Trying to grasp the $1 ebay comic store business model...

[the blob]

I have noticed a lot of people on ebay with stores mainly selling $1 books..some of them are the 1000 item $50/mo stores, some of them are 10,000+ item anchor stores (what is that, $250?).

 

I am trying to figure out how that works after fees and everything. I assume these are guys buying random junk in bulk, $20 long boxes or whatever, and sticking everything on line, but criminey, the amount of time put into a $1 sale?? And I understand, many of the sales are people buying 20 items at a time, and a lot of these guys do have several hundred sales in any given month, but i just don't see how this works.. if you sell 500 $1 books and are paying for an anchor store and 12% to fees between ebay/paypal.. and a bunch of these guys are not even making money on shipping, not with $4 unlimited.. i understoof when neatstuff was doing this because they made $1 a book for shipping.

 

Or, are we really looking at being able to make minimum wage from the comfort of your home? I get that, it beats paying to commute, etc.

 

Anyway, I get sucked into these guys' stores because i see something that is very attractive at $1, but with shipping, less so, and i want to see if there is more to make shipping worthwhile...

[shadroch]

I have no idea. I'm working on grossing $1,000 a month.

It's much easier selling 50 $20 items than $1000 $1 items.

[the blob]

These guys do sell in quantity...it seems like most people come in and buy 10+ items to save on shipping. One site I was looking at has at least 500 separate feedbacks form the last month, so he is moving stuff, but what the heck profit is he keeping at the end of the day, not to mention the hours of time? these were individual scans, not stock photos.

 

Honestly, I was thinking whether it might be a good project to give my son 1500 books and let him open a store and run it. 1000 fixed price, 500 auctions a month. he gets spending money, learns responsibility, entrepeneurship (hey, sometimes it helps to get a gift from dad to start you on your way, right?). i certainly have 1500 books I don't care about. And maybe he reduces the time spent on his darn ipad playing or watching TV. if it interferes with HW, forget about it though.

 

On the other hand. I could just donate a huge box of books to a thrift shop and claim they're worth $2 each...that probably saves me close to 80 cents a book in taxes between federal, state, and city.

 

 

[shadroch]

Wasnt Torpedo Comics business plan to buy everything for a nickel and sell it for a dollar?

How'd that work out?

[the blob]

Of course, I get the feeling I will be helping him ship these things and that's my big problem selling my own tuff.

[shadroch]

Lose money on every sale but make it up with volume

[the blob]

Wasnt Torpedo Comics business plan to buy everything for a nickel and sell it for a dollar?

How'd that work out?

 

Torpedo Comics in Nevada has nothing less than $15 in their ebay store. Is that the Torpedo Comics you're talking about? Or was there a Torpedo that went under a few years ago where they had warehouses of drek?

 

I guess the key is to not go nuts on the buying angle? 1,000 - 10,000 crappy books will not put you in the hole that much. but you need at least 1,000 in the store for this to work and probably need more.

[1Cool]

I can't see a way to make any real money selling $1 books on E-Bay even if your books are free. Lets say you make up your fees in the shipping cost then you are scanning and shipping a book for $1 (making up the fees can't be easyto do with bulk buyers in todays market). Even assuming you can scan, post up on e-Bay and ship in 10 minutes you are making $6 an hour - not even minimum wage.

[the blob]

Well, I think selling 10-20 dollar books at a time might take less time for shipping...just plop them in a box with some bubble wrap or whatever, but yes, posting and scanning takes time.

 

but yeah, i'm sure there are plenty of $1-$3 sales, which would make me jump out the window.

 

I don't have anything less than $12 in my store, but i have free shipping. I figure at that price someone can make a reasonable offer and I'm still ok. I will sometimes run a $7.99 auction (also w/free shipping) hoping someone wins a few items, but that's about it. it costs about $4.00 after fees, etc. to ship a book without even getting into time and materials.

 

"Even assuming you can scan, post up on e-Bay and ship in 10 minutes you are making $6 an hour - not even minimum wage."

 

Maybe that works for some people as second, stay at home, job for extra money. I'm not here to judge. Makes sense if you have kids or an elderly parent you want to be around for, or just don't want to leave the house. I just see it as a race to the bottom. People expect everything for a buck or less then. If more people valued their time you might be able to get $2 for a broader range of back issues. But it's too big, and too easy a market to enter, to stop a certain segment from racing to the bottom price-wise. For less than $1000, finding some sort of bulk blow out sale, you can pretty much stock a 5,000 item store, and not necessarily with nothing but total krapola.

[shadroch]

The original Torpedo was owned by a musician and his brother. As I was told, their market plan was to buy everything for a nickel and sell for a buck. It fabulously failed and they had one of the largest bankruptcy auctions in comic history. The current owner bought the name and some of the stock.

I spent $3,000 and got about 25,000 worth of decent stuff. There were pallets of drek ,piled on top of other pallets of drekier stuff..

[paperheart]

The original Torpedo was owned by a musician and his brother. As I was told, their market plan was to buy everything for a nickel and sell for a buck. It fabulously failed and they had one of the largest bankruptcy auctions in comic history. The current owner bought the name and some of the stock.

I spent $3,000 and got about 25,000 worth of decent stuff. There were pallets of drek ,piled on top of other pallets of drekier stuff..

 

and then Chuck swooped in

[aerischan]

I just see it as a race to the bottom. People expect everything for a buck or less then. If more people valued their time you might be able to get $2 for a broader range of back issues. But it's too big, and too easy a market to enter, to stop a certain segment from racing to the bottom price-wise. For less than $1000, finding some sort of bulk blow out sale, you can pretty much stock a 5,000 item store, and not necessarily with nothing but total krapola.

