Ending the year on a high note

Whew, what a year! It's so wild to look back at what we've been through. I'm sure I don't need to tell you. But specifically for Flipshark, it was a strange time. There was a period of several months where I couldn't even imagine going back to the thrift stores. And here we are, making more than ever before. Plus YouTube videos!

Let's get down to what we made this month and what the next year has to offer.

By the numbers

Profit this month: $999.36!
Profit last month: $928

Spend: $408.05
Listed on eBay: 101/250 (A big reason for the increased success)
eBay rating: 99.2% (Woohoo - a hard-fought .1% increase!)

What sold:

Other highlights:

It feels like I never learn my lesson. Just about any time I delay listing something I bought because it's just a bit too cumbersome, it sells almost as soon as I do. Take the Plug and Play TV Games Spongebob set, for example. I delayed listing it for two weeks while I tried to figure out if it was brand new, never used, or opened and tampered with. The tape around the edges suggested it could have been used, but when I found pictures of others, it seemed new after all. And, sure enough, just after I listed it (as the only one on eBay), it sold within four hours for full asking price - $70! I'll need to remember that the next time my apartment is littered with high-dollar items that need just a bit more elbow grease to ship out.

I managed to pump out three more YouTube videos in December. It's still a bit of a challenge to offer something I consider quality, but it should get easier and better with time and patience. Just keep plugging away.

Fails:

YouTube was pretty frustrating this month, though. I just want to be better, and ideally perfect, right now, but some of the videos this month took an entire day to shoot, edit, and put out there. It's not that bad in retrospect, but in the process, I just wanted it to be good and done. All I need to do is focus on being one percent better each time. And I have lots of ideas on how to do that. Stay tuned!

Turns out buying too many WWE wrestling action figures requires a bit more organization. I ended up somehow selling the same The Rock figure twice. I suppose I didn't pay attention to the details of his outfit and listed it again. Anyways, I had to cancel the second December sale and refund the buyer. Lesson learned.

It's not quite my failure, but while most of my shipments went smoothly, it looks like USPS might have lost the Playboy Best of Baywatch DVD sale I made in early December. I shipped it out quickly and USPS still considers it "In Transit". It's a shame too because I bought it for $1.50 and sold it for close to $30. I considered it profit in the numbers above, but I'll most likely need to refund the buyer and adjust the numbers if it doesn't turn up in the next week.

Going forward:

It occurred to me that how I track my profits in these monthly reports might not be the best or most clear way to describe what I'm able to make. Since sharing these updates, I've considered the net profit each month only on the items that sold. I didn't factor into the total amount of money I spent on everything. I just noted my monthly spend separately, assuming everything (or mostly everything) I buy would eventually resell. But we both know, as good as I am, that's not true.

And since I used the end of this year to purge some things that haven't sold in over a year itself, I figured it might be helpful going forward to factor my buy costs into the profits. It would be more genuine to add the other costs of this business, like shipping supplies, plus, I wouldn’t need to individually log every single toy or bag or toys I buy. It was getting hard to parse out how much money I made when I sold a collection of toys I built up over months of buying.

With that being said, it's hard to know how to explain what I make in this transitionary period. I could start from scratch but if I sell something I bought in 2020 (or even 2019) does it count toward profit?

Wondering that, I decided to look back at the year in general. And it was pretty good!

Spend: $2,285.72
Profit: $6,524.05

Almost 285% profit!

Sounds like it might be time to invest back into the whole business. And, good news, I have some ideas to make my life easier, including a thermal printer for my shipping labels (saving me on ink and cutting and taping time) and smaller LED lights so my apartment is not cluttered with box lights for product photos.

The year might be over but the work is never done. So let’s get back to it!