Rob and Melissa Stephenson, of Flea Market Flipper, talk about what they sold on eBay for $6,000.
Check out our free flipping workshop: https://courses.fleamarketflipper.com/webinar-workshop-registration125027
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fleamrktflipper/
You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
What We Sold On eBay For $6,000
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about what we sold on eBay for $6,000 and how we did it.
Rob: Alright, guys, so today's episode is a fun one. A single flip for $6,000. If that's not high profit, I don't know what is. But a single flip, we actually paid $350 for it.
Melissa: It does matter, like when you're saying if that's not high profit.
We're not, we're going to dive into the numbers in just a little bit. But, you can't say high profit unless you know that you didn't pay as much for it.
Rob: Absolutely. You're right. High profit. So we paid $350 for this and we sold it for $6,000, which is a killer, killer deal. We love flips like that.
So we're going to break it down for you. Kind of the story of how we got it. And then what the fees, what the eBay fees and everything that it actually cost us total. So what our total profit was on a $6,000 sale.
Melissa: Yep, and we're excited to be back on the podcast. We're gonna get them out more consistently again.
We love doing this. We would love to hear from you. We got, we got to hear from a couple of people in our group who posted and said, we love your podcast. We need to, we need you guys to do it again. So, so if you do like to listen, we'd love if you leave us a review, it helps us know that you are here.
Like sometimes we're not just talking to nobody. So we did get that feedback in our group, which was super nice. And we love to see it cause we'd love to hang out with you guys. So, hopefully you should start to see those more consistent again. We do have a big hurricane coming up. So we're trying to get this done before the hurricane comes.
So pray for all the people on the coast of Florida that are about to get hit by the hurricane because they're already doing some repairs and stuff. So from the last one, so keep them in your prayers for sure.
Rob: Absolutely. And yeah, definitely. We know it it's happened. There are people in hurting that are hurting right now and we have another big one coming this way.
So. During this episode, that's what's going on in our lives. We have to get ready ourselves, but we wanted to talk about this sale that we did last week, kind of give you guys some hope, some, some insight on what it looks like to be able to flip high profit items and that's what we're going to do.
So, this, go ahead.
Melissa: I was just gonna say, so how did we find this item? Because that's always a fun thing. How do you find it? And so we found this one, surprise, while we were on a road trip. So.
Rob: Our goal is to be able to go on road trips and be able to pay for the road trip by finding an item. So I'm always looking when we get to a place, if we're going somewhere, I'm always looking around in that area to see if I can find something, or even sometimes outside of that area, maybe on the journey home.
And that's what I did for this one. This one wasn't really, really close to us where we were staying, but it was on the ride home. It was, we were going through a town and I found this thing and I believe if I'm not mistaken, I don't remember exactly how much he was asking for it. It was a commercial dishwasher.
That's what we sold. It was a commercial dishwasher. And I don't believe, I believe he was asking maybe $500 for it. If I'm not mistaken, he was asking that maybe, I don't remember. Don't quote me on that, but I know what we paid for it. We paid $350. So I offered him less for it. He was excited to get $350 for it because he knew he was in a local area and he knew he had had to sit for a little while and he was unable to sell it.
So when I offered him $350 he jumped on it. He was excited about getting that. So, yeah. We offered him $350 on the way back home through this town. We stopped by we picked it up, oh, this is, I even forgot that part of the story. What? We picked it up in our pickup truck, so I didn't have a actual trailer with us, but I had our pickup truck.
Oh, I do remember this part. We picked it up with the pickup truck.
Melissa: But before you get into that. Go ahead. Before you get into that. So, this guy was so nice, like he was one of the nicest guys, and he was a flipper himself, like he had a whole bunch of stuff. He had a forklift. He had all this stuff and he was a nice old guy.
And I'm like, you would be friends with him, totally, if he lived in our area. Like we would definitely have a relationship because he, he was just super nice and so cool and helped you with the item. He had more stuff. You'd probably buy a lot more stuff from him. So I just wanted to add that. So he was really cool.
It's fun. It's fun to meet new people that are like, do this business. What, what exactly did he do? He did reselling in a different capacity.
