Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how they turned a $350 investment into $3,500 on eBay.
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How We Turned A $350 Investment Into $3,500 On eBay
Rob: What's up, pro flippers?. On today's episode, we're talking about how we turned a $350 investment into $3,500 on eBay.
Rob: Alright guys on today's episode. Exciting episode today. We actually bought a range, turned it into or bought, bought it for $350, turned it into $3,500, which that's usually our goal with the items that we're buying, the higher profit items.
We're trying to 10 x what we're doing. We did this to a t. I did actually take an offer on this one. Somebody offered me less, but it still fit into my parameters of what I wanted to do. I wanted to still make 10 x on it. So we were able to do that, and that's kind of what we wanted to talk to you guys about today.
Yeah. Kind of the whole story behind this flip.
Melissa: Yeah. This one had a fun story with it. And so I definitely wanted to, to talk about it 'cause I remember going to pick this one up. This was actually in like May, I think you found it because our friends, we were trying to go on a road trip with them and they said they need, you know, a budget around, you know, four or $5,000 for us to do like two weeks out west.
We were trying to do it and plan it with them. And so Rob was like, okay, I'm gonna help you guys. I, you went to your friend, they didn't have the money to do it, they didn't have the money, the extra money to go on the road trip. And you're like, I'm gonna find you something. You go flip it and we can make the extra money.
So that's how this whole thing actually started and how we ended up getting this range.
Rob: So I found the range. It was an hour away over on the coast, away from us. And that's a great question. A lot of people ask, how far do you drive for some of these items? This was an hour away. I knew what the potential of the item was, I knew it was gonna be between $3,500 and $5,000. I knew that's what I could get for it. So that is why I drove an hour and I probably, even if I would've made like $2,500, you know, $2,500 to $3,500, I still would've driven that far. It's not too much out of the way to be able to do that, but I told my friend, I was like, dude.
Let's go do this together. We will go over, we will eat dinner on the coast. We'll pick up the item. We'll come back, bring it back. I'll help you get it listed. I'll help you, you know, do all this stuff when
Melissa: it sells.
Rob: This is one of my close friends. I grew up with them, so, and they, they didn't have the money to do a vacation.
That's why we were trying to help them and do it. And it came down to it. I set everything up for him. I made the offer on the item, they accepted the offer, and then I came down to it and he is like, yeah, I just don't have the time to do it. And he just didn't want to do it.
Melissa: No, he didn't want to go. I'm like, come on.
We could have had dinner on the beach. It would've been fun. It would've been a good time.
Rob: Yeah. So I didn't wanna let it go. We actually went and Melissa and I went and picked it up. We came right back. We didn't actually do dinner. Took the kids with us, picked it up. It took me a little while to get it listed.
I,
Melissa: that's usually your hardest part. It is.
Rob: I don't, I think it was probably listed for maybe two months, before it actually sold, once I actually got it listed. That's usually how I sell my stuff. I can't sell it if it's not listed.
Melissa: Your bottleneck.
Rob: I got it listed. It's sold in, in two months or less, I would say.
And we sold it, like I said $350 into $3,500 and then I charged an extra $600 for shipping on this. It will be less than $600. I'm almost a hundred percent positive. It'll cost me probably about $350 to $400. But my time into palleting it up and doing that, that's where I'll get paid the extra money.
That's why I charge roughly four something this size. I'll charge five or 600 bucks on it.
Melissa: So the funny thing too is that we were actually camping with them this weekend, this same friend, and we're like, look, showed them the eBay screen. It could have been yours, guys. It could have been yours.
Rob: Cha-ching! And we showed them, yep. Showed them the sale and said, you, this could be in your bank account right now. You could have had this. Had you done it and that's,
Melissa: and you were gonna help him. That's another thing you were gonna do, like almost all of it. But, and you have another friend too that he actually, you helped him find something at an auction and he has it still sitting in his garage and he is not getting it listed.
And you're like, dude, get it listed. It's like seven grand, isn't it?
Rob: Yeah, it is.
Melissa: And so that was something I kind of wanted to talk about a little bit today before we dive into like the, all the numbers 'cause we wanna talk about the profit, like what is remainder of the profit? 'cause that is the most important part.
If you're not making money, like you're, you, you have to be making money for it to make sense. But like he needs to get it listed and you're willing to help. But I, what the point I wanted to make was that there is some effort involved, like it's not like a push of a button. But the effort is so worth it.
