Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about the $8,500 Christmas bonus flip they had at the end of 2022.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Our $8,500 Christmas Bonus Flip
Rob: What's up, pro Flippers? Happy New Year. Today we are talking about our $8,500 Christmas bonus flip.
Melissa: We're excited to be back on the podcast with you guys.
Rob: All right guys. Hopefully you had an amazing new year.
Hopefully it's been, what are we into it? A couple days now into it?
Melissa: Yeah.
Rob: Hopefully you had a great time and you are ready to go for this year. 2023 is gonna be amazing.
Melissa: Yeah, we always like to take a little time to reflect and kind of really reflect on the last year and we're gonna dive into that on a future episode, like all of our sales, all of our dig into our. Dig into, of course, you know, all the numbers. But we just wanted to come back on real quick and, you know, say Happy New Year and talk about our last flip that was a Christmas bonus, which was really nice.
Rob: That's right. And give you a little recap of our Christmas, new Year vacation.
We got away, got with some family, had some crazy stuff happen. So we were gonna recap all that. But before we do that, do you wanna jump into the flip what it was?
Melissa: Sure we can jump into the flip.
Rob: Let's do it. So the day after Christmas, we got the cha-ching and it was a good one. It was $8,500 for the other Turbochef.
If you guys remember, we bought two of these on the road trip over the summer. This was the second one that actually sold, paid $400 for it and sold it for $8,500 on December 26th. So what a great Christmas bonus that we got. We actually were out of town when that happened, so we had to come back at the end of vacation, which we didn't rush back, our stuff.
Melissa: We could come back a little early. We wanted to come back. We did. Which we'll dive into that in a minute, but we wanted to come back a little early. And then also you didn't put your stuff on vacation, right?
Rob: We did not. Right. And a lot of times, instead of going on vacation, I'll change the handling time on our store, to go for 10 days or seven days, whatever we're doing. This time I did not. And we did have a sale come in the day after we left. We left, right. And I emailed the gentleman or the person who bought it and said, listen, we're outta town. I can get it shipped out at the beginning of January.
If that is unsuitable for you, please let me know. I'm happy to refund you. It was a pretty good sale too. I mean, 250 bucks for three little tiny ballast, so it was a cool flip. And I never heard back from them, so I marked it as shipped. And then when I got back, I shipped it out the, the day after we got back.
And no issue with it. Nobody reached out and said it wasn't acceptable. So, yeah, well that was okay. But typically when we go away, we throw our shipping and handling on a longer handling time so the buyer can expect when they actually go in there and it shows them, when to expect the item, it shows, hey, this, this person doesn't really say they're on vacation.
They say expect it and then it gives out like 10 or 15 days out.
Melissa: They're expecting it that day. At least if they're, I mean, they should be looking at that. I look at that when I buy something, especially like on Amazon or eBay. How quick can you get it? Yeah. How quick is it coming? And you're hoping it comes faster than that date, but sometimes it's out there.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So, so yeah, so double checking that and that's what they see whenever they're gonna go buy it. So you just change the handling time.
Rob: Yep, exactly. And I didn't do it this. If I forget to do it for some reason, like I said, I reach out to the buyer, say, hey, currently we're outta town. I can't get it shipped out until we get back.
I'm happy to give you a refund if you need it quicker. If you don't, I'll get it shipped out as soon as I get back. And a lot of times I can't. Nine outta 10 times the buyer usually says, yeah, don't worry about it. Just ship it out when you get back. I haven't had a lot of people tell me, no, I need it immediately.
So, which is cool, but I like to change the handling time so it is done and the buyer has great expectations.
Melissa: And you don't get dings on eBay too. The eBay doesn't like it if you're, if you don't, ship your stuff in the timeframe that you're allowed.
Rob: But a little loophole on that if you do end up in the same situation we were, you can't actually go on and market as shipped without adding the tracking number.
And eBay will mark it as shipped in your timeframe that you're supposed to, you can market is shipped, and then when you get back, you can actually still print the label and then the label will be attached to it and it'll ship out. So, yeah, try like I said, it's not the best make.
Melissa: Don't wanna make a habit out of it.
Rob: It's not the best practice, but it's the kind of the loophole, the way that you can get around, not getting something shipped out is marking it as shipped.
Melissa: So, but don't do that all the time. Absolutely. With a lot of different items.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So did we say what the item was that we sold?
Rob: Turbochef. Yeah.
Melissa: Okay.
Rob: So we bought two of 'em over the summer, $400 a piece. And this was the second one that sold, at the end of the year right after Christmas. Sold for $8,500.
So, $400 invested and we sold it for $8,500. Love, love, love those returns. So excited about that.
