Humble Beginnings
In January of 2020, I listed an old motorcycle manual that I had carried around for decades on eBay for $50. More or less on a lark – to see if anyone would be dumb enough to buy it…it sold within a couple of days and shipped overseas. In hindsight, it would most assuredly have brought a lot more than I sold it for – but it did start me thinking.
I set up an area in the bedroom my long-suffering family is letting me stay in and started sourcing a few things here and there. And getting rid of some of the stuff I had gathered up through the decades.
My First “Office”
I had moved a 5 foot long oak table into “my” room and set up my ancient mid-2010 iMac on it. It was a good start, but I quickly outgrew it. This type of business takes up a surprising amount of room for supplies and inventory. I began dumpster diving for boxes, and soon found some great sources for clean heavy duty ones.
My inventory and box hoard soon took over my available space and I moved my budding operation into the garage space usually occupied by Mom’s vintage Mercury Marquis. This move was a temporary respite as I expanded my listings pretty quickly, finally reaching 200 after a few months of part-time work between doc review projects…not much of an achievement, but it was soon bringing in enough profit to pay its way and paying for some new shelving and equipment.
To keep my shipping manageable, I got in the unconventional habit early on of getting the items fully ready to ship – boxed, weighed, and ready to slap a label on and send. I was doing document review also during this time so I needed to be able to get them in the mail quickly. I still do it this way. It takes time up front, but you gotta do it anyhow. I figure it’s best this way for me. The only problem is that if an item doesn’t sell – and I decide to re-donate it, I’ve wasted packing materials.
I put a couple of 6′ steel shelving units in the garage space in Mom’s former Marquis space. Sis could still get her car in, but I had pretty much maxed out the space I’d been able to whittle out.
The Mini Storage Progression
I found a shallow 6×10 climate-controlled mini storage not too far from the house and rented it at $80month. Moving my “stuff” into that space freed up my garage space – for a few weeks, at least. I soon rented a 10×20 space and bought two more heavy duty shelves – kind of a mini pallet rack design, and loaded them with storage totes. That space would serve me for the next year and some months. When I moved into that space, it was $165 a month. They bumped the rent to $177, then another $40 to $217 soon after that. In October of 2022, they sent me a notice that the rent was doubling to $400 a month. This is for 200 square feet…if it was a 1000 foot apartment, that would be equivalent to $2000. But at least the apartment would have a kitchen and bathroom! LOL!
The 10×20 was in a great location, and it was easy to get items in and out of it quickly. But that extortionate rate would have taken all of my average profits most months – so I looked around and found another unit. The next one was 10×30 (notice a pattern here?) and climate controlled – for $365 a month. A pretty big step, but the alternatives would be to liquidate my items and stop selling, or try and cram all my inventory into a smaller space, likely without climate control. I crunched some numbers and talked myself into the move. If I have to overpay for storage, I may was well pay less per square foot and give myself some room to grow (and move a few more things from the house to free up processing space in the garage.)
I got moved in and operational in October (’22) and it was working out great! The climate control was nice – it kept the temp at around 55 degrees or so, and the humidity was kept low.
When I contracted for this space, I explained what I needed to the site manager. He’s a fellow of near my “vintage” and has been working for the company for over 20 years. I told him that I’d need to do some inventory work from time to time and use the space as storage for my ebay items. He said the only issue was that there was very little lighting in the unit (you can see the little piece of fluorescent lighting fixture protruding through the wall in the picture above…) but that if I wanted to add some lighting, I could use the electrical power that was a couple units over (on the outside of the building).
Being climate-controlled, he also said that I’d have to keep the door shut to keep the climate controlled air in as much as possible…logical, right?
Everything was going great for about 6 weeks until they get a new manager in the location, and “my” manager gets moved to another one a few miles away. I’m working away in my unit one evening and she comes around and beats on the door – telling me that I can’t close the door while I’m in there. I calmly explain my conversation with the former manager and she won’t hear of it. She’s got a real chip on her shoulder and can’t possibly be wrong. Anyhow – that turns into a big hassle immediately, and instead of engaging in a huge battle of wits with an unarmed person, I just move.
