Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper share a high profit niche that has made them over six figures in their reselling business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - This High Profit Niche Has Helped Us Make Over 6 Figures
Rob: What's up, guys, super excited today to talk about our favorite high profit niche and get into some details about it.
Rob: So today guys, we are talking about one of our favorite high profit niches and a little bit more about how it plays really into our business.
Melissa: And we pick up a lot of these types of items. We kind of have gravitated towards them recently. And what we really realized was when we came back from our road trip, we did a six week road trip across the country, picking up items, all over the place. And a lot of them were these items. So we're like, oh, this is where we like to make our money.
So we wanna talk about that.
Rob: It is one of the only types of items that you can get, that you can make crazy profits. Like. Yeah. I'll talk a little bit more about it in a minute.
Melissa: But, so, so what is it, what is it?
Rob: Are you guys just wondering what's going on? Guys it is appliances. Appliances is an amazing high profit niche, that we've kind of fell into, by doing it.
And we have made so much money, off of appliances. So it is an amazing, amazing high profit niche.
Melissa: And a lot of our members are making money on appliances too. There's a couple reasons why, and we're gonna dive into those in just a minute. Absolutely. Why they are such a good flip.
Absolutely. So, so first off, like why appliances?
Rob: Why appliances? So check it out, guys. Appliances is the reason why you can make so much money off appliances is right now you'll probably be surprised about this, but right now, there's over in the United States alone, there's over 10 million, home, not home.
Sorry, kitchen, kitchen renovations going on every single year, over 10 million. So what do people do when they get a renovation? Typically they update their appliances. They're getting rid of whatever's in their kitchen and they're updating it. So, you will be able to find deals this year, next year, the years to come, because this is a normal practice for Americans for people in the United States.
So.
Melissa: So basically you can get these items for next to nothing like there's pennies on the dollar. Yeah. So easy to that. I mean, you don't wanna say easy to find. You have to look for 'em a little bit, but there there's a lot of them that are practically given away because how many people just want them gone when they do their kitchen renovation?
Rob: So, absolutely.
So that is one of the reasons why, and you think about it. If you've ever done a renovation or you're gonna do a renovation, what are you gonna do with the appliances? Or what did you do with the appliances? You really have a couple different options. You can either, you know, throw 'em away, get 'em on the side of the curb.
If something's broken on it, throw it away. Put it on the side of the curb and the trash people will take it. You can recycle it. You can take it to a scrap recycler. And that's where you'll really, really get like a penny on the dollar. They'll give you absolutely nothing for it.
Melissa: It's like what the metals worth pretty much.
Rob: Exactly. You can donate 'em so you can send 'em to your local thrift store, Salvation Army, Goodwill, local thrift stores. You can donate 'em there.
If you're buying new appliances from Home Depot, Lowes, anything like that, they will take your old appliances away and typically they probably have a warehouse full of these appliances that they either throw them away resell 'em refurbish 'em. Exactly. So those are really the only things that people can do when they do get a renovation.
But needless to say, when you see the numbers of 10 million people, and it's probably gonna keep going up, doing renovations, you can imagine how many hundreds of thousands of appliances. I mean, this is over the United States, but just hundreds of thousands of appliances all over the place. When you're dealing with 10 million that's a lot spread across our country. So you can imagine in your local areas.
Melissa: So that stat, that was just our United States.
Rob: Exactly. You can imagine in local areas, your local area, how many appliances are actually there, that you can take advantage of this high profit niche.
Melissa: And during the whole COVID pandemic, when everybody was home, a lot of people redid their homes. They updated their homes, and there was a lot of appliances out there. And it's still the case. It's still like, they are still circulating because, and they will be, it'll trickle down for a couple years too.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: And another thing, another way that you can get them too another reason why they're easier to find is also, unfortunately that restaurants go out of business. I mean, they before the pandemic, they were going, you know, just only a percentage of them make it. And so then they have to do something with the equipment and actually on our trip, we ended up picking up two ovens.
What were they were one of our, our highest profit, they're commercial ovens. And they're gonna make the most money for us.
Rob: They're small, they're countertop ovens.
Melissa: So the restaurant went ut of business and he just sold 'em on Facebook marketplace.
Rob: And he had three of 'em and I would've bought all three, but I didn't have enough cash.