Rob: I think this thing came from an auction. I think he bought it from an auction. So he sold, maybe tables and chairs and other equipment other types of kitchen equipment and stuff like that. So he had a warehouse full of this stuff. But when I reached out for this he was very very willing to take $350 dollars for it and he was excited about it to be honest. So, he had a forklift there. He actually picked it up put it in the back of our pickup truck.
We have an F250, an older F250, F250 pickup truck. So he put it in the back. We set it all up, we got it loaded up, got it strapped on and all that stuff. And then we took off on our way home.
Melissa: And how many, how many hours? So the trip total was only like six hours, right?
Rob: Five or six hours. Yeah.
Melissa: Five or six hours was total.
So we found this like an hour after we left, I think. Yeah. So, so then it was in the car. So we're trying to get home. This was actually on New Year's Eve.
Rob: Was it really?
Melissa: Yeah. 'cause we were trying to get back to go to your sister's house. Okay. For New Year's Eve. So we were leaving and yeah.
Rob: The crazy part about it is my truck has been making a noise for, I don't know, probably a year and I heard it and I didn't know what it was. And come to find out it was in the rear end. So once we put all the weight of this commercial dishwasher on the back end of it, we made it about another hour and all of a sudden the rear end went out on my truck. Which was crazy. So we pulled off. I think we just made it into Florida if I'm not mistaken Was it? Just made it into Florida off the border. And yeah, we pulled over to a gas station and we ended up having to get the truck towed home from that location. Which don't worry, if you guys don't know us, we don't drive new vehicles, but I do have AAA. And AAA,
Melissa: we have the top tier
Rob: where they will tow us 200 miles if we have to. This was one of those times where we had to get towed right around 200 miles to get.
Melissa: It was less than 200, wasn't it?
Well, we didn't pay anything extra. Yeah, we didn't have to pay any extra, so it was, I was under that, under that radius. And we made it home. We went to your sister's house for New Year's Eve. So, I mean, yeah, we made it.
Rob: So we got a tow truck that actually held all of us, our family of five, and then also, picked up our pickup truck and put it on the back of the flatbed.
Melissa: That guy was super nice too.
Rob: He was super nice, yeah.
Melissa: We get to meet some pretty cool people when our truck breaks down.
Rob: We had some, some fun with that. But anyways, so we got the dishwasher home. It actually took me a little while to get it loaded. I mean, get it, listed, because I had to, figure out how to fix the truck.
I probably didn't even get it listed for a good month before we got everything else fixed and done. But it's alright. We got it listed and got it sold.
Melissa: You probably didn't get it listed for a couple months, to be honest.
Rob: Probably not. Probably not because I don't think I fixed my truck. We actually, it went down and I didn't fix it for a little while.
So, but I had to buy a new rear end and put a new rear end on the truck and did all that stuff. But, anyways. All that being said is, yeah, so we paid $350 for it. We sold it for $6,000. So I actually had this thing listed, I believe it was for $8,999 for $9,000. And I think I was giving somebody a pretty good deal at $9,000.
But then somebody reached out and asked me if I would take $5,000. Now remember, I only got $350 into this. That's all the money that I spent out. Well, if you count my rear end that broke, you can add that to it.
Melissa: But it was already broken. So.
Rob: I paid a couple hundred dollars for the rear end too, and I fixed it myself. So. We're not even going to talk about that, but we did pay $350 for the dishwasher. And for me to have that and then somebody offer me $5,000, I mean, that probably would have been a good deal for me to take. But there is something mental when somebody sends you an offer, to actually go back and negotiate a little bit with them.
If they send you an offer for $5,000 and then you jump on it and you take it, they're like, well, maybe he would have taken less than that. So I went back with the guy and I told him, I can't go that low, but I will do $6,000. So I came down off of my $9,000, $8,999. I came off of $9,000, a couple thousand dollars. I, and he wrote back and said, well, I'll split it with you and I'll do $5,500.
And I stuck to my guns because I know if I'm already coming off that much, I don't really need to come on anything more off of $6,000. So I wrote back to him and said, $6,000 is really the lowest that I can go. And then he didn't say anything for 24 hours. And then after 24 hours, he wrote back and said, all right, send me the offer.