Melissa: So I broke down the numbers. So like you said, $8,500 sold. The cost of the item was $400. The eBay fees were $453, and then the promoted listing fees were $451. Shipping cost total with materials, and the label was $148, which left our total profit to $7,048.
Rob: I love it. $7,048, just over $7,000 for a $400 investment. Guys, that is amazing. I love those ROIs.
Melissa: One thing that people, a lot of times they can't stand the eBay fees. O obviously we don't wanna pay eBay fees, but they see the, that large number and they're like four, $800 to eBay. You know, nobody wants to pay that.
But when our profit was $7,000, like we don't have to go out of pocket that $800 until the item has sold. So it's absolutely, you know, it's, it. We're not doing that ahead of time. Our only cost is, is the item itself. So.
Rob: Yep, exactly. It's like a lot of stuff. You actually have to pay for the marketing ahead of time, and then hopefully you get the results.
This is not the case with eBay, which is cool, but it's, you know, you're paying extra money. Nobody wants to pay money out.
Melissa: I'm not saying we love eBay fees not want it.
Rob: But at the same time, at least we are not paying until a sell. So eBay's doing their work to get it sold, and then once it sells, we actually owe to them after a sell.
So, which, yeah, like I said, nobody wants to, but it is part of the business for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. They need to make their money so that, I mean, they like to have their hands in everything. Yep. And now that we're getting to these higher thresholds, they're trying to hold some of the funds, which we're gonna dive if you're in our, Flipper University Freight course.
We're gonna be diving into that soon because we wanna talk about some of the stuff they've been holding, in a little bit.
Rob: Yeah. They have different thresholds now, guys, that they're actually, they manage. They since managed payments took over, and this is just recently, they're actually certain thresholds of money.
They're holding onto it until the item is delivered and they're giving the buyer, on this specific item. They're giving the buyer three days to inspect the item, before they say something is wrong or something everything's okay before they're releasing the funds to us, which, it's crazy, it's ridiculous.
It's, it's just.
Melissa: We get it if you're a new seller, but if you established and you're selling
Rob: somebody who sells this stuff on a normal basis, this should not be going on. But you know what it is. It is what it is. eBay still by far is the best platform to be able to sell this stuff on. So you gotta kind of play by their rules right now, unless enough sellers rise up, either leave or petition, whatever it is, make their own Shopify store. Exactly. So right now, I'll just complain about it a little bit, but not that much because eBay still, they're the best platform to be able to sell this stuff on for the stuff that we sell. Absolutely.
Melissa: Yeah. So, so yeah. So that was our breakdown of the numbers there.
And I. You said Yeah, that we did the five day shipping, handling time. Yep. And that was just a nice christmas bonus, and yeah, we just used the time to kind of reflect over the year. We did have something kind of crazy happen over Christmas break, which I feel like we should talk about because I mean, I don't know, like something on the pod about being on a podcast.
It's like you guys are keep coming back and listening to like you're part of our lives. Yep. And it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of crazy.
Rob: But it's a little more personal. Yeah. So we actually did a trip with our family. Melissa's mom lives in Colorado, so we actually did a trip up to Colorado.
Melissa's grandpa, who is 92, 92 years old, lived in Atlanta, and we with her aunt and we, made the suggestion a month or two ago, that we might pick him up and take him if he wanted, wanted to, if wanted to, yeah. Pick him up and take him to Melissa's mom. He has done this for 14 years. Yeah.
The last years.
Melissa: He was out there all the time with my grandma. They used to make that trip out there, so we thought if he wanted to go, we would pick him up. And but craziness kind of happened and he, we were almost at my mom's, we were 20 hours into the road trip, three hours away from mom, three hours away from my mom, and he ended up collapsing in the bathroom.
Did CPR called 9 1 1 and it was just, it was probably a little traumatic . Yeah. But he ended up passing the next day. And I, we do, like, we feel at peace about what happened, but I don't know if why we feel the need like just to share with you guys, but, but it was, I don't know. It was kind of a crazy thinking about this whole Christmas and.
I don't know. Yeah, just, reflecting on it and his life and how many people he's impacted and how many people he shared Jesus' love with, and I don't know. Yeah. And, and did you have anything?
Rob: No.
Well, if you guys don't know, we are Christians. His wife passed away. Melissa's, we called her Mimi. She passed away six months ago.
Six or eight months ago. April. Yeah. Yeah. So she passed away six or eight months ago. He was terribly missing her. We totally believe, he will be reunited with her, once he goes to heaven, and that's one of those things that we have peace about where he was going, he was ready to go. Definitely not the situation.
We would've preferred it to happen. Definitely it happened and we got to spend those last hours with him, through the whole process. So we're thankful for that.
