Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how they turned a $100 flip into $2,200 in less than two weeks.
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How We Turned A Single Flip Of $100 Into $2,200 In Less Than 2 Weeks
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about $100 into $2,200 in a single flip in less than two weeks.
Rob: Alright, so today guys we're talking about this most recent flip that Melissa and I just had on why we were out of town.
But we turned a hundred dollars into $2,200 in less than two weeks.
Melissa: And yeah, we are gonna unpack kind of the start to finish, like how finding it, like what you did to it, how it got, how you sold it. So just kind of unpack it a little bit because people do like to, they ask us about the whole process.
Yeah. So, but we were actually at a mastermind event, which was super cool. This last weekend when it sold, so.
Rob: Yep. Sitting at dinner and I got the cha-ching on my phone.
Melissa: But you didn't have your sound on.
Rob: I didn't.
Melissa: And it should have been on that. It's so much better when you have the sound on your phone was on silent.
Rob: And we had 10 of our live students around us at the mastermind, the one-on-one coaching students that we have helped grow their business, but we are sitting with them in person. How cool is that? Sitting with them in person at a dinner table. And then getting that cha-ching and being able to show everybody, hey, check it out.
We just made $2,200 on this flip. So amazing.
Melissa: I wanted to add too, the funny thing is the night, the day before, you had screencast your phone on the big projector thing behind us, and you were showing that video, using it as a, using it as a example, example of showing the Absolutely. The cooktop. So, so yeah, so what was it?
Rob: Really, really cool. So it was a cooktop and, we'll pack, unpack this from the beginning. So it was a 45 inch gas cooktop is what we sold. Unpack it from the beginning. So over the summer, Melissa and I do road trips. We try to do road trips with the kids, go around the country and we try to find cool stuff on the road trips that we can pick up.
We buy them, we bring them back, we try and sell them. This is one of those items that we picked up all in the middle of nowhere. I don't remember what state we were in, but we picked it up in the middle of nowhere. Got there.
Melissa: Was that on the way to Michigan or on the way back down? I, I don't remember. On the way back from to Florida? I can't remember where it was. I know exactly the road that we drove down. Yeah. I can tell you what it looked like, but I don't remember what state we were in.
Rob: I don't either, so we went all over the country. But anyways, so we found it on the road trip. The first thing that happened when I got there is I met the guy there, supposedly he had all the pictures.
He showed me everything. I met him at a different place than it was. He was taking it out of one of his rental houses and then moved it to the house he was living in. When I got there, it was missing the grate, the actual grate overtop of the downdraft. So we looked, we looked around in his trailer, we couldn't find it.
And he goes, just take it for free. I know you came a little ways out of the way to come and pick this up, just take the whole thing for free. And I was like, no, I can't do that. I don't want to take it for free. And I didn't have any less, I paid a hundred dollars for it. I had a hundred dollar bill. I didn't have any change on me.
So otherwise I would've tried to give him a couple extra bucks less. But he still was giving me a really good deal, so I just gave him the hundred dollars. I knew I was gonna make money on it, but it was missing that one piece. It was missing the one grate, the, the cover over top of the downdraft.
Melissa: Before you get into the rest of that. Yes. Like how did you know where this item was? Like on our route? Yeah. Great question. Even sourcing it because that is like, okay, great, it's on our route. But how did you come to that conclusion? Yeah, so this was kind of a cool one. Previous years what I would do is I would source the areas that I know we were gonna go into and stay that night.
Rob: This time I didn't, you did it a little different. I did it this trip. I actually looked at the route that we were taking from one day to the next. And I checked different areas of that route to see if I could find anything in the route that we were driving. And that's how I found this. This was not
Melissa: and within like 30 minutes from the road. Yeah. You didn't want to go too far. We weren't trying to go off road too much.
Rob: So I did a small radius around the road that we were actually traveling that way. And that's what I did and that's how I found this. I was looking for items, this thing popped up. I don't remember if I negotiated with a guy or he was at a hundred dollars.
I don't remember exactly what it was. But we agreed on the price of a hundred dollars and we met with him. Like I said, it was missing the great, they covered the, the downdraft. He told me to take it for free. I couldn't do that. I gave him a hundred bucks for it, took it. I knew I was going to make money, so we brought it back.
Now this is the other cool part about this. So when we got back, we have a huge army of flippers inside of our community that are really, really cool. They share stuff, it's really, really fun. But they, I actually posted in our group and said, hey, I got this downdraft. Does anybody have the part, the grill for it?
And one of our members actually came out and said, yeah, I have one of those. I haven't listed it yet. I'm happy to ship it to you and I try to buy it from her. And she said, no, you guys, you don't have to buy it. We'll just ship it to you. So I tried to pay for shipping. She wouldn't let me do that either.
Really, really cool. And we know her. She, like, she's been around for a while, so very, very appreciative that she stepped up and did that. She sent us the grill. We put it on there and then, got pictures and got it sold.
Melissa: The two weeks was of it listed, so. Exactly. Not from starting to finish.
Exactly 'cause and that's one thing that's hard to ask, like people ask, well, how long does it take to sell? The longest part is, is not that you had to do stuff to it, it's just the fact of getting it listed. Because some stuff just sits in the trailer a little longer than you want it to.
Absolutely 'cause other stuff.
Rob: Well, life happens.