Alas, if $1 items on ebay's bad, apparently some artists are even willing to work for free (and not just for charity).

 

http://www.comicsbeat.com/being-a-cartoonist-by-the-numbers-and-the-numbers-are-ugly/

 

http://www.comicsbeat.com/page-rates-whats-fair-is-fair-except-when-it-isnt/

 

Makes me somewhat grateful I'm in STEM although even that isn't immune due to outsourcing.

[Gatsby77]

I haven't sold on eBay in years but when I did so I realized I had to buy at 9% of my sell cost to really make it worthwhile.

 

Basically: Pay $100 a long box (~$.40 a book) for solid Marvel Copper Age books that would legit sell for $3 (plus shipping).

 

It worked, too.

 

Books like X-Men 145-200 would eventually sell for ~$6.00-$7.00 (including shipping), often to collectors abroad ($3.00 to me, minus fees, so about $2.50).

 

But, as has been noted - it wasn't efficient. Eventually I bundled $25 worth of books together with a starting bid of $7 (basically $10 after shipping).

 

Was able to eek about $10 an hour this way in my off-hours, but it was boring.

 

90% of the time was spent packaging and shipping books.

 

Ultimately, there are other ways I'd prefer to spend my time.

[ComicConnoisseur]

I can't see a way to make any real money selling $1 books on E-Bay even if your books are free. Lets say you make up your fees in the shipping cost then you are scanning and shipping a book for $1 (making up the fees can't be easyto do with bulk buyers in todays market). Even assuming you can scan, post up on e-Bay and ship in 10 minutes you are making $6 an hour - not even minimum wage.

What`s better though doing that or working fast-food or retail jobs for federal minimum wage for $7.25? You think about those $7.25 an hour jobs are probably less than $6 after taxes, plus usually come with minimum hour commutes back and forth so that $6 on Ebay doesn`t look as bad.

 

[ComicConnoisseur]

The key to making money with dollar books is buying comics between 5 cents to 50 cents a piece on Ebay,but sell them at cons, flea markets, yards sales,craigslist and Facebook.

Facebook is the new big player. A lot of stuff gets sold on there before it ever hits Ebay.

[deathtohemingway]

The original Torpedo was owned by a musician and his brother. As I was told, their market plan was to buy everything for a nickel and sell for a buck. It fabulously failed and they had one of the largest bankruptcy auctions in comic history. The current owner bought the name and some of the stock.

I spent $3,000 and got about 25,000 worth of decent stuff. There were pallets of drek ,piled on top of other pallets of drekier stuff..

 

It is still John Dolmayan, at least judging by his presence all over their facebook page.

So yes, the original owner fabulously failed,

but the original owner is also the current owner.

[1Cool]

I can't see a way to make any real money selling $1 books on E-Bay even if your books are free. Lets say you make up your fees in the shipping cost then you are scanning and shipping a book for $1 (making up the fees can't be easyto do with bulk buyers in todays market). Even assuming you can scan, post up on e-Bay and ship in 10 minutes you are making $6 an hour - not even minimum wage.

What`s better though doing that or working fast-food or retail jobs for federal minimum wage for $7.25? You think about those $7.25 an hour jobs are probably less than $6 after taxes, plus usually come with minimum hour commutes back and forth so that $6 on Ebay doesn`t look as bad.

 

Problem is $1 books are not flying off the shelves (especially books you can get for free or $0.05 a book). If you post up 1,000 books a month and you sell 30 - 40 a week that's a lot of work to net maybe $30 a week.

[aerischan]

I can't see a way to make any real money selling $1 books on E-Bay even if your books are free. Lets say you make up your fees in the shipping cost then you are scanning and shipping a book for $1 (making up the fees can't be easyto do with bulk buyers in todays market). Even assuming you can scan, post up on e-Bay and ship in 10 minutes you are making $6 an hour - not even minimum wage.

What`s better though doing that or working fast-food or retail jobs for federal minimum wage for $7.25? You think about those $7.25 an hour jobs are probably less than $6 after taxes, plus usually come with minimum hour commutes back and forth so that $6 on Ebay doesn`t look as bad.

Technically, you'll be subject to self-employment taxes so you would actually need to pay both employee and employer share of payroll taxes. Could still be a better gig than retail or food service when you factor in commute and dealing face to face with unreasonable bosses and irate customers.

[shadroch]

The original Torpedo was owned by a musician and his brother. As I was told, their market plan was to buy everything for a nickel and sell for a buck. It fabulously failed and they had one of the largest bankruptcy auctions in comic history. The current owner bought the name and some of the stock.

I spent $3,000 and got about 25,000 worth of decent stuff. There were pallets of drek ,piled on top of other pallets of drekier stuff..

 

It is still John Dolmayan, at least judging by his presence all over their facebook page.

So yes, the original owner fabulously failed,

but the original owner is also the current owner.

 

That's interesting. There is a man with a British accent who came to dinner with Simon Bisley and a few others one night after a show who introduced himself as the new owner.

That must have been three years ago, long before the store opened.

[Michelangelo]

selling $1 books on eBay is a flat-out stupid business model. Someone who's doing that is not thinking clearly. They either can't do basic math or they don't value their time.

 

I have nothing under $20 posted on eBay - even then I sometimes think I'm not making good use of my time.

 

There's also the risk involved in someone not being happy with the item, or it getting lost or damaged in transit.. then you have to eat the cost, which further dips into the profits