And we were going through the town.
Melissa: And he was in a hurry too.
Rob: So the only cash that I had to give you an idea of type of high profit that we're talking about. I only had, $800 with us. We were driving through this town. I made the, the arrangement with him $800 to pick up one to pick up one for $500.
Yeah. Well, when I got there, he said he had three and I said, well, would you do $400 a piece if I took two, cuz all I had was $800 cash and we really didn't have time to go to the bank and do other stuff. So anyways, we got two of those ovens paid $400 a piece for them and these will sell on eBay between $7,000 and $8,000 an oven.
If I wanted to sell them super quick, I could easily get $5,000 or 6,000. I'll try to start it out at seven, and see how the market is, but they have sold for, $7,000 and $8,000. So that goes to show you $400 in. And $800, I mean, $8,000 out that just shows you the possibilities when you're dealing with appliances and not just appliances, but commercial stuff, when you can find good deals on that stuff.
And this restaurant went outta business. I don't know if they went outta business or they went a different direction. It was a catering. Yeah. It's something was going on. They went a different direction with what they were doing. So they were selling these ovens that we actually got. So just really, really cool potential when you're dealing with appliances.
Melissa: Yeah. So what is the best platform to sell these appliances?
Rob: That's right. And that's really, really cool too, because you guys, it's not a secret. We absolutely love eBay. We love selling on eBay just because it is a monster. They have been around the longest for used items that they have right now, it's like over 159 million registered users.
If you get your items onto eBay, you have a bigger pool of people who will be looking for that specific item. So, that's why we use eBay. Now there is a drawback when you're using eBay guys, but we use it because we get it in front of more people, which allows us to sell it quicker. And which allows us to ask more money for it, not price gouging, just more money for like these ovens that we're selling retail on 'em is like 20 some thousand dollars.
So we are not price gouging. We're getting somebody a great deal on a good oven.
Melissa: And we, we generally average around 50% of retail. Yes. So that's kind of our ballpark average. It goes up and down depending on the item. But that's around what we ask for our item. So, and people are looking, especially, you know, now with maybe whatever upcoming recession or inflation people are looking to save money.
So more people tend to go and buy used than they're than go and buy new. So it really is a great time to be selling these things.
Rob: So absolutely. And like Melissa said, we just came back from our road trip, throughout the U.S. We were on the road for six weeks. But we took a trailer with us and I think it's like 14 out of our like 17 items.
Yeah. Most of them were our appliances and they're high profit. We're going for the high profit. Now these two we're talking to you about are definitely the highest, I mean.
Melissa: And we spent the most money on it. We don't usually, we're about 50 to $200 and we look to 10 X our if you're looking for ballpark, we kind of, we go for about 10x of what we invest.
Rob: So, yeah, so we have double ovens. We have cooktops, we have microwaves, we have all that kind of stuff, that we found really, really good deals. I think some vent hood, some hoods. Yeah. Just a whole bunch of different types of appliances, but this guy to give you an idea, we spent on the road when we were on the road, we spent roughly, I think it was just shy $1,400, $1,500.
Yeah, it was, it was over $1,400 but just shy $1,500. That's how much money we spent while we were on the road. And estimated I think conservatively we're over $30,000 in inventory. So $1,500 to $30,000 and the majority of what we got were appliances.
Melissa: Yeah. And those two are gonna be our biggest moneymakers for sure.
Rob: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Melissa: We picked them up on both on Facebook marketplace, OfferUp, and at the thrift store. So we found all those places.
Rob: I can't even tell you how many times I picked up appliances on the side of the road. I picked them up out of the trash and sometimes there might be something wrong with it.
Maybe a burner's bad on an oven. Or maybe there's nothing wrong with it. They got new appliances and they didn't want 'em sitting in their garage. So they just threw 'em out on the side of the road. But I cannot tell you how many times I have picked stuff up off the side of the road and you have a couple of different options with those.
If it is broken, you get it home and it's broken. Guys right now, it, I mean, when you get used appliances, people will pay great money for parts. So you can pull knobs off, you can pull doors off the appliances and sell them as parts. And sometimes you can even make more money parting the appliance out, then you can sell it for the whole thing together.
