Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about what they sold last month to make more than $4,000 on eBay.
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What We Sold To Make Over $4,000 Last Month
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about what we sold last month to make over $4,000 on eBay.
Melissa: We're gonna dive into the eBay fees, shipping costs, and of course, the profits.
Rob: Alright, so today's episode, we are talking about what we sold last month to make over $4,000 in sales. And the best part is how many items we sold. Four. Total of four items to make over $4,000. But we're also going to get to the nitty gritty on how much the profit was, how much it cost us to ship, fulfill, pay eBay fees, and all that stuff in this episode.
Melissa: So that's an average of $1,000 per sale with four items, but that's not what we, we had one larger item. So, we're going to dive into it. I also want to talk about the hours involved because people ask, well, how much time do you have? And the whole reason we do this business model is to maximize our time.
Like we don't want to spend hours and hours listing a whole bunch of small items for $5, $10, $20 profits, so that's just not our business model. We and we've gravitated towards this over the years since we didn't start here. Although you did start with a $300 sale on when you were 16. Yeah So he did kind of start a little bit higher higher. But we that's what we have chosen to do for ours.
Rob: Absolutely. We have three kids. We do podcasts. We do videos. We do coaching. We do a lot of other stuff. So actually our flipping business probably equates maybe five hours a week. And sometimes it's even zero hours a week depending on if we have any sales come in or that kind of stuff.
So, this is very, very part time with what we're doing to be able to make the income that we're making.
Melissa: I wrote down about on average how much time you had into each item. So we can do that at the end once we go through each item. Perfect. So there's only four, so we can go through them.
Rob: Let's kick it off.
First item sold this last month is?
Melissa: A carpet scraper.
Rob: Carpet scraper. So this is actually an electric machine. It has a motor that sits up on top of it, and then it goes down with a pulley underneath it and it's got a blade that sticks in front of it. And that motor oscillates the blade and it does like a chipping or a scratching, but it is a commercial unit. This is something that our rental store would rent to a homeowner. They would be able to rip up either tile or carpet and get down in there and rip like glue and stuff up with it. We bought it for $75 from one of my vendor friends who has given me thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout the years, very, very, good guy that I created a contact with from the flea market. Originally met him at the flea market, created that relationship with him and then ever since then he's always giving me awesome finds that he finds.
Melissa: Yeah. Contacts and relationships are huge. It's always good to be polite to people because you never know and just be nice when you're having conversations because you never know like what that person, you made so many different contacts at the flea market and that's just by going there consistently, being consistent and saying hi to everybody and then buying from people multiple times and you eventually get their number and like, oh, take me back to your storage unit.
Like, or should they say, you don't want to come check out and see if I have anything here. So, it's good to create those relationships.
Rob: Absolutely. So we paid $75 for this. We actually sold it for?
Melissa: $500 plus $150 for shipping.
Rob: So $499 plus $150 for shipping, just over $600 or just under $650 total on it. And then what were the fees?
What were the shipping?
Melissa: The eBay fees were $87 and the shipping cost was $131.
Rob: $131. So surprisingly, this is a bigger, heavier unit, but I was able to break it down and get it into a box. So it didn't actually ship on a pallet. A lot of our stuff that's larger items, we will ship on a pallet. This was that threshold of typically we say $750 or below, typically you do not want to be shipping those items on a pallet. You want to try to either get them into a box, anything over $750, that you, typically you are going to be shipping on a pallet. Not always, but that's generally our rule of thumb on that. So this was underneath that. That very heavy.
It was a heavy box that we shipped. Actually, I did this in two boxes, believe it or not. I had to pull the handle off of that and ship it in a separate, very, very, thin box, but it was still, I think it was like three, three foot tall on that. So two different boxes that we shipped this, but what was the total profit on it overall?
Melissa: $357.
Rob: So $357, not bad for a $75 investment. We made $350, very it's smaller compared to what our normal flips are. But still, I, I like finding cool things and like, this was a commercial unit, that we were able to find and sell, so not a bad, not a bad deal at all.
Melissa: So the next one you didn't really want to sell, so, was the Boombox.
Rob: The Boombox! This one was, yeah, we actually got this from a local thrift store. I went in there, and I don't remember what sparked my interest on this. I think I had looked up boomboxes on eBay and saw that some of them were insane some vintage boomboxes. So this was from I believe the early 90s if i'm not mistaken. One of those cool boomboxes had the speakers on the side had the tape deck, two tape decks on it and then had a cd5 disc cd changer on the top. So it was a little bit newer than the more expensive ones that will sell from the 80s, but still a really really cool one.
I actually got it from the local thrift store not that far from our house. How much did we pay for it?
Melissa: We paid $15 for it.
Rob: $15 from the thrift store sold it for? $250. $250! And the guy that got this was very, very excited to get it. He messaged me multiple times asking me about the condition. Once he got it, he said this is in way better condition than I assumed it was in.
