Howtime

Flipping tips

FedEx for Large Items.

I sold a sweet little flip -- small TV/VCR combo from Savers for $0.99 to $99. However, even a tiny 14" TV was brutal to package. I wrapped it in bubble wrap and put it in a box to double box, but couldn't find a big enough outer box. FedEx turned out to be about 30% less than the quoted USPS price of calculated shipping ($60 vs 112), packaged it for $15, and is guaranteeing delivery in 2 days (instead of 2-7 via USPS). Insurance included. I'm ahead $38 on shipping, it's professionally packaged, and the customer is happy that I told him FedEx will be dropping it off earlier than expected.Knocking on wood that it arrives safely, but so far win/win.

Here is the Google Spreadsheet I made for sales tracking, profit tracking, expense tracking and more. (File -> Make a Copy)

If you're not shipping TONS of stuff daily and would prefer your carrier pick up over going to the post office, this is the mailbox you need. Was $31.64 via Prime (link in comments) and is massive.

If you buy a lot on Amazon, go ahead and leave feedback on all the sellers you've purchased from.

I just got an email reminder to leave feedback for something stupid I had bought and was greeted with four pages of transactions that I didn't leave feedback on. I took five minutes and left feedback for all the FBA people I had purchased from.If you're like me and you buy a lot from Amazon, please do the community a favor and make sure to leave feedback.

Check the back of those bags at savers/value village

If you buy stuff internationally, search for items in other languages.

Also, learn the ins and outs of a site's search engine. some sites I have search strings saved that are like 30 words long. some sites I bookmark every term I want to search for, so I can just open a bunch of tabs instead of manually searching for the same shit over and over again.

If a guitar hero controller is broken.

Do not throw away. Salvage the parts. If the strumming feature does not work but the buttons do, salvage the neck of the guitar. They go for around 20 bucks a piece and are easy to ship (combine 3 dvd sized bubble mailers). Same thing goes the other way around, if the buttons do not work but the strumming does, save the body of the guitar for one of your spare necks. Also keep in mind that ps3/2 and xbox 360 controller necks are interchangeable. This means that you can take the neck of a ps3 guitar and throw it on a 360 of the same model and it will work fine. Doing these things will help maximize profit.This will not work with xplorer and rockband guitars.

Spending Extra Time To Research A Pattern / Style is Often Worth It.

I found a clothing item by a famous designer and there are hundreds of active and sold listings. I decided to take some time and research the pattern since I noticed that there are some rare and HTF prints, so I looked for similar prints and couldn't find it. I was about to give up until I noticed that the print contained a small word, which I used to do some more research and lo and behold I found it!! They were being listed as "rare" and I know that that's not always true. I listed them at $100 OBO and HTF as a keyword and they sold in a couple of days for full price with 3 watchers. I sold another pair from this designer a couple of weeks ago for 1/3rd of that and now I wonder if I could've gotten more had I researched it a bit more. Anyways...this may not be news to most of you, but I still wanted to share my experience.

Cleveland Browns Changed Their Logo, Keep Eye Out For 1-2 year old (new) Memorabilia/Apparel with old style logo.

Http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/Not a whole lot of change in the logo but you can probably grab the old stuff cheap, fans will be fans (like me!).

Free Android App for tracking time spent on different projects, with options for adding expenses and notes (not my app, but it seemed relevant to this sub)