so we came back kind of regrouped. We both felt like our message did need to get out there and we could totally. do this. And so we kind of revamped our content strategy. Let's get more content out there, be more consistent.
So we weren't as consistent and we just needed to get better. I go back and look at those blog posts we did six years ago and I'm like, what, this is horrible. Why would anybody want to read this anyway? So now, you know, it comes with experience and doing it over and over and over. You learn what is actually better.
Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
Griff: I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business podcast, your weekly source for the information, inspiration you need to start, run, and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 160. This week, we'll explore a different approach, the all in approach of social media, for lack of a better phrase.
And to help us better understand how this approach works, please welcome our guest this week, Rob and Melissa Stephenson of Flea Market Flipper. Hi, guys. How are you? Thanks for having us. I have to confess, when I checked out everything, including your eBay store. I found you all over the internet.
It was quite impressive. How long have you been doing this, Melissa?
Melissa: Well, the whole eBay part, Rob started doing this, 25 years ago. The social media aspect, that part of our business, six years ago.
Rob: 25 years? Yeah, well, I started this when I was 16. My mom kind of modeled it for me, going to yard sales and picking up stuff and then selling it on eBay. So I started at a young age and did it full time and part time for the last
Griff: 25 years. So you're approaching 25 then, not bad. Oh, I meant 25 years on eBay. Obviously you're not just 25 years old, right? Rob, you didn't do anything before, really. You were in school.
This has been your life.
Rob: Exactly. And I did it part time. I always had the belief that you could not be a full time reseller. Until about six years ago when we actually went full time into this. When I was younger as a kid, I made decent money at it to where I would have thought maybe it was a full time income and I've had side jobs, I've started other businesses, I've done a lot of other stuff besides this because I never really thought the money was here to be able to sustain a full time income at eBay.
Griff: So what are some of the things that you did before you jumped in full time?
Rob: Everything. He's done everything. Everything. Yes, I was a host at a Red Lobster. I served at a Red Lobster. I worked for a glass company. I started multiple businesses.
Melissa: An advertising company. He tried to do a parasailing company,
Rob: pool cleaning company, landscape company, painting company.
So you name it, I probably have done it or tried to start a business in it. Exactly. And then my, my better half here has held me into this portion of it for the last six years. It's been amazing. We have not looked back.
Griff: And Melissa, what did you do before eBay and social media and selling?
Melissa: I actually rode horses at a dinner show for several years when we first met.
Griff: And what kind of dinner show was this?
Melissa: It was called Arabian Nights here in Orlando. So it was around for 20 some years and they closed down recently. And then I was a personal trainer for 10 years.
Griff: Personal trainer for equestrian. No, for a gym. So about six years ago, Rob, you said you got into social media.
What was the reason for starting your social part of your business?
Rob: Six years ago, we decided to go all in with our reselling business, and we decided that we wanted to teach others how to do what we do. That's kind of the turning point. Melissa and I are, our third child was born, and Melissa was going to give up her job as a personal trainer to stay home and take care of the kids.
I had a decent job with a yeah, report company for homeowner's insurance and commercial reports, but they canceled our insurance, our health insurance. And as of, was it May?
March?
Melissa: It was March, and he was due in April. And they were cutting our health benefits by the first. So when he was due, we would no longer have health benefits.
Rob: When our, our third child was born, so they said, Yeah, you'll be cut off. And praise the Lord, he was born before the cutoff date. But that was what made us make the transition from what we were doing into reselling and teaching full time six years ago.
Melissa: Cause we knew what we were doing in part time hours and we had three little kids at home, so I'd be doing a lot of that.
But if he could devote all of his time into our eBay business, what could we do with full time hours?
Griff: So how does it go for the first, say, couple months?
Rob: Absolutely horrible. Oh no. So we got some, I wouldn't say it was bad. It was different coaching. Stressful.
Melissa: Yeah. I would say stressful. Are you talking about the eBay part of it?
Rob: No, I'm actually talking about, yeah, the eBay business was very well when we went into it full time. Yeah. We did very well. When we started keeping track of like what we were doing part time, we were able to make like $42,000 per year when we started keeping track of it, and that was only working part time hours. That's when we decided to go to the next level and do full time hours.
And then the first year we did full time, we did over $130,000 in revenue, and that's just going into, it's still not... 40 hours a week, but more than what we were doing part time. So that part of the business was growing, but the teaching aspect of it, when we started going over to social media, we created a course, we thought we would create a course and everything would just boom and people would flock to us.