So he's very, very happy about that. But as I pulled this out, we put it in storage right after I did it. I started playing some DVDs and, I'm sorry, CDs and some tapes, that we had, just to making sure everything was working okay before I shipped it, and the kids were having a blast with these.
Melissa: And it's like, oh man, we should have kept it. Ugh!
Rob: It was so crazy. But anyways, we had fun. I packaged it up, had a good time getting it packaged up, packaged up and shipped it out. So $15 to $250, what were the numbers, what were our breakdowns?
Melissa: $25 for eBay and shipping cost was $21, so total profit was $189.
Rob: $189 and not spectacular, but remember this didn't go in a monster box either. It was not that big It was a very very light but at $21 to ship, you know, that's not a monster box So yeah, so killer killer deal got to play with the kids a little bit on this a little smaller item. So not not too bad.
Melissa: The next one was an interesting one.
So this was a thrift store. Thrift store find. Say that three times fast. I know. That you got for $10. It was the oxygen bar that you sold for $750.
Rob: So this one's cool. We were actually on a road trip and I found this at a thrift store, didn't know what the heck it was, but then did a little bit of research, found it, and retail on it, I believe, was $2,000 to $3,000. The thrift store, how much were they asking for it? $10. So $10 is what we bought this for. It did sit on eBay a little while, but remember, this thing is not very big at all. It was a commercial unit. We're always looking for commercial stuff because we know the retail on it is higher so we can sell it for more money.
So, it was a commercial unit, put it on eBay. I sat on it. I don't remember how long I sat on it, but it did sit on for a little while, but just took pictures of it, got good pictures of it, and I actually sold this as is, because I didn't really know how to test this. I think you had to have an oxygen,
uh, not a tank, one of those concentrators or one of those things that creates oxygen.
I think that's what you use to pump into the unit. And then it made some kind of different aromas or flavors or something like that. So, a little bit different, but we paid $10 for it, sold it on eBay for $750. And then what was the total number of the breakdowns on this one?
Melissa: eBay fees were $105. $105.
Shipping cost was only $27 because it wasn't that big. Not big. So, profit was $608.
Rob: $608. And this, even on the shipping cost of this, the half over half of shipping cost was the insurance. So that is a good note for you guys to know. Even on all of our items this one was $750. So I had to have the buyer sign for it. Anything.
Melissa: That's the threshold right, $750?
Rob: It is. So anything $750 or above you have to have your buyer sign for it. eBay requires you to do that just to verify that they receive the item and for insurance purposes. The buyer has to sign for this, direct signature on this, so they're expecting it, they're signing for it, and that way if anything does happen, the insurance has no problem going through.
So one thing that you do want to remember is do the insurance, have them sign for it, and the biggest thing is do it. Definitely, definitely pay for the insurance. This was half of the cost of my shipping. My half of the shipping cost was paying for the insurance because I wanted to make sure it was insured.
Melissa: That still doesn't seem like a lot of money though. $27? Nope.
Rob: But probably $15 of that was the insurance. Maybe it was $12. But it was right in that range and you want to pay that extra for something this expensive you always want to have insurance on it.
Melissa: I was gonna say that there was one time I remember somebody tried to return something. It was like a two years ago now. And they ended up going to their credit card because they didn't win in eBay. They went to their credit card and said they never received the item, but they signed for it.
So, we won automatically. Absolutely. It's like, that was probably not the best excuse you could have put. But I hate it when people try to lie. That drives me nuts. I'm like, duh, like if you have a legit issue, we're going to help you and we're going to work through it. We'll troubleshoot the unit, whatever we need to do.
Like we're going to help the customer and make them happy. But when people try to lie and it drives me nuts. But anyways, we won because they signed for it. So, we won that one. We had the proof.
Rob: All we had to show was the proof from the company that actually delivered it. They got the signature.
We got the documentation. We're able to approve it. So, that kind of stuff. Yeah, you want to make sure that your, your T's are crossed, your I's are dotted when you're doing this. And like I said, the biggest thing, always pay for insurance. If it's over $750, make sure they're signing for it. Those are the big things that you'll be able to do if something does happen and it goes, the, the sale go sale.
Melissa: Alright, the last one was the big one. Number four! It was the wheelchair.
Rob: Wheelchair! So we got this thing. Surprisingly, I had this thing for a little while. So this one's kind of a unique story. I got the wheelchair. I probably was regretting it after I bought it, just because it smelled of cigarette smoke, and I didn't know how hard it would be to get the cigarette smoke off of it.
I wiped it down, scrubbed it down, could not get the cigarette smoke off of it. So what I ended up doing, and this might be a big thing for anybody who deals with reselling something that might have cigarette smoke like baked into it, I feel like it was into the plastics and I didn't know it until I really picked it up and I, I felt bad.