Melissa: And thankful for our relationship. Absolutely. We were very close with him and my grandma and Absolutely. Yeah. I don't know, like I just, I'm very thankful for the relationship we had with him and, just thankful for all the time that we got to spend with them.
Yeah. And we spent a lot of Thanksgiving and Christmases with them, so over the, when I was a kid and then when we were married. Yep. That was the first thing I said, you gotta meet Mimi and Boppee. Mimi has to meet and approve of all the spouses. So anyways, so we just wanna give a little bit of a tribute. It's been a tough year.
It, it was a tough year. We lost your mom. Lost Mimi, Mimi and Boppee. It's been a, a kind of a crazy year. So we're, it has excited for this next chapter, 2023. Sorry if we brought things down a little bit, but just wanted to kind of share some things that we went through over Christmas. Yeah. If you, if you're on our email list, you probably read a little bit about, about that and about my Boppee and then, but maybe didn't know like kind of all the crazy details.
Rob: Yeah. So, and then even at the end of our trip, we all caught the flu, which was not horrible, but we had a good two or three days of not feeling well. So, crazy, crazy end to 2022 this year. It was crazy. So we are super excited.
Everybody's healthy now. Everybody's excited for the year coming up. Melissa and I are super excited for everything that's going on, in our business. We have some great, great goals. We'll get into another podcast, great goals for the flipping business. Cannot wait to, actually take some action and get some stuff moving and sold and bring you guys some awesome stuff.
Melissa: What is one of your goals for 2023?
Rob: Yeah, definitely listing a lot more of our higher profit items. I have a lot of high profit items that are sitting and not listed yet. Two of 'em in specific I can think about. I know I have one that's $15,000 one, that's another one that's $10,000 to $15,000 that are sitting that I have not had.
I, I don't have them listed. One of 'em is a lift that I've had for probably two years now. And I still have not got it listed. So my goal is to get some of these higher profit items listed that I have. Get that inventory up so we can, bring some higher profits in.
That is my goal. We are shooting again, which I think we don't have all the numbers in yet, but we are just below our hundred thousand threshold that we are trying to hit in the flipping business.
Melissa: And, and you could, you just need to add a couple more hours. Yeah. And you would totally get that.
Yeah. You just gotta get some more stuff listed.
Rob: And we'll talk more about that. But, yeah. To be honest with you guys, we're only working on the flipping business probably five to 10, five to 10 hours a week. We're not throwing a ton of ton of hours into it, and for us to get even in that, that range of $75,000 to $100,000 is huge.
The other thing is when you hear resellers or you hear people talk about them being able to you know, sell $300,000 on eBay, $500,000 on eBay, a lot of 'em, you have to look at what the profit margins are. For our profit margins, we average 65 to 75% profit on our items, so when we say we made $75,000, so the, that profit is not that much below that, which is really, really cool.
For a lot of resellers, like we have a friend who sells on Amazon and he does like $3 million a year in business, but he takes home, this profit margin is only like 10%. So when you look at that, a 10% profit margin versus a 65, 75% profit margin because of our business model. It's cool. We, it's what we like now.
I can't convince our friend to do what we do. Yeah. Because he likes what he does. Right. But we really enjoy what we do as well. And it's one of those things that yeah, makes it that much better, much more rewarding for us, to be able to do what we do, five to 10 hours a week and still be able to make some really, really good money.
Yeah. So we're excited about that.
Melissa: Yeah. One of my goals personally for, and it's really both of our goals for, the whole business is to get our, standard operating procedures down to sobs science so that we can really, you know, really get some good content out there. And then I don't have to work so much on the stuff on the backend and, you know, behind the scenes, all the tech stuff.
So hoping to get all that in play this year. So it's a good goal.
Rob: Absolutely. What about you? What is your goals here? Guys, if you have not made any write 'em down. We want to definitely tell you to sit down, think about 'em tonight. Write some, some goals down for your flipping business, for your, whatever it is, your family.
Whatever it is, make some goals that you guys can accomplish.
Melissa: And let us know what they are. Give us a shout out on social, DM us on Instagram or Facebook. You can find us all the things. Flea Market Flipper, you can find us. We're just about everywhere. So, let us know what your goals are. We wanna help you get to those goals.
Rob: Absolutely. So guys, if you're a returning listener, please, we would ask, it'd mean the world to us if you guys would give us a quick five star review. Rate and review this podcast. We absolutely appreciate we respect your time. Thank you so much for doing this, spending time with us. And like I said, if you're return listeners, please do that. We'd love that from you guys. It'd mean the world to us if you could take a couple minutes.
Melissa: We'd love to keep this podcast ad free if possible. So we're gonna try to do that if we can do that. So we thank you and appreciate you guys so much.
Rob: You guys rock!