Rob and Melissa Stephenson, from Flea Market Flipper, talk about three items they sold to make $8,590.
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Just 3 Sales To Make $8,590
Rob: What's up, pro flippers. On today's episode, we are talking about what we sold last week to make $8,590, and guess what the best part? It was only three sales.
Melissa: And we're gonna dive into what we sold, what the eBay fees were, the shipping costs, and of course the most important- what the profits were.
Rob: Alright, so it's gonna be a fun episode. If you can't tell my, my, by my voice, I'm super excited. This was a killer, killer week last week. Three sales, almost $9,000 in revenue. Very, very excited when we can do that. But we want to tell you guys what we sold. The profits that we made, because anybody can make $9,000 on three flips.
But what really matters is how much we're actually taking home, how much we're getting out of these flips that we're doing.
Melissa: Yeah. That's one thing that, like you see some of these, you know, people post numbers, especially like, I guess more like Amazon sellers. They like, they sold a million dollars of product.
Well that's amazing. Except for they spent nine, what is it $950,000 in fees and all this stuff. And so they brought home $50,000. So it's like that's not the real number. So like that's what we want to make sure that we are talking about because, but like we, at the end of the day, you have to make money in this business or there's no point in doing it.
Right.
Rob: Absolutely. So let's dive in. So like we said, it's three items that we sold. We're gonna start with the first one being one that actually my daughter, she actually helped me find this. We found this at a thrift store. We did. We picked this bad boy. We had a little bit of fun with it. Sometimes when I buy stuff, I like to test it out.
I gotta have a little fun with the kids. So right after I bought it, we went to the grocery store, we bought some ingredients, and we came back. Can you guess what the first item actually was?
Melissa: It was a bread maker.
Rob: A bread maker from the thrift store. How much did we pay for it?
Melissa: We paid $10 for it.
Rob: So cool. 10 bucks. And then I got a good loaf of bread that we made. We actually made a couple of them and the kids were like, would you make more? Those are so good. So it was so, we almost kept it for a little while. We did. It was so much fun to be able to do that with the kids. We got some videos of actually making it, showing that it worked with the kids.
And then whopper whopper, we sold this for. $49.99. $49.99.
Melissa: 50 bucks. I love it. So, and just for the ease of numbers, I rounded everything. I round everything to the nearest dollar, so up for down, because I usually do pennies. He usually does $999.99, and then it just gets, I'm like, I'm not doing the pennies, we're just going to the dollar.
So, and plus $40 shipping.
Rob: Yep. 50 bucks. We charged another $40 for shipping. Ended up total numbers on that. We paid $10 for it, sold for $50, and,
Melissa: so $ 90 with the shipping, yeah, sorry,
Rob: 90 with shipping. And then total, what was the total profits on that?
Melissa: eBay fees were $12, 12 bucks for eBay fees, $10 to, to get it.
And I might have this wrong, $6 to ship it, is that right?
Rob: That might be right. No, I think it is.
Melissa: It went in the same state it went in Florida. Yeah. I just, I was like thinking about it. I'm like, $6 seems super low, but no, it's right.
Rob: Yep. It actually is. So we didn't have to pay that much to ship that item.
But yeah, it was a little bread maker. But still, yeah, that was the total. So what was the total profit on this one? $62. 62 bucks. Big, big winner, winner. Chicken dinner. Not really, but it was fun. It was fun to do it with my kids. That's what Melissa and I are trying to live a little bit more into right now is helping the kids, actually make some money to learn the process with this.
So it's fun to be able to do that. She helped me package it up. It was a lot of fun. So that was flip number one. What is our next one?
One,
Melissa: I think we still need to pay her too, now that we divide that profit with her. Right?
Rob: We do.
Melissa: Number two, and the funny thing is, is the sales typically come in three. So I don't know why.
And there's not no scientific evidence to why that happens, but they do typically come in.
Rob: The funny part was we were actually doing a podcast. But yeah, last week after, I think one of them had sold, or two of them, yeah, no, two of them had sold and I said, guys, they're coming in threes, we got another one coming up, so just be ready.