The problem was we didn't have any exposure from social media because we had never really published or showed anybody kind of the stuff that we were doing. So that aspect was absolutely, it flopped and we weren't expecting it. So we actually gave up on the teaching after 7 months of creating a course.
Melissa: And we gave up for about half a year.
Rob: We thought that this wasn't for us because we couldn't get people to join our course. And
Melissa: see our blog or anything.
Rob: So we gave it up for about 6 or 7 months after that. And then, for some reason both of us felt like, okay, we really need to get our message out there.
That's when we actually started really pouring into social media and pouring into people, and it's been an amazing journey since then.
Griff: So what did you do differently? What did you learn from that first foray into social media, trying to promote the teaching side of your business?
Melissa: I think we went into it with some false expectations at first.
Absolutely. So we had all these big expectations going into it, and then when those didn't work out, we, you know, it was hard. And so we came back kind of regrouped. We both felt like our message did need to get out there and we could totally do this. And so we kind of revamped our content strategy.
Let's get more content out there. Be more consistent. So we weren't as consistent and we just needed to get better. I go back and look at those blog posts we did six years ago and I'm like, what? This is horrible. Why would anybody want to read this anyway? So now, you know, it comes with experience and doing it over and over and over.
You learn what is actually better.
Griff: So, and how quickly did you notice that it might be successful?
Melissa: It still wasn't very quick. I think we went into it with a different mindset before. It's like we thought, okay, we'll hit publish. And now all these people see us. No, that's not how it goes. So now we knew that.
So now we like, we just got to get better. We need to get better information out there and come from a place of serving more than expecting people just to see us.
Rob: And I think it was more information. Our flips are very, very weird. They're different. They're unique. And they're so much fun. We have so much fun with the stuff that we buy and sell.
It was one of those things that we realized, okay, we have to start showing some people some of these flips so they can see what we do and how much fun it is and how much fun we have. That's where we started to embrace it. And it's just gotten better ever since then.
Griff: So your first attempt at this, was it lacking in the fun department?
Melissa: I mean, you're always pretty fun, but I don't think we really showcased it as much. And we didn't bring the family into it as much. It was all just Rob in the beginning. And then we had worked with a coach and he said, I really think it's your whole family. It's your kids. It's you guys as a couple doing this.
And so I think that bringing the family aspect into it really, because we do it with our, like we all do it together. We all go on road trips and find items across the country together. I think that was a big help.
Griff: How old is your oldest child, Rob?
Rob: She just turned nine yesterday.
Griff: So she's old enough to be an entrepreneur.
Rob: She is. And, yeah, our son is five, our youngest. And he'd made a funny comment to Melissa the other day about doing chores in the house. We've taught them how to flip stuff and they know they can throw stuff on eBay with our help and be making money. And Melissa said, hey, you need to get your chores done.
And he says. I don't want to do chores anymore. I can make more money flipping. Out of the blue. And we couldn't stop laughing because it was hilarious, but it was one of those things he was dead serious and just telling us that that kind of goes, our family is it's fun that everybody's in involved in the business.
Griff: Can you give us an example of a recent or a memorable flip that really got your audience's attention?
Melissa: Just recently, we had the bus wash, and that was a big one.
Rob: So yeah, we, we purchased a bus wash on a road trip. It was actually last year. It took us one year to sell this bus wash. And it's big. It's 11 foot tall, 7 foot wide, 6 foot deep.
So it's a big, mobile bus wash that you walk around a bus and you, you wash a bus with it. We were on a road trip last year. We tried to do a road trip with the kids over the summer. We found this and I didn't have enough room in my trailer to bring it back. So we had to make another trip up there. I think it was in North Carolina.
So we had to make another trip up there to pick it up. Once I negotiated the deal, we came back, we paid $500 for it. And then we sold it a year later for $14,500. And yeah, everybody just shipped it on a pallet. Yeah. It actually got shipped to another state and yeah, everybody, when we do flips like that, people are.
They're, they're in awe of it. They, I mean, they just, they, they appreciate it. They think it's really, really cool.
Griff: Well, it's an unusual item, but that profit margin, I feel like I'm in the wrong business.
Rob: Yeah, it's, it was an amazing profit, but it doesn't always happen that way. We shoot for higher profits with our model, but yeah, that was definitely, that was our biggest sale so far this year.
