How to Invest $100 Flipping Thrift Items
It's more about time than money.
Flipping thrift is basically turning money into stuff, then turning that stuff into more money. Rinse and repeat. The rest is just details.
What is the best way to turn money into more money when selling online?
Invest as little time as possible to get the sales.
Here is (to me) a terrible example of time investment:
This person is selling a new custom-made coffee cup on eBay for $5.00 with free shipping. For the sake of argument let’s say shipping is $3.00 (probably higher) it has to go in a box with packing, and a label, likely another $1.00+. Then there are seller fees.
And they have to do whatever labor is required to make the personalization. And they take returns, and accept offers!
It isn’t that selling a lot of cheap stuff can’t work, it’s just more work.
I do not see any way this seller is making any actual money. They can’t possibly be getting a return on their time invested.
WHY BOTHER???
You don’t make up losses on volume, you just lose more.
For this exercise let’s assume it takes ten minutes to list, store, pick, and ship one item.
Your mileage may vary but the idea is the same. I suggest actually timing yourself, including setup and stocking/picking/packing time. More on that later.
We won’t count product acquisition time for the moment.
Consider these choices:
Acquire/list/sell/ship 20 items purchased at $5 each, and sold for $10 each. (I know this is oversimplified and it’s never this tidy but there is a specific point here.)
$100 invested
$200 in sales
$100 gross profit
200 minutes invested, 3.3 hours
$30 per labor hour
Acquire/list/ship/sell 5 items purchased for $20 each, sold for $40 each
$100 invested
$200 in sales
$100 gross profit
50 minutes invested
$83.30 per labor hour
Acquire/list/ship/sell 2 items purchased for $50 and sold for $100 each
$100 invested
$200 in sales
$100 gross profit
20 minutes invested
$303 per labor hour
Same money invested and, the same financial return on investment in our theoretical example.
But the time!
It takes around the same amount of time to purchase, list, sell, and ship a $5 item as a $50, or even $100 item.
If you flip thrift goods you also have substantial time and expense invested in driving to, shopping at, and returning from your buying trips. That varies a lot between communities and sellers. For the sake of argument let’s say acquisition time is 4X your listing/shipping time.
Suddenly those hourly rates look like this:
$30 becomes $7.50
$83.30 becomes $20.85
$303 becomes $75.75
How much do you value your time, the one thing you never get back?
Where could the saved time be invested? More leisure? More sales?
4 ways to reduce your labor time:
Be organized. Have a home for everything and stick to it.
Batch work. Do a bunch of listings at once, like all of your packing once a day.
Have a simple quick way to find where items are when they are sold and ready to ship. Be militant about keeping things where they belong.
Avoid shiny object syndrome when shopping, you are in a thrift store to buy inventory, period.
The best way to increase your hourly income.
If your thrifting and selling is really a hobby, skip this. There is nothing wrong with the fun of the hunt. If you want to build a profitable side hustle, if you want to get a good return on your time and financial investment. If you want to build some financial freedom, think and act like the business you are.
If you are buying and selling with the goal of turning a profit you are a small business person. You don’t need to be eBay to be a real business, maybe just on eBay. You just need to make money doing your own thing!
There are two assets that matter, time and money. Using your time efficiently helps you make more money.
Really, actually knowing where your time is going gives you a huge edge. One of my favorite quotes is “What gets measured gets better”. Running many businesses through the years I have found that to be true.
If you keep track of 100% of where your side hustle time goes for a week you might be surprised. You will likely start to see where some of your time isn’t going toward the results you are looking for.
Count all of your time:
Checking your listings
Responding to customer questions
Driving to and from thrift stores
Shopping
Researching
Photographing/listing/storing
picking/packing/going to the post office
Bookkeeping
To see how you are doing take my 7-Day Challenge, Click here to get your PDF copy.
If you are disciplined about it you will find out just how much you are making per hour.
$50 per hour equates to $100,000 per year full-time income. If you have 10 hours a week to invest, that gets you to $26,000 per year. $26,000 breaks down to $71.32 per day. Doable!
Sales is not profit, what’s left over after the bills are paid is profit.
My last suggestion is to have a financial goal and track your progress, daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you.
Here again is the link to the 7-day challenge PDF.
Tim Gebauer
Thrift Retailer - Dedicated to the business of thrift.
You can find me on LinkedIn I would love to connect!
Check out my Thrift Merchandising e-book
Or my Online Sellers book on Amazon
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