Like it, it is so worth it if you look at your hourly rate of what you're making on these items and how much effort, like now you've honed your skills. So the amount of time you're doing it is very, very, as minimal as possible. Sure. You know, so, but in the beginning it might take a little bit longer and there is some effort involved, but in the long run it is so worth it.
It, it's like to get those high value flips like that. Big like into your bank account. It's nice. Like it's very helpful. Yeah. So anyways, that's my little soapbox. So it is.
Rob: It's funny though, and this goes back to Melissa used to be a personal trainer and we had a close friend who would ask her to train and do it for free and do all this, and it goes back to really that for me.
I have two friends right now and I didn't even remember the other one. The other friend that I helped him buy something, get it all set, been in his garage for probably six or eight months now. Yeah. And this is at the
Melissa: time that you bought the freeze blaster too? Yes. And we already sold that for, we sold that.
For $8,000.
Rob: We did, we paid $80 for it, and we sold it for $8,000. He paid $40 for the item that we found, and he can sell it for between five and $7,000. And he just won't do that extra work to get it listed. So, it's one of those things that, yeah, and this buddy that I'm talking about for the range that we actually found, I don't know, and.
And really goes back to, and, and a lot of people go back to, you know, Melissa and I, we, we teach people how to do this. We love teaching people how to do this. But if you don't have anything invested, if you don't have any skin in the game, will you actually do the work that it takes? And a lot of times it boils down to, no, you won't.
And that's,
Melissa: I mean, for four or $5,000, this is, I feel like you would do it crazy.
Rob: Because I have friends right now that are around me that will not take that extra step. I was joking with, one of our friends over the weekend that we were camping with, and he's the other one. Both of them were camping with us, so these are close friends of mine.
But the other one was his wife was there and she's like, please help him get the thing. And I'm like, listen, I can lead a horse to water. What do you want me to do? Start lapping the water up in my hand and letting him drink it. I was like, I got, I've done everything that I can do. He's got to have a little bit of of effort to get this thing done. And, yeah, that's, it's just funny, but it's funny how that whole thing plays out of, you know, kind of helping your friends do stuff versus people who actually pay you to learn what you have. It's just a totally, totally different ballgame. So crazy.
Melissa: Like you were saying with personal training. Yes, because I would sometimes offer it to friends and then people wouldn't show up.
Like they wouldn't show up for their sessions. You can't do, you can't do it if they don't show up. So
Rob: waste your time of booking the time and you can't do anything else. You can't train anybody else during that time.
Melissa: They don't take it as seriously because, and it's
Rob: no, you don't have anything invested in it.
Exactly. It's, it's one of those things. So, I wasn't really going that way with this podcast, but it did remind me of that. That, that is kind of crazy how I'm, I'm willing to hand some of my friends four or five, $7,000 and all I can do is a little bit of work, and I'm here to help them do everything.
Clean, test,
Melissa: answer their questions, anything,
Rob: yes, answer their questions, help them get it listed, make sure it's the right way, and they just won't do it. So, kind of, kind of crazy, but
Melissa: that's all right. You'll still, we made the money, so we're, we're we, I wasn't gonna
Rob: let that $3,500 go myself, $5,000. I wasn't gonna let that go myself.
So we actually went and got it. We got it. So let's give you guys the nitty gritty about this flip. So we paid $3,500 for, it took me a little bit of time.
Melissa: $350.
Rob: Sorry, $350. We sold it for $3,500. Yeah. With an extra $600 for shipping. So a total of $4,100 transaction came through. But let's break that down to give you an idea of what total profit was.
That's what we always like to tell you is what the total profit was 'cause I can go ahead and buy something for $3,000, sell it for $3,500, and then eBay fees and shipping and not make any money or make a hundred dollars or make, you know, whatever it is. That's not exciting. It's exciting when you really get into it and you can start making some really good money.
Yeah. So we want to break that down and tell you guys exactly what the numbers were for this sale.
Melissa: Yeah. All right. So we sold it for $3,500 plus $600 shipping. So we had $361 in eBay fees and those fees are, some people would be like, oh, that seems low 'cause it's $3,500 sale. And we get this question a lot on our higher value flips because the reason that is, is because eBay fees after $2,500 drop, so the first $2,500, we were charged 12.7% for fees, which came to $317.
