This Reseller Life

On Your Mark, Get Set…

Bradley Harris — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 02:11:27 +0000

I have been planning my 90-Day Bins Listing Challenge since before Christmas. I chose a start date that would take me to the end of April and then give me a moments respite before yard sale season began. So, tomorrow is the day. This morning, however, we awoke to frigid temperatures and snow.

Snow. We were expecting the polar plunge, but no one mentioned snow. I hate driving in snow and with these temperatures, it isn’t going to melt before tomorrow morning. My plan was to go to the bins, first thing to see what I could find, come home and begin my listing challenge. Did I mention how much I hate driving in the snow?

Yesterday, we discovered that my dishwasher has been leaking. We have ordered the part, but I am going to be without it for several days. We also discovered that the leak from the aforementioned dishwasher has caused considerable damage to the subfloor in my kitchen, requiring a fun new home improvement project in the middle of winter. Yay, for unexpected home improvement projects? *That was sarcasm in case you didn’t recognize it.*

This is when I begin second guessing myself. Am I taking on too much stress? How will I feel if I get a few days into this and my kitchen is torn apart for days and days? Do I really need some big, hairy ass goal (BHAG) to motivate me? I mean really who cares if I do this or not? Did I mention snow?

Part of this challenge, for me, is also a great project to finally get my website off the ground. I have never been focused enough to dig in and stay consistent. I believe that challenging myself to examine my sourcing and listing will give me a great framework to launch This Reseller Life for real. I am also trying to determine whether or not I am making enough money based on the amount of effort I am expending and the physical space it is taking up in my home to justify continuing on my reselling journey.

Well, my car has 4-wheel drive and I can always take the back way to the Outlet. I will just take it slow and make other drivers crazy. As for the kitchen, Brad can do dishes and I have no more control over the floor getting fixed if I postpone the challenge or not. I’ve sort of got that now or never kinda feeling and that if I postpone by even a day, I will continue to find reasons to postpone until I just decide to forget the whole idea.

So, for now, it’s a go. I am preparing my photography space and organizing my listing equipment. I have my gloves and IKEA rainbow bags in the car and my gym bag is packed and ready to go. Always an overachiever, I am planning on stopping by the gym

for a quick workout and hydro-massage after my sourcing excursion. I will then swing by my storage unit to pick up my solds and come home and get my shipping ready for drop off at the post office.

Then, the listing process will begin. I am hoping to list anywhere from 10 – 20 pieces a day. I usually start with photography and down and dirty drafts on my cell phone. Later, I can finish the drafts on my laptop and launch. It’s amazing how motivated I get when I have drafts waiting for me.

This is my plan. This is the way.

Wish me luck!

The post On Your Mark, Get Set… first appeared on This Reseller Life.

90-Day Bins Listing Challenge

Bradley Harris — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 01:40:01 +0000

What is it about putting a number to a goal? I don’t mean, necessarily, I want to lose 46 pounds (by the way, that is a silly number because our goal numbers usually end in 0 or 5) but I am going to do ‘x’ for 30, 60 or 90 days. I guess it’s like holding your breath and or taking a slice measurement during a research project. Humans have an ability to focus on intense projects if they know there is an endpoint.

So, on January 31, we will begin a 90-day Bins Listing Challenge. I want to see just how much a solopreneur can make if they focus their sourcing at the Goodwill Outlet and list consistently. I won’t limit my sourcing 100% to the bins but will source there 2-3x a week. There is an ARC Thrift Store right across the street and I just can’t resist those 50% days. I do well there and I won’t limit an income source completely just for the purpose of a good story. I will, however, keep separate accounting for inventory purchased from other sources.

So, together, we will track time spent sourcing and listing, thrift hauls and then sold reports. We will also keep track of costs and profits. Fortunately, we have a well-run Goodwill Outlet about 12 minutes from my home. There are also three outlets in the Denver area about 60-90 minutes away. I will make a couple of Denver trips during this challenge and try to do a comparison. Denver and Colorado Springs are very different communities and I find different brands and types of items at each Outlet.

I have never posted a YouTube video before but I think it might be helpful for hauls and trips. I will let you watch while I learn a completely new skill set. It should be fun for you and horrifying for me, but I think this will be the most effective way to show hauls and sales.

I don’t have a specific niche. I buy clothes, shoes and accessories as well as household items and home décor. My favorite things to sell are media, toys and plush. One of my goals with this challenge is to try to find more items that will sell quickly. Although we are entering a slowing sales season and according to many economists, a recession, people still spend money. The trick is to find things that people want and price them attractively while still maintaining a decent return on investment.

Goal = 1,000 new quality listings

I am hoping to check in a couple of times a week so make sure you are following me on Instagram and Facebook.

The post 90-Day Bins Listing Challenge first appeared on This Reseller Life.

Unpopular Opinion – Where to start

Bradley Harris — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 02:40:04 +0000

Resellers with a YouTube following are not always experts.

Let that sink in a moment.

Let me just say that there is some terrible advice
circulating out in the ether. I mean, hey, at some point someone thought it was
a great idea to pick up the black diamond Disney VHS tapes. One of the great
things about reselling is its variety and flexibility. Not everyone does things
the same way; nor should they.

The conventional wisdom that I want to challenge today is
the whole, “Start with things that you find around your house.” Never have I
gone through my personal possessions and thought, should I sell my personal
possessions to start a business on ebay. Many of you know the story of how I
got sucked into the reselling world. We were pretty broke, but I had some cash
in pocket and had stopped in at our local Goodwill. They had some Southern
Living at Home pottery by Gail Pittman on the shelves and I bought it. To this
day, I love Gail Pittman pottery, even though it doesn’t have the resale value
it once did. My husband, who had dabbled with ebay for one off sales here and
there, mentioned that I could probably find more pieces there if I wanted. I
asked him to look up prices and was shocked by how much these pieces were
bringing on ebay. I looked at him and said, “Sell them.”

