There are a lot of web sites that tell you what the potential ‘earn’ would be on certain deals if you buy and resell them. I’m always curious what the ACTUAL profit/loss on those items are, and they usually never get blogged about. With this blog, I hope to at least give you the results of all the deals that I buy and resell. You read about the HD Homerun deal from a couple of weeks ago, so here’s the followup.
I finally sold the last of them yesterday. Here’s the breakdown, not counting the $25 Visa offer and the $25 AMEX deal. Just the pure profit/loss from Ebay resulted in a profit of ~$38 (a nearly 13% margin). If you factor in the $50 in offers, it comes out to a nearly 30% margin. This still excludes the 480 AA miles I earned through the AA shopping portal. Sure beats any 2-4% cashback you earn from manufactured spend. Of course this isn’t as scalable as MS methods, but that’s why you want to diversify.
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Item
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Sold
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Cost
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FVF Fee
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Shipping Fee
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Paypal Fee
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Profit
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Margin
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| HDHomerun | $99.99 | $71.66 | $6.00 | $8.30 | $3.20 | $10.83 | 10.83% |
| HDHomerun | $199.98 | $143.32 | $12.00 | $11.50 | $6.10 | $27.06 | 13.53% |
Lesson Learned
While everything I wrote above sounds so easy and stress-free, let me mention here the lesson I learned from this deal. What you need to understand from reselling on Ebay is that you have to deal with customer service issues directly. When I initially posted them on Ebay, I put the shipping method as USPS Priority MAIL. USPS Priority Mail will usually go from coast to coast in 3 business days. I try to ship everything USPS PM, but if you sell the volume that I do, you try to save on costs as much as possible. Fedex in the last 6 months introduced a shipping method called Fedex Smartpost. This shipping method uses Fedex Ground up until delivery of the item, which Fedex then lets USPS do (since they already go door to door 6 days a week). Fedex Smartpost is great for packages 2 lbs or heavier. However, it also takes a lot longer than Priority Mail; the official policy is 2-8 business days. That’s a long time!
Anyway, back to my story. The first buyer I had was a new Ebayer with 0 feedback. He bought the item, and when I went to ship the item, I realized the box was 3 pounds. I could either pay something like $11 for a flat rate box or I could pay $8 for Fedex Smartpost. I of course chose Smartpost. The buyer then gets the shipping notice and sends me an irate message saying he paid for USPS and got Smartpost and a delivery date that was 10 days away. Note that I listed the item as FREE SHIPPING, and have never had an angry buyer about my shipping method. Anyway, he complained about a bait and switch on shipping, and I told him to wait until Monday (4 business days later). He then basically threatened me that it better get here by Monday, because you know, I am personally delivering this item to him. The last tracking info shows it was in Idaho on Friday, and the buyer lives in Arkansas. My best guess is that he’ll get it by Wednesday or so. I expect a nasty message any minute now, and I’m sure I’ll get a negative feedback. Regardless, this has been a headache, and what I’ve learned now is that you should always try to error on the conservative side when selecting a shipping method on eBay.