Fortunately, across the street and down about a block was a facility with a 10 x 40 for $320…not climate controlled, but convenient to the post office. It took me about 3 easy days to get moved. This one also has no power (lights) but the manager (again) tells me that I can use the outside power….and can keep the door closed if I like. After I’m there a couple weeks, a fellow I thought was a district manager came by and walked in while I was working. I explained the situation to him and he (thankfully) said that it looked like a really good set up to him and that we had no problems. (WHEW!) (Come to find out, he’s actually the owner of the facility – and I didn’t have any issues at all.)
That unit worked out really well, but of course they had raised the rent by December of 2023 to $365/month. The extra space wasn’t really helping me that much and the financial strain was just too much. On December 9th, a tornado came through our fair city – making a mess of many small businesses in the area around this storage facility.
I finally managed to talk my way through a roadblock to get closer to my unit. I could see it through the security fence, but couldn’t really tell much about it. The door blown off the end unit and all the junk piled on the roof was certainly not confidence-inspiring, though. (Mine is the third from the end.) Luckily, my unit was unscathed but I couldn’t get to it for nearly a week because of utility work just down the road a bit. When I got the statement a few days later, there wasn’t any discount for the loss of access. I really had overshot my square footage requirements and expense anyway, so I looked around a bit.
I quickly found 3,000 sq ft of conditioned space at, of all places, my original storage place. The one that had jacked up the rent to $400 for 200 sq ft a couple years earlier. They had this space available for $206 a month. It ended up being 2 adjacent units of 10×15 each, but that’s actually working out better than one unit – the walls are great for stacking against. I’ve got one of them set up as “storage” and the other set up for “active storage” – for items to sort and to donate or list on ebay. Anyhow – moving all that crap is getting tiresome…I’m ready for a serious downgrade in quantity and upgrade in quality!
Shipping Area
I’ve scooted out this area in the corner of the garage to use for taking photos and getting items boxed before putting in inventory. It’s grown quite a bit since I started, and despite the massive clutter, it works pretty well.
The real sellers seem to be churning along nicely. I’ve watched a guy named Wick for a couple years that’s been a great source of solid selling information. His channel is:
https://www.youtube.com/@FlippingJunk
He’s been doing this for years, as well as dabbling in other money-making pursuits. He’s pragmatic and pretty entertaining. I like that he says he’s a reseller that does YouTube videos. Lots of fakes in this genre.
About a week ago I stumbled across a fellow that does flipping as a side gig to his full-time job. He estimates that he spends 20 hours a week or so at it, blending it with his other responsibilities like dropping kids off the piano lessons. He’s got an easy-going, no-nonsense attitude and tracks his sales data more closely than anyone I’ve ever seen on YT. He is transparent with his process and his results, giving information and walking you through his system step by step. He also shares a lot of insights he’s figured out. He has about 1,000 listings and nets approximately $40k/year (!!!!) working as a side gig. His channel is:
https://www.youtube.com/@justinresells
I binge-watched his content and was about to radically transform my listings to conform to his system – and wrenched my back. I seem to do this about every 3-4 years, and it puts me flat on my back for several days, with another couple of weeks to get back to 100%. This episode lasted about 2 days before I could reasonably navigate and felt good to drive. Not sure why it was less, but am sure glad that it was! I’d been following the “new” Carnivore diet for about 2 weeks and am pretty sure that played a big part in my speedier recovery.
When I got able to sit for a period of time, I started cleaning up my listings. First Class Packages had been absorbed by the postal service’s new Ground Advantage – so I manually changed out most of those first. I then changed my return policy to “30-Day Return, Seller Pays” – I’m a Top-Rated Seller, so if someone returns something that they’ve trashed or try to pull a switch with their old broken unit, I can at least cut the return amount by up to 50% with good cause.
I mentioned earlier that I packed and weighed my items before I listed them…and I’m going to have a hard time getting away from that system – but I have to. It takes up WAY too much room, is slow, and I don’t know of anyone else that does it that way. I blame my auto parts background – I love a nice, ready-to-ship inventory!
To that end I changed my shipping time from 1 day to 3 day…and will still box the truly weird-size items. I don’t want to get stuck without a box of the right size.
I’ve recently changed all my eBay info to the new corporate identity, and will spend a little more effort into making it profitable. I do think there is a good potential in the platform.