Last year’s numbers are in and we had $92,341 in sales from our reselling business with just part-time hours in 2023.
We’re going to dive into the item costs, eBay fees, shipping costs, and of course, the profits!
We jumped into flipping full-time in 2016, and it’s gotten more part-time for us in recent years, but we like to be transparent with our sales. The other part of our business is content and coaching, but we are very much still into the flipping game.
Last year we averaged roughly 5-10 hours a week, sometimes less, sometimes more, to bring in $92,341. That was our total sales for 2023 with just 46 items sold. Our average sale price was $2,007 per item.
This is why we like the high profit model. It takes us less time to sell one item than what it takes some resellers to get to the same profit point. We strive for the less time model because we can spend more time with our family.
We didn’t start here, but we’ve gravitated towards this business model because for us it just makes sense. We can spend a lot less time finding items, listing them, taking pictures, and shipping them.
Diving Into 2023 Numbers
One of our goals for our flipping business is to 10X our investment. If we spend $100 on an item, we want to sell it for at least $1,000. To be able to make the $92,000 sales last year, we only had to spend $7,359 on inventory throughout the year, which is 12.5X our investment. We overshot our goal by a bit, which is pretty cool. That number is important because it gives you the flexibility to pay for eBay fees and shipping, while still bringing home a good profit.
Notable Flips
Last year our largest single item we flipped was the Turbo Chef. This was the second or third Turbo Chef we’ve sold and it sold for $6,250. I paid $150 on Marketplace for this and it paid for our family’s 17-day LA to Hawaii cruise.
We got a cooktop on our roadtrip for $65 that we sold for $1,500. The guy was going to take it to the scrap yard that day if we didn’t pick it up. He had looked me up on Facebook and saw I was from Florida. We picked it up on our way to Niagara Falls somewhere in Ohio, and he was skeptical that we would show. He gave us the benefit of the doubt and he was excited we were able to get there. Once we got that listed, it sold really quickly.
Our most profitable 2023 flip happened early in the year and it was the 12 stretchers that we bought from one of my contacts. They were ambulance stretchers and we got them all for $2,200, so around $183 each.
This was a scary flip because we don’t normally spend that much to buy inventory. Melissa didn’t want me to do this one, but I knew the profit was there if we 10x’d our investment. I sold the first four for $1,500 a piece for local pickup. Then from there, I kept increasing the costs. The total sales for the stretchers was $35,650.
Almost every year we find one item that we get in bulk that makes us a ton of money and in 2023 it was the stretchers. In previous years, we’ve found bulk deals on electrical panels, lights, Sleep Numbers and others. We look for those items that we can buy in bulk, but they have to be high profit items.
2023 eBay Fees
Some of our sales were from Facebook Marketplace so we didn’t have fees for those. Roughly $19,000 was sold on Facebook and $73,000 was sold on eBay.
We don’t do eBay insertion fees or upfront promotion fees. Sometimes we will do promoted listings, but that comes out of your profit after the sale is made. Our total 2023 eBay fees were $7,694.
The eBay fees depend on your category and then once you get over $2,500, the initial percentage goes down to a lower percent 2.3% or 2.5%. For example, on the Thermador we sold for $6,250, we paid a 13% fee on the first $2,500 and then the rest was at the 2.3, 2.5% rate.
And remember, we don’t pay these fees until the item sells.
2023 Shipping Costs
Last year we spent $1,090 on shipping items that went in boxes via FedEx and UPS. Freight shipping was $3,259 so our total shipping cost was $4,349.
One cool thing is when we use eBay for shipping, they save us usually 50 percent on fees by creating labels through their system. For freight shipping, we recently joined forces with a broker who can give us the cheapest freight shipments anywhere, which is really exciting. It’s something we’ve been dreaming about for the last nine years so we could give that to our members.
2023 Refunds
Refunds are always a part of the business, but in 2023 we didn’t have any. We don’t accept returns, but sometimes eBay can force them. The cool thing about higher value, higher dollar items is typically buyers are not looking to return them. They want that model of whatever we’re selling and they just want it to work.
We had one that was almost a refund because something had jostled in shipping. It was a telescopic hood that I bought for $30 and sold for $1,000. I got on the phone with her and we troubleshooted the problem, and then it worked fine and she didn’t proceed with the return. The filter had just come loose and it worked perfectly once it was pushed back in. Having good customer service helped me with that one.
2023 Cancellations
We did have some cancellations, which we don’t usually count in as returns because we didn’t do anything for them. We didn’t ship it.
There were three and most were smaller items I couldn’t find. I had listed them, but when it came time to ship them, I just could not find them.
Another one was an item that I would’ve lost a lot of money on with shipping. I thought the item would go in a box and could be shipped for under $100. It ended up costing a couple hundred to ship, so I canceled the transaction and let the buyer know it was going to cost too much to ship in a box. When it resold later, I shipped it on a pallet. That was an error on my part, but the numbers just didn’t make sense.
The total cancellations were $1,859 but we ended up reselling them later.
Our total profit for the year was $71,080 with just 46 items sold! Out of those items, the majority were shipped in a box. We only had about 10 items go freight.
We get asked about taxes in our numbers and we don’t include sales tax because eBay handles all of that for us. Income tax is trickier too because we have our coaching and content business too, so that’s why we use a CPA to do our taxes. There are taxes involved and we do pay them, but they aren’t factored into our numbers here because it’s complicated.
2023 Takeaways
The biggest takeaway is to start flipping if you are not flipping. We had so many cool, weird items we were able to find and bring to new owners. We love being able to help people find amazing deals. So, if you’re not flipping yet, get involved. It’s so much fun to be able to do what we do. And hopefully you guys will love it as well.
Show Notes
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You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
FURTHER RESOURCES
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