Melissa: But another one that we picked up on that trip too was that we picked up that stovetop on the same. We liked it. If we're going to go make a trip, we're going to go make it worthwhile. And so we picked up a couple items and it was a stove. It was a stove, a range that we picked up for $200 and sold for $2,200 pretty quickly.
Rob: Within a couple of weeks, we actually sold that on eBay. What kind of range? The thing, it was a unique range. It was instead of most ranges, I believe are 30 I think they're like 30 inches wide 36. This was a third. No, this was a 40 inch wide So it was just a regular like oven if i'm not mistaken It was a kitchen aid but instead of one pull down drawer for the oven portion It had a little side baked drawer.
So it had two ovens on the bottom. It was an extra wide one. So it was a unique one and usually unique stuff really sells well on eBay. So we try to find those unique items while we're sourcing But this one yeah, we paid two hundred dollars for it. The funniest part about this story was the guy we bought that from when we showed up at his house.
He goes, hey, you're Rob with Flea Market Flipper, and I was like, oh, no, the game is up. He knew exactly who I was and he says, yeah, I followed your guys's blog forever, and I'm like, yeah, you, you know, I'm gonna take this back and sell it. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I got it for free. So $200 is great. I couldn't sell it.
We took it back and sold it in a couple weeks and then we shipped that to another state as well.
Griff: 40 inch wide ranges and bus washes. Have you found more?
Rob: Absolutely. So this was our second bus wash that we sold. That's one of those things that we sold the first one, sold it a little bit for a little less money.
$9,000. Yeah, we paid, I think $600 for that one, maybe $650. Don't quote me on that, it's definitely in the blog. But we paid that much and then we sold that one for $9,000. So, and then this one was a little bit newer, worth more money. And these bus washes retail for $24,000, $30,000. Somewhere in that range, the second one we sold was newer.
So yeah, we made a little bit more money on it, but yeah, bus washes are great. We love selling bus washes.
Griff: When somebody with your range of the audience mentions that you made this kind of profit margin on a used bus wash, doesn't it become harder to find used bus washes now?
Melissa: The biggest thing is most people won't ship them.
It is a whole nother Avenue. It's a big pallet. It took you a couple of days. I mean, the profits worth it. To do it, but it's a big project to take on.
Rob: It is. And that's what usually sets us apart from other resellers. As we take on, it doesn't matter, even like the oven that we sold, a lot of people will not take on selling that oven and shipping it to another state.
They won't go the extra mile to throw it on a pallet, strap it down, and then ship it to another state. That's kind of where we stand out. We can make so much more money. If I try to sell that oven locally for $2,400, it would take me forever and nobody would buy it because it just takes that special person and that's where you get into a big audience on eBay.
And when you find that right audience and it's large, your chances are a lot better of selling it, but you have to be willing to get the item to them.
Griff: I think a lot of sellers just think, I'm never going to be able to ship a range. It's just too big. It's too heavy. Where do I get all the cardboard boxes that I have to tape together?
And how much bubble wrap is that going to take? They don't consider the freight aspect. Yeah.
Melissa: The first one that he ever did was actually right whenever we were trying to jump into this full time. And. You had a dining set and was it the buffet? What is that called?
Rob: Yeah. It was a buffet where you had, you put your China and credenza.
Yeah. Yeah, silverware China. And it actually had a spot in the back for the lease on the, on the table. It was a really nice set.
Melissa: And you, he bought it for a $350 at an auction, was trying to double his money in the local market. I think you had it up for $700 or $750. And nobody was even looking at it.
And so he said, he started looking at them on eBay and they were selling for, I mean, similar ones were selling. And he's like, okay, if this will sell, I'm going to figure out how to ship it.
Rob: Yeah. And then we actually threw it on eBay for $2,200 or $2,400.
Melissa: $2,400. You accepted $2,200. No. $2,200 and then plus shipping.
Rob: So $2,200 and then I charged, I think it was like $500 for shipping.
That was my first freight and my realization, my aha moment of, okay, if I start offering some of these larger items and I ship them, people are going to buy them and they're going to be appreciative that we're actually shipping them to them. So it was a unique table set like you had, yeah, it was very unique.
So, yeah, that's one of those things. And then after that we were like, all right, we're sold. We're going to dive into this. And then it, it's been a couple of years in building our expertise with the freight market.
Griff: Getting back to social media. It's become a big aspect of what you do. You do these videos, you have these courses on your website.
How much time does this take up now? If you had to give a percentage of your working day.