So, I helped him with the photography, and he showed me how
to list. They sold rather quickly. Now, you might suggest that because these
were something I had purchased for myself that I did indeed start with personal
possessions. Maybe. I never used them or put them away and I sold them almost
immediately. I had no attachment to these dishes that I had just purchased and
shipping them off to a new home for much more than I had paid for them was a
great feeling.

It never occurred to me to go through my cupboards and pull
out my other pieces of pottery to sell. Instead, I went back to the thrift
store to see what else I could find. I figured out how to look items up on ebay
and to check the ‘solds’. I started with dishes and figurines. I opened my own
account and got to work.

I would encourage someone who wanted to start an ebay business,
to begin with what they know or love. Take twenty bucks and go to the thrift
store and browse. Use the ebay app and look stuff up. Just pick up a couple of
things that have value and are selling pretty well. By the way, if something
has twenty listings up for sale and only two sold, it is not selling well. You
get my drift. Texas Gal Treasures has a great YouTube video on checking
sell-through rates and I find her videos to be a good resource. I started with
dishes. You might know and love fashion. If you are a fashionista, I
would urge you to start with ebay. If you can list on ebay, listing on Poshmark
will be a breeze.

When I started, ten years ago, it never occurred to me to
check blogs or YouTube to get help with my ebay business. The most help I
received was from ebay employees. Every time I called to request an increase in
listings, I got great advice. Today, it is almost impossible to speak with an
ebay employee. Alas, such are the times in which we live. It would be 18 months
before I found Suzanne A Wells, my first ‘expert’ for help with ebay. This led
me to others, some of whom I still listen to today. I don’t agree with
everything they teach but there is a lot of great information out there.

Caveats and Exceptions

1.
If you are legitimately downsizing it doesn’t
make sense to donate things that can bring you money on ebay. I know of some
sellers that got started because they were downsizing or tasked with going
through a family member’s estate.

2.
If you don’t have $20 to spare. If this is really
the case, selling your personal possessions is probably not going to be enough
to get you started. If you are able, it might be worth getting a part-time job
to get the investment money to start. Another option would be to let friends
and family know you are wanting to start a reselling business and ask them to
donate their gently used items to you instead of a charity thrift store.

You need to do what is right for you and best for your
business. In the upcoming weeks, I am going to focus on what I feel is the low
hanging fruit in reselling and that would be the Goodwill Outlet AKA the bins.
I am approaching this in the nature of a research project. Can a reseller
really make a living sourcing at the bins and selling on ebay and other
platforms?

Stay tuned.

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What a Croc!

Bradley Harris — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 22:48:10 +0000

Several years ago, as I was wandering around our mall (back when we wandered among other humans) I saw a vendor in the middle of the walkway, selling the oddest shoes I had ever seen. They looked like rubbery plastic clogs. I remember mentioning them to my mom and she was like, “Oh yeah, Mario Batali wears those.” Who? So as you can see, I was really not up on fashion or Food Network chefs. Over the next few years, Crocs became more and more common but it never occurred to me to purchase them because they were the stupidest looking shoes I had ever seen.

Years later, after I had begun my reselling journey, I started seeing all kinds of Crocs that didn’t look like the ugly, rubbery plastic clogs. I had picked up a couple of different looking pairs and was surprised and delighted by how quickly they sold and that they turned a decent profit. I even bought a couple of pairs of Crocs myself. Well, the truth is that I LIVE in my Crocs all summer.

Now I rarely pass up a pair of Crocs when I am sourcing. As I am mostly sourcing at our Goodwill Outlet these days, AKA ‘the Bins’, I pay $1.39 a pound for them and as we all know, they don’t weigh much. The main determining factor is the bottom tread. Of course, some of these shoes are beyond salvaging…

Here is a pair that I picked up last week. They cost me roughly 80 cents. I thought they were cute. In my defense, it was early morning and kinda dark in the Goodwill Outlet. We are given a two-hour time limit, due to Covid-19 protocols (they are limited to 40 shoppers at a time) so I must confess that I didn’t give them quite the going over I might have in the past. They will serve as an example of how easy it is to restore them to shiny again.

Here they are before I cleaned and treated them. Notice that they have PAINT on them. What was I thinking?

Well loved shoes. Kinda yucky

Paint on the bottoms of the shoes.

The first step is to soak them in my sink in warm water and baking soda. I then sprayed them with a bit of Dawn dish spray and poured some baking soda directly on them. The baking soda acts as a cleanser of sorts and works magic at getting scum and okay, paint, off of Crocs.

Soak shoes in warm water and baking soda.

In the next step, I use a Magic Eraser to scrub the sides (this works great on white Crocbands) and get whatever discoloration the baking soda missed. I cut my magic erasers into smaller pieces and use one piece per pair of shoes.

Next step, magic eraser.

Finally, I use Crocs Shine polish to make the shoes shiny again. I purchase this directly from the Crocs website and it is a game changer. It really does bring Crocs back to life. It also works wonders on other rubber-based shoes. I may start buying it in bulk.

Final step is Crocs Shine

Here is the finished product. As you can see, they look much better on top, but there is still some paint left on the soles of the shoes and far more tread wear than I had noticed.

Much cleaner and prettier shoes.

Still a bit of paint on the bottoms and more tread wear then I like.

Hmm… to list or not to list…

I normally list everything fixed price/buy it now but after considering tossing them into the ‘redonate’ pile, I listed these shoes as an auction with a starting bid at $2.99 + shipping. We’ll see what happens. As of this moment, I have four watchers on them. If they were my size, I certainly would have kept them and worn them.

I will let you know what happens.

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