Melissa: So yeah, I remember one cooktop, sorry to cut you off. But I remember one cooktop that you got it was missing, one of the knobs was broken or something, and we went to go look for it and we couldn't find it for like, $200 or $300 or something we're like, this is a Wolf brand. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, right.
Yeah. And that, and then we're like, nope we're just gonna part out the rest of it because we're not gonna spend $300 on a knob. Yeah. So.
Rob: But, so, so the potential, you're not paying anything. If you get something on the side of the road, you're able to sell some of these knobs and some of these, different parts of the oven we'll sell for a couple hundred dollars and you're getting it for nothing.
So, just another great way to be able to find appliances. So, thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, any stuff. Definitely the apps. People will throw stuff on marketplace.
Melissa: Yeah. That's a popular place. That's where you like to find them too.
Rob: Yeah. Marketplace, OfferUp, and Craigslist. You can find, appliances, great deals on appliances.
But it really goes back to being able to list them on a big platform. Cuz when you're finding 'em in the local markets marketplace, Facebook marketplace, OfferUp and Craigslist. Those are just your local markets. So the only people seeing those are the people in your local areas. And then if you take it from that market and throw it to a, I mean, you could say global, but we don't really ship stuff overseas for appliances.
Other stuff we will, but you could.
Melissa: You ship big stuff, but you have not for that.
Rob: No, you could take this to country. I mean, you, you have a huge, huge variety of people all around the United States that would pay money for these things, that you can absolutely do it. And that's taking the advantage of, you know, where you're getting your most amount of money.
You're able to sell it the quickest because you're using eBay.
Melissa: And that's a question we get a lot is, so why would, how, I don't understand how you can make that much money on an appliance. Why isn't that person making the money? Like, why wouldn't they go and just sell it? Like you're gonna go do yep.
And they totally can. But most people don't wanna deal with it.
Rob: No, there's a couple different reasons. People don't wanna deal with it. They just wanna be done with it. They don't know how to deal with it. They don't know how to ship an item. They don't know how to do any of that stuff. And they don't wanna learn or they just don't have the know how to do it.
So they're just gonna get rid of it, cheap as, as cheap as they can. So it's not sitting in their garage. They're gonna get rid of it that way. And that's where we swoop in and we find the deals and then we make the money on them.
Melissa: Because you won't be able to get that amount of money, locally.
To find the person who will pay that locally is very few and far between.
Rob: It is so in your local market.
Melissa: Yeah. You'll see some people list stuff, but it's very unlikely that it will sell for that, for that price. Yeah. People like it. They like to be able to shop from their phone, scroll through and see what they're looking for.
And people sometimes are looking for specific, like maybe they're eighties, nineties cook top went out and they wanna replace it cuz they love the thing or fix it. And so they're looking for the exact size or the exact one they had or parts or parts, and they're just gonna go online and look and they can scroll on their phone, get it shipped to them.
And that convenience is what they absolutely like. And it's at a discount. So absolutely buying new and some of those things you can't even find new anymore. I mean, you can't. They're vintage stuff. Exactly. You can't find in, it was made so much better back then, exactly. Than the stuff that is made now.
Rob: Yep. So the one drawback of listing on eBay is you have to ship it.
Yeah. And that is the drawback, but can you imagine the potential you have and it's, but you learn that one thing. It's not impossible. We do it all the time. It's not impossible, but if you do, if you're willing to learn that skillset, that will make you thousands tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars just by using this one niche, you'll be able to make so much money, through the next couple years.
For sure.
Melissa: So, yeah. And we realized that we do so many appliances that we wanted to really be able to bring this to you guys, to be able to show you what is possible with appliances. So we are putting together this new high profit appliance flipping course, which we're so excited to share with you guys.
Rob: That's right. This got birthed. If I use the right grammar. Yeah. This was birthed on our trip. After we got back and realized all these great appliances that we found that we picked up on the road. So we decided, hey, we need to do this. So what's gonna be?
Melissa: So much money on a table!
Rob: It is. What's gonna be in this?
This is one of the only places you can spend $50 and make $500. A thousand dollars, $2,000, you can. I mean, we've made that much money on appliances we've made, probably up to $5,000 on a single appliance on a single flip. Can you guys imagine that, imagine being able to do that, this is the only niche that we know of, that you can absolutely do that is commercial appliances over and residential appliances.