Melissa: I would say of our working day, 75 percent of it is working on the social media blog courses, all that stuff. And the other 25% is actual flipping.
Griff: Do you schedule out like in advance? Do you schedule which videos you're going to do?
How you're going to create a new course? Do you script them? Do you have collateral? How deeply do you get into the production and scheduling of these videos?
Melissa: Planning and scheduling is definitely not something that Rob likes to do.
Griff: I'm not surprised.
Melissa: He's a free spirit. So that's taken us a little bit to figure out as a couple what we're doing.
We schedule out topics, but then we, like, stuff sells and so those are kind of impromptu. Oh, this just sold, let's do a video. So the app part has to be more impromptu. Usually every morning we go for a run, we come back. We do a short video. We've been doing a lot of TikToks and reels lately. And so we do those cause those are pretty easy and quick to do.
And then sometimes you'll go to the shop and I'll work more on the backend and then we'll shoot videos at night sometimes too, later at night after the kids go to bed.
Griff: How did you grow your audience during this second approach over the last five, six years?
Melissa: We started mostly with blog posts and Pinterest, actually.
That's been our biggest start. So we did blog posts, a couple videos. We still like YouTube is still on our radar. We still haven't been as consistent as we know we could be or should be. And that's definitely one of our, our goals to do. But that's where we started.
Griff: How big is your subscriber base right now on YouTube?
On YouTube we're at like 5, 000. And you used Pinterest to start off. That was the channel of choice for you?
Melissa: Yes, because it's a search engine. It's a search engine like YouTube and Google. It's kind of gotten a little bit less lately, but in the beginning it was really good and got us a lot of traffic.
Griff: Assuming that you started close to zero over the last few years, what kind of growth have you seen in audience numbers?
Melissa: Well, we have, on Pinterest, we have 27,000 followers. We get about 50,000 hits on our website a month. And then we have, an email list of 23,000. Yeah, that's kind of our bigger ones.
Griff: You started with Pinterest. What channels do you focus on now? You mentioned TikTok.
Melissa: Yes. We actually just started TikTok not that long ago. We were very resistant to do it because I'm like, oh, I don't want to learn another, another platform. It's just ridiculous. But I learned that I could do the video. I could edit the video on TikTok, which has a great editing.
Yeah. It's easy, easy to edit, upload it to reels for Instagram. I can upload it to Facebook and they actually do really well on Facebook, our Facebook page too. We get the most views on Facebook. Like we get hundreds of thousands of views on our short videos on Facebook, but I don't think most people realize that.
So they do really well. And then they can be used for YouTube shorts. And now they can be used on Pinterest as well on their newest thing. So there's five places I can use one video, and that is very amazing.
Griff: If you had to give a word of advice to somebody who's considering a social media component, it may not necessarily be that they want to provide courses, but they want to tie what they do for business to some sort of grassroots campaign that they create for social media.
What would be your first word of advice based on your own experience?
Melissa: I think the first thing is to be consistent in whatever you choose like that is a huge piece of it and right now if I had to pick one platform to go all in with it would be YouTube. We should have done that in the beginning. I wish we would have. Instagram is a close second because you can do a lot on Instagram and you can make a lot of really good connections and reach a lot of people on Instagram too.
Griff: And what would be your second bit of advice?
Melissa: I would say a second piece of advice too would be to understand what problems people are having. So if you consistently are getting asked the same question or you are asking it yourself as a new reseller, probably a lot more people are asking that same questions.
Answering those questions definitely will help.
Griff: How quickly do you respond to a question that has been posted on any channel?
Melissa: That's one thing also I guess would be another tip. A third tip was you can't be all consumed with it because it can't take up your life. So I took notifications off my phone and that has been a game changer.
So I don't see when somebody comments on any of the social media until I purposely go into that app, spend 30 minutes replying to people or doing whatever because I want it to be intentional. Otherwise, I'll be like doing this. Oh, let me I got to answer this. Oh, I got to answer this and you'll go crazy.
Griff: So, time management, shut off those notifications. Yes.
Melissa: Don't turn off eBay notifications. Leave those ones on.
Rob: No, those are the best. Leave those ones on.
Griff: Let's make that clear. It's social media notifications. Keep the eBay notifications on. You don't want to miss a sale. Thank you both. Continued success to you.
I'd love to be able to speak with you again, perhaps in six months. Find out how things are going. And we'll speak again soon. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.