Melissa: Takes, yeah, it takes priority and it, so you can't, I feel like you can't really count the time that it's just sitting there 'cause it can't sell if it's not listed. No, absolutely. So it took two weeks from the time it got listed to itself.
Rob: But for us, we're a little bit different than a lot of people.
Maybe we're not. But it's one of those things where we have a million things going on and I guess a lot of people have the same thing. They could do it. We're not different. Everybody does, but, well with us, we're bringing back a whole handful of a trailer full of stuff on the road trip. So we have an enclosed trailer that's full of stuff and then we get back and we jump into coaching again.
We jump into media again. We jump into all this stuff and it goes kind of on the back burner and doesn't get out and listed as quick as we want it to. But when it does list, that's when it gets sold.
So, really, really cool part about that we listed it. But another portion of this is when I actually pulled it out I got it cleaned up, did the testing on it, two of the burners, it's a gas, cooktop. Two of the burners actually did not light off of the igniter. So the igniter was clicking but it was not lighting, so I had to order two igniters for it. I actually ended up replacing four 'cause it came in a kit of four igniters.
Melissa: How much are those?
Rob: I think I paid like $10 for four of them. For four? Yeah. So not that much. I got them really quick. Got them on Amazon. I got them really quick. They came back. Now this is the part that hangs people up as well. So, I've never changed an igniter in a gas cooktop. Surprisingly, I know that might surprise a lot of you guys, but I didn't know how to do it other than I have an understanding of how stuff goes together with screws pulling stuff apart to getting to that component that I need to change. And typically that's how everything works. You can get down to it, you can break it down with screws. Pull the whole thing apart and get to it. So what I did was jump onto YouTube and I found a YouTube of somebody changing an igniter.
I did that before I even broke the thing down, and then I had a kind of an understanding in my mind, this is how my mind works. Once I see it in my mind and kind of visualize what needs to be done, I. I did it, I visualized it. I ordered the igniters. I got them in, put the thing up on my table and started taking apart and put the, changed the igniters out.
And guess what? Voila, we got a good cooktop that everything was working. We tested it with gas and so we got testing it, videos of it actually working to sell and pictures of it. So that was the whole process. And now the next process is, this just sold like a day or two ago, so I actually have to ship it out and I have not done that yet, but today or tomorrow I will be actually packaging it up and getting it shipped out.
That's kinda the whole process.
Melissa: Yeah. I wanted to add the, you kind of skimmed over the video part. Yeah. And we've talked about this a lot before is that videos of something like this help your listing so much. So, videos of some stuff might not matter as much, but any really, they can help anything.
So if you can, you can't. Well now with AI it might be a little different, but you can, you know, Photoshop images, but to, like, you can't really fake a video as much and somebody can feel like, can see it, see the item, see that it's working, if it's something that powers on and it just makes your listings more likely to sell. So.
Rob: And this, like Melissa said, this is more towards the higher end stuff. If you're selling a $10 item, it might not need that. Yeah, yeah. Going through all the time and effort of getting a video, taking the video, and then actually posting it in there, probably not worth it. Typically not really worth it.
But when you're getting into the range of $500, $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, yeah, that stuff really will help go the extra mile to get your buyer actually to pull the trigger on that listing. For sure.
Melissa: Yeah. So videos definitely, if you're not using them, add them. They definitely help. And your videos are really cool and you showed all the burners turning on and and all that.
So now you gotta get it ready to get shipped out and across the country.
Rob: Woo-hoo. So that was the process that we used to take a hundred dollars investment into $2,200. You guys.
Melissa: And, and when you, one last thing about pricing it, so that's part of it too. So are you at half a retail or are you just go with the comps or.
Rob: So this is kind of hard because this cooktop, I think was a nineties early two thousands cooktop. It's kind of hard.
Melissa: And people, people say those don't sell. That's an old cooktop that'll never sell. People love them.
Rob: It's, it's kind of hard to find what retail was on the item. Okay. And I don't do a lot of research on the retail on these items. More of, I'm trying to see what the market will bear.
I'm like jumping on eBay and I'm doing comps on eBay. I'm seeing what the active listings are, but to be honest with you guys, The only active listing on this, I believe it was $1,799, around $1,800. And I jumped mine over that because I added a video to mine and I did pictures and I did everything that I needed to do.
So that's one of those things that yeah, you can reset the market and we have great feedback. We have a hundred percent feedback. People know and sell higher. Yeah. People know what they're getting when they actually buy stuff from us that we're not under promising or overpromising and under-delivering that we're doing the opposite. That's what we're doing with our listing. So that's one of those things that we have built the foundation, not only with our reputation with eBay, but with the buyers that we've done. We've built the foundation on the business that we're running for people to know that they're gonna get what they're getting and it gives them that extra comfort of pulling the trigger with buying our, our listings.
Melissa: Yep. So set your listings apart. And guys, if you're just getting started with your flipping business, we are jumping into a new challenge in the next few weeks, trying to help you make your first $250 from flipping. So yeah, we'd love if you would join us if you had kind of, this is a little bit more.
Starting out a little bit more basic or if you just need the encouragement and motivation, maybe you kind of got started. You need more encouragement to get going. Go to learn2flip.com and get registered for the free challenge.
Rob: Grab your seat now. Don't miss out. Don't wait until the last minute.
You want to grab your seat now for that. Learn2Flip.com. We'll put the links in the show notes. You guys can grab it and we cannot wait to see you guys on the next episode.