And over again.
It's not just one time. It's not this unicorn of, oh, I hope I can find something, you know, this year that's gonna make me $2,000 on a single. No, it's not guys. You can go and find these things every month, every week, if you're diligent and you're looking and you're looking in the right places, you can find this stuff.
So, that's what really birthed this course, this high profit appliance flipping course. We're so excited. We're in pre-sale right now. So it is not actually open, depending on when you're listening to this. Exactly. Well, thank you. Yeah. Right now, while we're recording this, we are in presale and we are actually selling enrollments or we're doing enrollments for 50% off of what this course is actually gonna cost.
Melissa: And we will be covering everything, eBay and big items, shipping, including freight shipping. We get asked about freight shipping all the time, and this will cover freight shipping because appliances can go both. It can go, we do FedEx UPS or freight shipping. So we'll be covering all of that and how to get it there safely.
Rob: Exactly. And one other thing that we've never offered, we've never taught people this, we have a, what would you call Stacey and, Betty and yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. Our high profit. Our one-on-one coaching.
Rob: Yeah. For high profit flips. We have one-on-one coaching right now and we're teaching this one system, that we've never offered before.
We're teaching people how to, in the comfort of your home, and you can do this with the appliances, finding the appliances, never having to touch an appliance, not having to go and pick up the appliance and not having to put the appliance on a pallet and then not having to ship the appliance. We're teaching this system to allow you to do that.
Melissa: So, and they're doing it and it's really exciting.
Rob: Exactly. It's super, super cool. So you might be in the position where you're like, hey Rob, I can't move an appliance. How can I, how can I take advantage of this high profit niche? Well, We're teaching that inside of this high profit appliance flipping course, very, very excited.
We've never taught this before, so we're super, super excited about that. And yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be so much fun.
Melissa: Yeah. We're so excited to help you get into this high profit niche, because we are really passionate about your time is money and we want you to spend time, yes, work hard in your business, but also have enough time to do the things that you love to do. Absolutely. Make those higher dollar flips.
Rob: That's why we've sought out for the last six years, high profit flipping. And we don't only do appliances. We've done crazy, crazy commercial stuff. We've done crazy, crazy big stuff.
We look for the high profits, but this course is actually specializing in appliances because we see the need for this. We see how many appliances are going out on the side of the road or getting donated, or you're being able to pick up from a residential owner who just updated the kitchen.
We are seeing that we wanna help people utilize that. And the reason why we do high profit is because we have three kids. Melissa and I work together and we wanna spend as much possible time together as we can, as a family, we wanna travel. We wanna do that. And we're only able to do that if we're not working 60 or 80 hours a week on flipping, because we're not doing hundreds of thousands of flips. We're able to do shipping of those hundreds of items. Exactly. We're able to do this with only selling a few items, each month to be able to, to get the high profits and get our, our profits up there where we don't have to do all that extra work, that we're, you know, in the shop packaging shipping and dealing with all these buyers who are, who are, you know, buying a ton and ton of products.
Melissa: So, and I will add too, if you go through, you'll be able to ship more than just appliances if you go through this. So we basically will be able to ship anything. Yeah. From little to big.
Yeah. So on a pallet, whatever it takes.
Rob: So yeah, because we do, we do ship appliances n boxes sometimes too. So we're covering that in this course. We're covering how to ship in boxes, big boxes. And then on pallets, when they're too big for boxes, we teach you guys how to know that, how to shop those appliances when you're, when you're shipping them, how to shop the cheapest rates, how to test and fix them.
If you have to, we're covering all that stuff in the course, it's gonna be amazing.
Melissa: So you can check it out at applianceflipping.com and also the link will be in the show notes. So wherever that is on wherever you're listening, whatever device you're listening on.
Rob: And we did limit the first 50 people who jump in, depending on when you're listening this, if the link is still below, we did limit it to the first 50 people who are getting at the 50% off.
So the 50% off of our enrollment fee. So, yeah make sure.
Melissa: If that link's not there. Yeah.
Rob: Grab that link, jump to it. If it is still there, if it's available, you guys are getting it at 50% off.
Melissa: We can't wait to help you make some good money on some high profit flips.
Rob: Woohoo. You guys rock. We will see you next time.