Skip to main content

Goodwill Resell for Profit - Did I Make My Money Back?

    On May 5th I went to Goodwill and purchased books to resell in my secondhand bookshop. I spent a total of $24.67 at Goodwill, but $2 was for personal use. I have already made my money back on these books! 


      I want to take a look at the sales that came through so far, now everything else in my Goodwill haul that sells will be 100% profit. I also wrote in my previous blog post that I hoped to make my money by the 20th, and it's the 22nd. 



The first sale was this Rainbow Brite, like new, book. I listed it for $13 and someone made an offer for $10 within 24 hours of listing. My COG was .99, the selling fee was 1.00 and the processing fee was .91. $8.09 was deposited into my Mercari account. After COG, my profit was $7.10.



I am trying to make my money back as fast as possible with this Goodwill experiment. I sent offers to likers and gave a whopping $5 off for this fantasy book lot, the buyer accepted for $17 and paid for shipping.  I forgot that my COG was .99 cents and not a quarter like it usually is. The selling fee was 1.70 and the processing fee was 1.16. I made $14.14, after my COG which was $3.96, my profit was $10.18.


Both of those sales were on Mercari.


I realized on Sunday that I didn't have any of my Goodwill haul listed. I listed everything on Sunday and the books that I told myself I'd keep if I made my money back sold. It was my dark academia book bundle



This sold right away, within hours of listing just like the Rainbow Brite book. I did good didn't I? Love it even though I wanted these books so bad. My earnings were $14.30, my COG was 2.23, my profit was $12.07. 

With these three orders, my profit is $29.35 after fees and COG. My initial investment was $24.67. My profit so far is $4.68. I hope that by the end of the month more books have sold from that haul. 

I still have 11 books from that haul, see that the bundles did so well, I think I will bundle 3 or 4 cottagecore books together. 

Will I be able to double, triple my money?

Should I relist my items?

Edit 6/10/2023:





Another book from this haul sold! It sold in a bundle of other books I got for free. It was the Detective Arthur on the Scent for $7, I was asking for $10 but I put a sale on Depop to generate sales and Free Shipping. That's $7 profit!

Add $7 plus the $4.68 from what I've profited so far, and my total amount of profit is $11.68. I've made my money back, and made an additional $11.68. That really is not enough for all the work I put in, BUT I have so much fun selling books.  

Should I take the $11.68 and reinvest it to buy items with a higher sale price? 

Can I double my money with this Goodwill haul?




Edit: 6/24/2023




Sold for $4.80. Total profit so far: $16.48. 


Edit: 6/25/2023

I spent $24.67 at Goodwill, made my money back, and so far, I have a profit of $16.48. I was hoping to double my money, BUT

books take a long time to flip

&

not a high ASP 

there are still 10 more books from the Goodwill haul that I can profit from. But, I think I will take my initial investment of $24.67 and spend it on better items to resell. 


Edit: 6/29/2023



The Frog and Toad book finally sold!! I will never not pick up these books, it takes me 30 seconds to list. My profit was $2.60. 

Let's see... that means... I made my money back, and profited $19.08. 

Here is a list of the remaining books:

Best Loved Short Stories

Cajun Night Before Christmas 

Clifford the Big Red Dog

The Foolish Tortoise

Once There Was A Cat

Cat Stories

and I never listed the Beatrix Potter book, or listed the other two Beatrix Potter books. Hmm. I'm going to see what I can bundle. I got these books May 5th, around that time, had them listed within that week. It's been two months. I think 90 day turn around time is not bad, HOWEVER, this is a small investment back. 

I will be able to double my money.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Free to E-Bike- $54.02

 It dawned on me that I've been making money from free inventory these last two months. It's a risk free way to get into clothes. I think I have sold more clothes than books.  There was the Free Inventory I received from my neighbor. I was able to get more needful clothes for myself, and I've already sold a few items. Then there was the free inventory I got from the school bus lost and found.  I decided to do a fun series where I save up for a used car. I use my Mercari money for my dental transformation and that is a separate series. I already have a video called Mercari Buys Me Glasses.  Here is my video sourcing at the Lost and Found, I've made two: Not everyone Can source here...free inventory Sourcing at the Lost and Found Recently, on Ebay, I sold this Reebok sweater. It sold for $13.00 buyer paid $4.99 shipping. His total was $19.25, and my profit was $8.92. The Nike blue lunch box was a surprise sell for me, so I went back and picked up the other lunch boxes. It

What Sold January 15-21 (My First Week Back!) I turned .25 cents into $13.49!

 I can't believe that the same week I started listing I got sales!! There were three occasions, all sunny afternoons at the end of January between 3 pm and 5pm, right before it got too dark to take pictures. I took photos of all new inventory and chose Pango Books and Mercari to start listing.  There has been a lot of promotions on my Facebook page, the social media platform I spend most of my time on. I joined some facebook groups for resellers. I decided on my next paycheck, I wanted to buy my domain. This side hustle was my dream job, maybe being a teacher feels out of reach. But I've always wanted to be a writer. A bookseller, being my own business owner, maybe. Just maybe that's what I can do!  My reselling goal is to make what I made at my survival job. (I got paid $12/hour and worked 16 hours a week. Some weeks I worked 22 hours.) I'll be satisfied if I make any where between $80- $170. I listed a total of ___ books to each platform, and a total of 3 books sold.