- Trade Profit: ￡ -0.36
- Return: 39.4%
- Overall Profit: ￡ 1.75
So following the first sale, we are up to a whopping £1.32 budget for the second purchase!
I started keeping my eye out on the almost daily shopping trips that we make as a family… and taking a few photos again of prospective purchases. Having the extra 32p in the budget doesn’t open up a huge amount more in terms of purchases, most things tend to be around £1, and then jump to either £1.50 or £2.
The shortlist was relatively similar to the first purchase. I feel I’m starting to become an expert in the price of packet sauces and now cat food. The bird feeders were really nice for £1, but shipping would have been too high, I thought the handwarmers would go well with it being winter – but alas there was no real margin on them. I was excited by the Pez dispensers, as I know these are highly collectable and as with the Transformers on the first purchase I would be buying into a branded product. Unfortunately though the market wasn’t as buoyant as I hoped, and it looked like another potential loss after fees.
In the end it was a random purchase from Lidl. I noticed they were selling Christmas Stollen, which I thought might be good due to its scarcity in the UK. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford the ‘big’ Stollen so settled for the mini 200g version… I didn’t know then what problems this would cause…
I dressed up the photo with a few festive holly leaves, and put in the listing that it was a mini 200g stocking filler. This time I held my nerve on the price and didn’t reduce, the item got a fair few hits in the first couple of days, and sold on day 3! Brilliant!
I packaged the item out the next day… however I received an unimpressed email from the buyer about the size of the item! Stress!
At this point I was ready to can the whole experiment, I pointed out that the size and ‘mini’ was listed in the description and title, but I probably could have done a better job showing the size in the photo. I apologised and offered a full refund to the buyer (knowing this would end the experiment 🙁 ), though the apology placated them and through the skin of my teeth I was able to move on.
|
Stollen – item cost |
-£0.99 |
|
ebay listing fee |
-£0.36 |
|
ebay Final Valuation Fee |
-£0.36 |
|
ebay Final Valuation Fee |
-£0.76 |
|
Postage via Hermes |
-£2.45 |
|
Sale Price and Postage |
£5.35 |
|
Total Profit / Loss |
£0.43 |
|
Total Bank |
£1.75 |
The profit for the trade was 43p or 39.4% of the spend. This brings my overall total bank up to £1.75…. the 75p profit in 30 days the experiment has been running works out at 2.5p a day – projecting forward that could mean as much as £151 by the end of the experiment 🙂 probably only enough for a couple of nights out… best get back to it to try and make some more…