Then anything after that, which was the remaining. 1844 on there was charged 2.35%. So we paid $43, which brings our total to $361 in fees. So that's we,
Rob: which is really cool. And I think you only get,
Melissa: we benefited a lot from that before.
Rob: Yeah. I get this type of, type of breakdown on if you have a store, I don't think, if you had, don't have a store.
That they give you this type of breakdown at the $2,500 mark, they drop the fees down to the 2.35 or whatever it is. I think that is because we actually have a store and we don't pay a lot for the store. I think it's $27.
Melissa: Yeah 27 or 29 bucks.
Rob: Yeah. Right around 30 bucks a month we pay for the store.
But, but it's worth it right there, right there. We almost would've had to pay double in fees because of that single flip. So, yeah, that's one of those things that very, very well pans out for us to have the store and to be able to get this discount on the fees. So, yeah. Alright, so we paid $350 for the item, we paid $361
Melissa: in fees.
Okay? And then there was an extra $2, I was just looking at it a minute ago. There's a $2 express pay fee from eBay. We're like, eBay, what? What the heck? Like that you, you only have yours on a schedule. Like it just deposits weekly. It shouldn't be like, if you go in and you ask for the money to be deposited, that should be the express pay.
Like I want it right away, but you just have it once a week deposited. So that $2 should not be there. But they probably bank on you not looking at it. So, and then 40 cents in the listing fees. So.
Rob: Yeah, which we should not get charged, but we got charged on the back end of it. So yeah.
Melissa: Once it sold.
Rob: I could call eBay and complain it, but come on, I made a lot of money on this. It's not that big of deal for me. So, yeah, it, it's okay. So the, the final breakdown, all the fees. What was our total profit?
Melissa: Okay, so I, we didn't ship it out yet. We're doing that right now, pretty much. Today. So you don't have the shipping label yet, but I just went ahead and subtracted the full $600 that you paid.
Okay. It will be less than that, and it will, it will be less than that. Yeah. So it'll be a little bit more than this, but right now our total profit is $2,787. What? So it'll probably be a little closer to $3,000 once you get the label done. But yeah.
Rob: Close to $3,000 in profit and total time invested in this, I would be, and we drove to the coast. We did.
Melissa: So that was two and a half hours. Okay. So round trip.
Rob: I would probably be a little bit higher. Typically on a flip like this, if we bought it locally and I drove, you know, 15, 20 minutes away, typically for something like that, I, I would say roughly about three hours invested into this to make that, which the hourly rate on that is insane.
For the money, but we did drive, so let's put two, two and a half hours of coast time that we did, driving over the coast up cleaning it up. I'd probably put another two hours on it for that. So if that's four and a half hours and then shipping it out, I'd probably put another two hours onto it. For me to get it on a pallet, ship it out and do that.
So maybe a total of what? Six and a half hours, let's call it, round to seven hours total into it.
Melissa: Six and a half is $428 an hour.
Rob: $428 an hour for this flip. We absolutely love that. That's insane for an hourly rate to do this. Now we can do this day in and day out and for our flips, that's typically, it's not that uncommon for us to get a really, really high hourly rate for the time invested into this.
Really cool that we're able to do this on this high profit model that we have built.
Yeah, so that $398, if you divide it by seven hours, so, so still almost $400 an hour, put it on the high end, and that's without the. Extra for the shipping, so.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, so.
Melissa: Anyway, so now you got to get back and go get it shipped out.
That's it. So that we can move on. We have another fun flip in the works that we can't wait to share with you soon. Yep. Very soon. Hopefully once it goes through you have a couple, you have two in the works, actually.
Rob: This one, yeah, this one right now that will, should go through within the next couple days is gonna be our second highest flip ever, which is very, very exciting coming in, at the end of the year. Super, super excited that, yeah, we'll be able to do this. So we'll talk about that little sneak peek, we'll talk about that. Hopefully, once it goes through in a couple days, once it goes through, we're able to do that negotiating right, that right now and figuring out what we can do.
So, so.
Melissa: We'll let, we'll keep you posted. We'll, of course. And if you are interested in this higher profit business model and doing some of these larger flips. We put together a free workshop. You can check out the link in the notes below. We would love to see if this is a good opportunity for you to add to your flipping business.
Rob: You guys are amazing. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Hope you have a great day, and we'll talk to you on the next episode. See you later.