I'll buy it for $6,000. So I sent him the offer. We did the deal and we sold it for $6,000. So, killer deal, got it palleted up, got it shipped. And shipped it out. And now let's jump into the number. So what profit, did we make on this dishwasher after we paid eBay fees, after we paid shipping and all that stuff?
We'll give you the numbers of what we paid for each part of that. And then we'll talk about the profit.
Melissa: Because the $6,000 included shipping. So that was, so we have to go out that too. So that's something that we like to do with our, you do with, you go back and forth and sometimes he'll switch it up and add shipping. Free shipping, flat rate shipping, do free shipping, but we're it's built into the price.
So we already know like we have enough profit in the item that we can do that.
Rob: And I figured I'd spend about $500 on shipping on this. It's a bigger dishwasher. I think it's taller than me was how big it was.
Melissa: Did it go on a bigger pallet?
Rob: It, yes, it did. So it wasn't on a standard 40 by 48. It was longer than that. So it did go on a bigger pallet.
This one actually had the pallet, the guy had it on the pallet that we picked it up from so he already built the pallet. But I built a box around it. So I built it into a crate as well. So. Yeah, let's talk about the number. We paid $350 for it, we sold it for $6,000. What other fees did we incur in this sale?
So we paid eBay $401.
Melissa: So woohoo. Now they gotta love us.
Rob: You might be thinking, okay, you're lying about the fees. So how eBay works is the first $2,500 is that, that initial fee. And we are selling in different categories than most people sell. So ours roughly averaged out to be about 13%, $2,500. They take that 13% of the fees.
After that, the fees drop down to like 3.25 or
Melissa: no, it's 2.5,
Rob: 2.5 or 2.7, something like that. Ridiculous for every,
Melissa: I think it matters the, the different categories. Yeah, but it's around, it's around 2.5. So.
Rob: For every dollar that's over that $2,500, we get charged only the two point something percent on that.
So that's how it ended up only being $400 instead of, it would be over $600 $700 when at that 13%. So a lot of people wonder about that, but it also, it all has to depend on with how much, so when you sell the higher profit items, your fees come way, way down after that 200 or $2,500, threshold that it is.
Melissa: Yeah. We get that question a lot.
Rob: So, so the eBay fees were how much for
Melissa: $401.
Rob: $400 on eBay fees. Now, how much were the shipping fees?
Melissa: Shipping cost was $553.
Rob: $553 for shipping. And I, I averaged, I mean, I figured it would be about $500 for shipping. So, and that's what even, I told the guy when he offered me less, $5,500, I said, no, I really have to get some money for shipping into this.
And that's why I said I wouldn't come off of the $6,000. So, we spent just on, just over, no, just under $1,000 for eBay fees and shipping, right? Yep.
Melissa: Yep.
Rob: It was, $950.
Melissa: $950. Okay.
Rob: About $950 on that plus the $300. So.
Melissa: But that's not money we had to go out before.
Rob: We did not until after we got paid.
Melissa: So the money we had to go out before it was $350,
Rob: which is awesome.
We love that only $350 to go out to make how much profit? What was the total profit? $4,696. $4,500, guys, is the profit. This is the high profit that we're looking for. We love being able to make these high profit flips. And tell you guys exactly how we do it. So, hopefully they, they get you guys jazzed up. They get me excited when I'm able to do this.
It's so much fun to be able to find these and then flip them and then tell you guys about them as well.
Melissa: I wanted to go back to what you said about negotiating. So if this guy offered you $5,000 for the item and you would have taken it right away, He's going to pay right away. So like you can go sit, you can say, okay, here I sent the offer, but then that's when something clicks in his head.
Like, Oh, they, they took it right away. I could've got it for less. And then they don't end up buying. So that's kind of the thought process behind that part of it is. So if you get an offer, you might not want to respond to it right away. And accept it because sometimes they're like, oh, well, if they're going to go less, I'm not going to go and, and do this.
So anyways.
Rob: Well, this came from years of experience guys. Cause I've done this. Somebody's offered me less for an item. I needed the money and I wanted to sell it quickly. So I send back an offer and I'm like, all right, I'll take it. Then they don't complete the deal because of this mental struggle in their head of, wait a minute, I could have got it for less.