And one actually sold that day or the next day. So yeah.
Melissa: And that was this one actually. It was the basketball hoop.
Rob: Basketball. This was really, really cool. So it's a weird one. It is. It's a four hoop basketball game. This one's kind of crazy. It went to Puerto Rico. One of our friends works at a local school.
They ordered these basketball hoops and it didn't have a backboard. All it was was the hoops. And they went onto this center mechanism that you sit on a pole and it's got on every single side. It's got four of 'em on the sides that you just shoot and keep shooting into it from all different angles.
Melissa: So the hoop had to go into a specific kind of thing, right? Like it was,
Rob: it went on a pole, so you had to have it on a pole. The main mechanism. Sat on the top of a pole and then each hoop bolted into all four sides of that pole, really weird. I was very, very, you didn't have the pole right? No, no. You had the hoop.
It was just the hoop and the mechanisms and the hardware. So I was pretty surprised. I didn't think, I didn't have a lot of watchers, I didn't have a lot of views on this, so I was pretty surprised when it sold, retail on it. That's, I didn't even know, 'cause there's no comps on this. Somebody gave it to us, so we didn't pay anything for it.
But retail on it. I was able to find a retail value and I think it was over a thousand dollars. So. I started the bid on this, well, I started the auction at, $399, $400, and I don't remember if I charged shipping or an
Melissa: not auction, it's buy it now.
Rob: Well buy it now, but I don't think I did. I I did charge some for shipping, didn't I? Did you get that?
Melissa: Extra money. Yes. It was $400 plus a hundred dollars shipping.
Rob: A hundred dollars for shipping is what I charged on this. So, 500 bucks total for this. It ended up going to Puerto Rico. And what was our total?
Melissa: No, I was just gonna tell you that, oh, the reason why we got it for free is because some of our, this was a friend at church actually reached out to us and they know that we sell stuff on eBay and they're like, Hey, we have these extra things.
Do you wanna take them and sell them? And so if you. That's something we like to. Great point. Make sure that we tell people, like tell people what you do. Like that you're, you know, working on this side hustle or that you're trying to grow your eBay business. And you'd be surprised so many people just have stuff that they don't even like and they'll give to you and not that they need it, they just want or decluttering or whatever.
But you can get a lot of items that way without having to pay anything for inventory.
Rob: Absolutely. So, such a great point. So I know. Tell people what you do. They gave it to us for free, so we got no money invested into it. Sold it. Four, $500 worth shipping. It cost me. $137. Yeah, $137 on shipping, b
ecause it did go to Puerto Rico and I couldn't ship it ground.
It actually had to go air, but it wasn't a big deal. I wasn't that worried about it because we charged a hundred and we made good money on it. So not a big deal. Shipped it. And then eBay fees were.
Melissa: eBay fees were $63.
Rob: What was the total profit? So
Melissa: $64, total profit was, $300,
Rob: 300 bucks. Love it for a freebie.
We got that sold and shipped and made $300 cash on that. So now you guys might be thinking, all right, that's two items. Rob. What is going on? How did you guys make the most $9,000? Not, we're not even close to that yet. Well buckle up. The number three item was a killer, super, super excited item that we got.
Melissa: It was a super excited item or it was a super exciting sale.
Rob: Super exciting sale. It was an exciting item too.
I wish I had thought more about it before we actually sold it. I told Melissa I would've done some really cool videos. No, but she said no. So what this thing was, we bought it at a local auction. And I think what it was called, which I didn't sell it like this, but I don't know, I don't know exactly what it was to be honest with you guys, but I think what it did was when, farms pick vegetables like off the vines or pick them off the, the trees or plants, whatever, they have a, a machine that they actually put them all in, right away.
And then it brings it from room temperature down to like below 20 degrees. So it does a freeze on that. So it keeps them fresh really, really quick and it only takes like five minutes to do it, five or 10 minutes. So really, really quick that it does that. That's what this machine did. I, some people said might be called a freeze blaster.