I couldn't just turn away from the deal either. So we bought it, brought it back and I didn't probably list it for a couple months because I didn't really, you know, I didn't really, go into it and get it all cleaned up and all that stuff. But when I started to, the way that I got the cigarette smoke off of it, the smell of it was I got a big bag from U Haul, a mattress bag.
And what it was, I think a king size mattress bag. I actually drove it into, so I opened up the bag, put it on the ground, to where I could drive the wheelchair into the bag and then totally enclose it. And what I did is take a whole box of baking soda, I sprinkled it all over the unit, every, every inch of it.
I, I sprinkled baking soda all over it and then I sealed up the bag and I left it for a couple days. And then I opened it back up and got another box of baking soda and did the same exact thing. And I did that and I left it for about a week inside of that bag. And when I pulled it out, guess what? The smoke smell was gone.
It took it off all the plastics. I also washed so it had a cover on the cushion itself. I took that stuff out, I washed the cushion, did all that. And it turned out okay. So, after all that being said is we actually bought this thing for $250?
Melissa: $250.
Rob: $250 and then we sold it for?
Melissa: $2,500.
Rob: $2,500. That's our 10x.
That's what we really shoot for on the higher items is doing that, is trying to 10x what our original investment was, which this was awesome. It was a killer, killer deal. And once, what I was trying to tell you, was I, it took me a while to get it listed because of the condition that it was in, and I had to get the smoke smell off, and then I had to clean it all up.
Finally, when I sat down and did it, I think it only sat for like a week on eBay. Yeah, it was a week. It was, I had it listed for a week, and then it sold like that. It's like, gosh. And I could have done it months before since I bought it, but I did not do it. And that's kind of normal for me. Sometimes I'll buy something, and then I forget to get it listed, or I'll get on to another shiny object.
Melissa: I'd love to know who listening has the same issue because I do feel like this is a commonality in resellers that you get excited for the purchase and then it might sit for a little while, which is why people do have death piles. So this is your, your, whatever note to go get that thing listed.
Rob: Absolutely. Something cool about this one was I was doing a training video for this. So I actually found this on a training video I negotiated the deal. I did all that stuff. So I have all that Maybe we'll put that together and put it in a video soon. Who knows? But I did do the whole
Melissa: case study. Yeah.
Rob: I did do the whole process on this while I was actually doing a training video on finding high profit items. So we have all the all the documentation of finding the item, negotiation on the item, picking the item up, and then actually selling it, shipping, and all that kind of stuff. So maybe we'll do some kind of case study on that as well. But
Melissa: let us know would you like to see that because it's something we can put together.
Rob: Absolutely. So, that's one of those things but we ended up $250 to $2,500. What is the breakdown of what we spent on this one?
Melissa: So eBay fees were $314. Shipping cost was $437, which is a little higher than normal. I'll talk about that in a second. Shipping cost. So total profit was $1,499. So $1,500.
Rob: $1,500! Not bad for a $250 investment.
We were a little bit short on the profit wise on this, but still $1,500. If, if I told you, if I took $250 of your money to give you $1,500 back, would you do it? Absolutely would do that. So that was a killer killer deal on this. So shipping on this. So we spent a little bit more on shipping. I felt personally so when I sold this I noticed that it was a new eBayer.
So typically I mean probably, the chances of them finding this on Google on a Google search or something like that coming over to eBay and buying it that was probably what happened with this. And I know it was somebody who was handicapped, so, and my eBay listings, I charge more for residential delivery, and I didn't do that.
I waived that fee on this one. So, I paid an extra, I think it was $165, $175 extra for shipping to get this delivered to the individual's house, just because I felt like I should do that in this one. I don't always do that. Depends on what I sell. But in this one, I knew that it was a handicapped person who probably didn't have.
Melissa: She told you she was renting one at the moment too.
Yes, yes. And so she was trying to get it to her truck.
Rob: And she probably didn't have means to get to a truck to be able to get delivery on this from somewhere else or a commercial address. And typically that kind of delivery for pallets so she didn't have access to do that kind of stuff. So I went, like I said, I felt like I should be doing this and I just waived that fee.
And then I kept that, I kept it to where I delivered it to her residential address for that. She got it, had a little bit of an issue with it going slow, but she figured it out. I think the seat had to be all the way down or something weird.
Melissa: And you kept communication with her. You tried to troubleshoot it.
I did. And she got it figured out.
Rob: Yeah, and then a couple days later she got it all figured out. Worked perfect. So she enjoyed it and it was a good seat.
Melissa: I wanted to add two things. Her and then the Oxygen Bar were both new eBayers, so they both had zero feedback. So sometimes people block people with zero feedback and that's because, you know, they, you think they could be a scammer, there's people that just get open new accounts and they try to scam people, or they're just difficult.