I'm not going to buy it now. I don't want it anymore for that price. I could have gotten it for less. And that's the struggle. So when you come back with a counter offer, when somebody offers you less than what you're asking for it, Even if it's maybe something not to this scale, but maybe you're, you have something for a hundred dollars and somebody offers you $75 and you come back at $80 or $85.
It's just a little bit over to where they're thinking, okay, he's not a pushover. He wouldn't come for that. That's the thing about the negotiation that we've learned through years and years, decades of doing this business is learning how to really work the negotiation in your favor. And this is one of those keys in that.
Melissa: Yeah. And I don't want to say like, don't respond right away because you want good customer service and good communications, good communication with your customers because you want you don't want them to become a customer. Yeah, so you want that good communication.=, But like just saying yes, I'll accept the offer right away is something that is just a mental block with people. So just know that whenever you go get offers from people and then he took 24 hours and came back and said, okay, so where did you almost take it take the $5,500?
No,
Rob: I wasn't gonna take the $5,500 because that's a huge drop from nine thousand to fifty five hundred dollars. And at that point, yeah, I knew $6,000 was, I to be honest with you I can read people in person and I'm learning my skills on reading people online as well. For this to drop down from a $9,000 price tag to $6,000, that's a huge drop for somebody not to take it for $500. That that's a huge deal that I I knew that he would come back and say he wanted it.
Melissa: It's hard to read people on text and messages though because you don't know how they're writing something or what the context they're trying to say is.
Rob: Way easier to do it in person. But it's a skill set that you kind of experience. And had this been from like $9,000 to $8,000,, To be honest with you, I probably would have jumped on it at just a little bit of a negotiation. I probably would have jumped on that, but knowing how far he was coming down and what I was actually asking back in return, it wasn't that much, so there's no way he should have done it.
Plus, the retail on this thing is, in the probably $30,000s or $50,000 on these dishwashers. So I knew he was still getting a spectacular deal, and there's no reason for me to ship it to him, for that price. And, and yeah, he shouldn't have any issues with it.
Melissa: I was going to say, even just yesterday, we picked up a golf cart.
Our kids have been wanting us to have a golf cart. We sometimes we go with our friends to camping or whatever, and we haven't had a golf cart in a while. So he found one on marketplace yesterday for how much was it?
So, how much did he list it for?
Rob: He didn't have it listed. He wanted an offer.
Melissa: He didn't have any price listed?
Rob: No, no price, just sent an offer. And so I sent him an offer, which I thought was a very reasonable offer. $750. I thought it was actually on the lower side of low balling him because the golf cart that we got is like a 6 or 8 passenger. A longer one. It's not new, it's older. But still at the same time, in our local town, those golf carts go for $7,000, $8,000.
Melissa: But he's in the middle of nowhere.
Rob: And we had to drive an hour to pick this up, but at the same time, so when I sent him an offer for $750, I think I overshot my offer. I probably could have got it for like $400 or $500, just because where he was at. And when I got there, it wasn't in the greatest condition that I thought it was.
He didn't show me all the imperfections, but he was super nice and he let me come down. He's like just give me $650, and I'll take it for that.
Melissa: You didn't even ask to come down. I didn't.
Rob: He did it automatically.
Melissa: As we were leaving, he's like, I probably could have got it for less. But at the same time, the guy was super nice and like, we'd rather him have that extra money.
He seemed like he needed it right then.
Rob: And he was helping me fix the lights on my trailer. He was offering me straps to strap stuff down, which I already had straps, but he's like, I got more straps. So I knew he was trying to over deliver on what this thing. It was awesome. It's awesome when you deal with people like that.
I love it. When we, when we're able to meet people and really interact with people that are really really cool.
Melissa: He's super nice. So that was our six thousand dollar flip last month. We had a couple more flips that we're going to talk about when we do the, I have to get the numbers for the monthly recap and we'll dive into those. But if you are listening and you're interested in learning more about our business model, how we like always look for these items. Like last year, our average sale price was $2,007 for, for our items. So we are always consistently going for those $1,000 to $2,000 sales. And that's, that's just what we like because it saves us so much time.
So if you're interested in learning more about that business model, we put together a free workshop. You can check it out in the link below. And see if it would be a good fit for you, even if you could add one of these kind of flips per month, just one to your business. So.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
We can't wait to see you on the next episode, but have an amazing day and we'll see you next time.