I've watched something like five of your videos in the last two days and really like your presentation style - down to earth, practical, no hype, well thought out. I've had the same question about how to document cost of goods sold for items you source at garage sales - I like your idea of just keeping a ledger. Sellers at garage sales would look at you kind of weird if you asked them for a receipt.
I have to say that I recently switched to your listing method. Grab your items. Create the draft. Take pictures at the end and list. I have gotten so much more listed this way. Thank you for the tip.
@@theresamcgallicher I used to do it this way. Take the pictures first. Transfer them to my computer. Sort them and save them in their appropriate folders. By the time I got done with all that, I just didn't want to list. This new way is definitely the way to go :)
I take the pictures first because all the info I need in the title and listing I photograph. I don't have to write down (or memorize) the details. I may change it up at some point and experiment.
I too sold on Amazon from about 2015 until 2021-2022. It wasn't just the restricted categories and ungating. It was the frustration of creating listings with descriptions and photos and all the product details--and then somehow somebody who apparently had God level privileges would go in and delete all of my details and change my photos to something totally unrelated. Then Amazon not only would not fix the listing, they would not even allow ME to fix them. The free returns were killing me because people would buy stuff and then return it packed in a way that cost much more to ship than how I sent it so I'd owe additional shipping when I got it back. Amazon would do a really terrible job repacking my FBA items when they got returned and sometimes they would arrive broken, so customer would file a defective that of course I had to pay for AND take a ding on my metrics. I can't even remember all the frustrations, but finally I said to hell with it and now I stick to ebay only.
Great info, thank you for answering my question😊, I recently become niche seller and I have to say that I think eBay like it. Clothing seems to be very saturated.
I see a big tax problem this year because of the $600 1099-K rule becoming active. A lot of beginner sellers are selling personal items they have from cleaning out the attic, garage, etc. They are selling these items for less than the original cost but they have no receipts to prove "cost of goods sold" because the items were bought years ago for personal use. Technically they would owe no taxes because there is no net profit. I haven't heard a reasonable recommendation from anyone on how to prove that you made no profit.
Sorry if your a hobby seller or "just" clearing out items from your house that shouldn't be hundreds of items bottom line is you make income on items be it personal or your actually doing this as income to live on part time or full time you still have to do taxes btw no matter if your a new seller or been reselling full time for 25 years (like myself) its your job to figure out how to deduct expenses the irs has a list of what things are worth if your just selling personal items and don't have receipts you have to use what the irs value your item at (just how you woukd do it if you donated it and got a receipt from the place you donated it to you can deduct the value (that the irs considers it to be worth) from your tax burden.....From my 25 years experience 99.9% of resellers are tax cheats and tax evaders I'm dumbfounded it took 25 years for congress to revise the tax law I'm mean geez self employment tax is only 15.3% if you make the minimum $600 thats only 91.80 sorry if your paying ebay 15-30 in fees but can't pay 91.80 of that $600 you have some major problems and should not be reselling online but working a brick and mortar job. This law will flush out resllers that really should not be reselling this profession does not need millions of resellers it needs a purge or draining of the swamp and when millions of resellers across the board get 1099k's come jan 2024 there will be a mass exodus its going to separate the sharks from the fish.
I've also noticed that making offers to 'interested' watchers rarely results in an actual sale. I do it to simply remove that line item on my mobile eBay view lol!
Thank you Justin for your content it really helps my motivation with the nonsexy stuff with my EBay business. Do you have a video where you talk about your strategy for best offer listings vs non best offer listings?
Thanks for watching and you are very welcome. I don't have a video about best offers and when to use them, but I have been asked a few times so I will consider making one. Thanks!
I told my parents about your strategy to promote all listings at 2% and their sales went from $1500 to $2500 per month. They are also doing more comp research but big thanks for the tip on promoted listings.