But for us, we have found that for a lot of times people find us on Google and then they open up an eBay account and then they buy the item. And we've had, not had, knock on wood, bad instances with zero feedback people so I mean maybe in the past but not like a lot of people do. Absolutely. Zero feedback.
Absolutely. So that was interesting. Two out of the four sales were brand new eBay people.
Rob: For us, we do not block.
Melissa: And they're the higher, the bigger sales.
Rob: Yeah. So we do not block people with new eBay accounts because that's how eBay puts this stuff. It goes into Google and that's how it might be how you're attracting people is somebody searching on Google for this item, and they come over to eBay and buy it.
So if you are blocking, now I can't say the same thing for people that are buying, are selling $5 and $10 items. These are more expensive items that we don't typically get tire kickers for these. These people want these items. This person who bought this wheelchair, she was renting a wheelchair and she needed her own.
Melissa: And what was retail on this?
Rob: Oh, I, I probably $7,000, $10,000 maybe even more, $12,000, super, super expensive wheelchair. So it was a nice wheelchair. So yeah, she saved a ton of money by buying it with us and we delivered it directly to her door, which, that's what she wanted. So.
Melissa: So it might be worth it not to block them depending on what you're selling.
It does matter. And we also are still getting Google sEO when we're not using the new, promotions that eBay is wanting us to do. So they're saying you're not going to get on Google unless you are doing their new promotions, but we haven't done that yet and we're still getting on Google. So, but our business is a little bit different than most resellers, so we're not competing against each other.
Thousands and thousands of different people selling the same thing. So, so there is that. So that, that could be an issue if you want to get on Google and you need to promote it to get there, so. Absolutely. Anyways, I just wanted to note that, that we're not using that new system just yet.
Rob: So let's break down how long we actually had in the hourly wise of these items that we sold.
Melissa: Okay, so I did this. I said about an hour for the boom box. We just stopped in the thrift store, grabbed it. Yeah. Listing it and packaging it. That was all.
Rob: That's really, I mean, that's really on the, we're overestimating on that because all I did on this thing is wipe it down, do a quick video and a picture, get it listed, and then it took me no time whatsoever to wrap this thing up. So.
Melissa: It takes you longer to video every day.
It does it does to actually do it.
Rob: Actually showing the process. So probably about an hour for that that flip that we did.
Melissa: The same for the oxygen bar because it's just a little item. Same thing. Easy shipping. So. Absolutely. For the carpet scraper I put three hours because you had the box a little bigger and a little harder.
Rob: Still I think you're overestimating Yes, absolutely, but you're still this one and this one had rust on it.
It had I I did not even do any of that. I did a quick wipe down and that was it. Sometimes if I know the profit is there, I will paint stuff. I will do stuff that will make it look a lot better. This one I did not. I, and this one was sold as is, it had a little thing on the top that you actually had to spin to get it working.
All that stuff was disclosed. I showed the potential buyers the condition that it was in. So, yeah, three hours is definitely, I would, I would assume between two and three hours on this is very, very a good estimate. Yeah, conservative, we did, did not go over three hours because all we did is very easily take pictures of this, list it, and then the shipping aspect.
I feel like the shipping probably would have taken the longest. Because I did it in two boxes, so I feel like shipping was probably the longest aspect of it. It probably took me an hour total on shipping. Yup. So still, cool. Awesome.
Melissa: And then, the wheelchair, I put four hours in.
Rob: This one actually wasn't, that's probably good.
We might even round up a little bit more if we wanted to because of the time that I put actually driving this thing into a bag and trying to de-smoke it. So maybe even say five hours on that one. And that's still, I want to say it was under five, but if we overestimate on that, so five hours. So what total hours on this?
Ten hours. So 10 hours total on this month is what we had into the whole month on these items.
Melissa: So, which brings you to $267 an hour profit,
Rob: $267. There you go. That's profit.
Melissa: Not gross profit.
Rob: That's profit wise is what we were able to do on that, on these items. And like I said, we're conservatively, conservatively, giving the estimate hourly wise what it took us to do this.
But you can see with what we do, breaking it down. That's exactly what I talked you guys through and that's, yeah, I feel like that is conservatively.
Melissa: Yeah, so that was our month last month, so we're working on getting some more stuff listed this summer and yeah, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast and we're excited for the rest of the summer.
You guys are awesome!
Rob: Hey, I'll give you a little teaser of one of the items that is coming up. We bought a killer item from a local auction. $88 is all I spent on it. The retail on this item is $56,000. We'll be doing a video pretty soon of once that item sells, but I'm super excited about that.
Melissa: Gotta get it listed so it can sell.
Rob: That's it. So stay tuned! Well you guys have an amazing day. Thanks for hanging out with us and we can't wait to see you guys on the next episode!