I'm not a hundred percent sure what it was, but the cool part about it was we bought it from a local auction. We paid $80, was it $88? $88. 88 bucks for this, and then we sold it for $8,000. Then you might be saying, how the heck did you sell this for $8,000? Retail on this was over $50,000. So somebody got a heck of a deal on it at $8,000.
We sat on it for a couple months. I priced it at the rate price, and then the cool part about this was. I didn't list anything. Like I've been a little bit lackadaisical on our, a little bit eBay on our eBay business for the last couple months. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna pick it back up. So I shot some offers out and this was one of the offers that I shot.
I had it listed for $9,000, and I took a thousand dollars off of it to try and drum up a sale and it actually worked. So somebody bought it for $8,000, $7,999.99. Somebody bought it for that. When I shot them, the offer, they had 48 hours to accept it. They did beautiful, beautiful sale. That's what pushed us over the top was this sale right here.
So. Killer deal on that. This did go freight. Didn't require any crazy machines to do it. I did it myself. I picked it, I picked it. Well, sorry, I crated it all up myself. But I actually, when I was pulling it up onto the trailer, myself, I actually had my neighbor saw me working on it and he's like, Hey, you need some, hand, and he ran over and helped me get it up onto the trailer.
So, but still I would've done it myself if he hadn't run over. But I always love to help if somebody's out there and somebody can help me. So, anyways, total cost on this $88. That's what we went out of pocket to make $8,000. That in itself is amazing, but then we had to pay the eBay fees and the shipping.
So what were the totals on those?
Melissa: Before before we dive into that, I had a couple things I wanted to say. Sure. First off, he wanted to do a video of getting inside of it. I did. And that is not okay 'cause I feel like you could die doing that.
Rob: I wanted to put a parka on. No. And it was so big. I could actually curl up.
I could curl up inside of it. Then we could turn it on and do it, and if it got too cold, I could just push the door open. But I thought it would be amazing. Wouldn't that be such a? No, that would not be. Hey, let me know guys, if you think that would be an amazing video. Comment. I wanna know, because I thought that would be so much fun.
Melissa: I feel like, I feel like that you would die, like
Rob: how you can go on negative temperatures. 20.
Melissa: Do you even know how negative it goes?
Rob: Negative 20. It actually doesn't print out.
Melissa: That was the, that's the most, I
Rob: think it was at zero. I think it only went to zero. But you could program it to negative 20 when I did the video on it.
So it was only going to zero degrees. That seems like a very bad, we've been in negative temperatures skiing, so it's not that big of a deal.
Melissa: Feel like that's a bad idea. You would die.
Put a
Rob: parka on. I put my hat on. Melissa could open it up and you'd see all the smoke come out, the cold air come out. And I could be in there shivering like this.
That would be such a creative, an amazing video. I wish I had done it.
Melissa: It would not. But anyways. So, another thing I wanted to say is you got it from an auction. I, so you get it, got it. From an online auction, went and picked it up. And we can go through, there's one more thing I wanted to say about it and I lost my train of thought.
What you got? Anyways, we'll go through these and then I'll, I'll probably think of it at the end. The numbers.
Rob: $88 outta pocket to make $8,000, which is exciting. But then we had to pay eBay fees. Oh, and the shipping.
Melissa: I remember when you started talking about offers. We talked about that on the other, the previous episode.
So go check that out. Like if you're trying to get business going again, setting out offers can be a great way to do it. And didn't. You send out offers on one of these other things that sold and then they didn't take the offer.
Rob: I did, I did. I did it on the hoops and they did not take the offer. But then somebody bought it because
Melissa: Full, yeah,
Rob: full price.
They paid full price for it. So that's kind of cool how that works.
Melissa: That's what I was thinking of. Yeah. Okay. So, the
Rob: eBay fees, shipping fees,
Melissa: so this is another interesting point and we will get to the profit in one second, but the eBay fees were $317 and $138. So we had two eBay fees, final value fees.