I know that some people are very much about not charging for shipping. But I charge for shipping in everything I sell. Sorry shipping is expensive and that just eats into profits . People still buy. I have a few listings in my store that are items from a grocery store. If you’re from my state and you moved away chances are you’ll miss the coffee our grocery store offers. So I post them online and go buy it when it sells. I follow a lady on RU-vid that said after a year she goes through clothing she didn’t sell and takes them to Plato’s closet and just sells it to them.
Also, I just watched your video about MIZZOU flags. That’s our family’s alma mater. I just learned that you from St. Louis I am from Jefferson City. But New Hampshired now
Hello about the last question do you file sales taxes every 3 months? I was doing that for 5 years and today I visit a new accountant and he said I don’t have to to do that
Have you dabbled in any of the crosslisting apps? I feel like a lot of people do well, but they also SPEND a TON of money selling things so I am wondering the ROI on the thing they bought if they are spending money on all of these apps as well as ebay stores and fees.
Justin great information and thanks for sharing your knowledge. I have one question: at what point did you decide to create a business, meaning setting a TIN for your business. I started selling on eBay two months ago, but I have not created an entity. I wonder if I should wait until I have more sales volume. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.
Just a FYI selling in media mail over a certain amount of money gets you a discount in shipping so it would only cost them about $2 per book to ship cutting costs significantly
Transitioned to the basic store subscription. Within 2 days I sold 7 items that had been sitting for over 20 days. I feel there is benefit to being a subscribed seller just based on the immediate response I got in sales.
I mentioned the public speaking. News anchors get voice lessons, which was what I was referring to. Your pronunciation and delivery is awesome, even if it takes a few tries lol
Your videos are greatly appreciated. I just started ebay and sold my first item today. A tax person is definitely the way to go and the write off advice is valuable for people who are new to filing taxes.
When I buy things individually and know the cost of each item I record the exact cost. If I buy a lot of things for a flat fee I split the costs across the entire lot.
And there's 2 ways to do it you can calculate all your cost of goods for the entire in the year you bought it or you can't use the cost of goods for an item in the year it sells I do the first option so say I spend $15,000 on inventory for the year and irs says my gross was $50,000 I deduct the $15,000 I spent in inventory in 2023 from the 50,000 gross which gets me down to 35,000 just remember since your deducting that now you can't deduct when it sells so say it sells 3 years later you can't deduct it from your 2027 taxes because you already used the cost of goods for tax year 2024 I've been using this method for 2 decades have never been audited btw one way not to be audited is to make sure you show some profit even if it's a few thousand over 25 year of full time reselling on multiple platforms the sellers I know who were audited are ones that always showed a 0 or negative (loss) never do that this wil put a red flag on your irs account
As always THANK YOU for these videos - you’re truly a wealth of information for folks like me starting out. I have two things: 1) Your listing time of ~5 minutes is mind blowing to me! It takes me so long to research, photograph, list, etc. You have a video where you talk about your listing process, which is incredibly helpful. Any additional advice you can give to help me speed up my process? If you’re open to new video ideas, one where you film yourself in real-time could be super helpful - like a split screen of you doing the action and your phone/computer on the other side. I’d love to know where I’m going wrong. Just a thought! 2) I noticed in another video that you’re in STL as well (not to sound like a total creeper 😅). If you’re willing, I’d love to know who you go through for your accounting needs. I’ve been on the hunt for one who knows reselling and would appreciate a good recommendation. Thank you again for all the time you put into your videos and responding to comments - it shows!
You can see my listing process in real-time in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t9Wyq4UhJ40.htmlsi=fO-x_DHr7brz0qP6 As for a CPA mine is actually not local to STL. Thanks for watching!
AbbyD758 I live about 3 hours from yall, lol, also in southeastern MO. Like yourself, I've only recently started reselling... and it seems to take me FOREVER to list just 5-10 items per day.
I would like to start selling part-time. But I have no clue how to start to look for a CPA/accountant. Would you have recommendations on that? What few I looked at wanted $300 a month. But that is based off of recommendations of big youtubers who push courses. In your video you state that what it cost you for a year.