And the reason that is, is because eBay takes. It was 12.7% of the first $2,500. And then after that they take two, what is it, 2.35% of the remaining. So that's one reason why when we sell some of these larger items, people are like, how are your eBay fees so low? That doesn't make any sense. So, I didn't even add those together.
So, but the second part of our eBay fees were only $138, so that is why they came
Rob: out like that.
Woo-hoo. So that's pretty amazing. And I was gonna actually play up to that, but Melissa stole my thunder. I was going to ask you guys, you guys are such liars. Your eBay fees should be over 12, 13%. But no, this is how it works in our favor.
So we love selling items, so
Melissa: $455 is the total
Rob: EBay fees, cool. So, and it, if you look at that, I mean that averages out to less than. It's almost 5% on eBay fees on that because 10% would be eight. 800. Yeah. $800. Yeah. So almost five, right? Right around 5% with this is what it actually worked out to be. So
Melissa: I didn't know you were gonna try to say that.
That's right. Maybe we should we should talk about No, no, no. Maybe we should talk about stuff. We don't really script a lot of stuff. We just write down some points you guys can tell and write down some points and then we go. That's it. So here we are. Cool. Here we are.
Rob: So, eBay fees, were a total of four?
$455. $455. Shipping fees was. $500 plus another. I spent $80 on wood. I bought some woods to wood to build a box around it. I also bought some, and I didn't have to buy blankets. I have blankets that I could use, but I like my blankets too, that I keep in my trailers for wrapping stuff up. So I just went and bought new blankets.
They're eight bucks a piece. I bought some more straps. I had straps, but I wanted to put fresh straps on it, and then I bought some clips to use for the pallet, so a total of $80 spent on materials to build the pallet. Got the pallet for free, got the wood for free. The went on top of the pallet, so all that stuff was free, but I did have to buy two by fours to build a box and this other stuff.
Melissa: So total we can put some links of some of the straps and stuff. Yeah, that's fine. You used too,
Rob: so a total of total $580 spent on shipping, and that means our grand total for profit was. $6,877, 6800 bucks just under $7,000. How exciting is that you guys? That is just amazing. It blows my mind that we're able to have so much fun in this business, find these amazing, amazing items, and then get paid really, really good money for that.
So I love it.
Melissa: Tell me how excited you are. All right, so the grand total, was $8,590 of the three of sales. Yep, but all we had to put up to make that was $98. So we only have $98 invested in the three items. Are you kidding me? Which is pretty cool, and our total profit was $7,239. Love it. After all, eBay fees, shipping costs, and shipping out three items.
So that hourly wage is not too bad. So no. So,
Rob: and that's what we talk about when we talk about the total money we had to put out. This business is pretty amazing. A lot of people, give eBay flack for, how you're having to pay, fees or fees on top of the sales and stuff like that. But guys, we only have to go out the money for these items, before we sell it.
Everything else we get paid on what we're doing, and then we can pay the extra fees, the extra shipping, all that stuff on top of it. So this business model is insane. It is so cool to go out a hundred dollars, almost a hundred dollars to be able to make, what is it, $850 or $8,000. That's just insane, that we're able to do that.
So. So much fun. We get so excited about this business. Hopefully you guys get excited about it as well, what the potential is in this business. So I'm excited. I'm excited for the, the next 30 days to see what I can bring in.
Melissa: 'cause now you're getting back to listing, right?
Rob: I am. We're bringing in some more listings.
We're bringing in some more items. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So, buckle up. Get ready. You guys are gonna have a fun next 30 days just like we are too.
Melissa: And if you want to learn more about our business model and see if it's a good fit for you, you can check out. We just recently updated this workshop.
So check out the workshop in the link below, and see if this could be something that you really wanna get into too, because we love it. And you'll do it as long as you can. Absolutely. And it's just a fun, it's a fun way to make extra money.
It is.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Thanks for hanging out with us today.
We can't wait to see you on the next episode.