Have you (or are you thinking about) leaving your day job to start an online business?
MULLINS5
Posts: 4,517 ✭✭✭
Just curious. I'm in this mode of thinking it's time to quit my day job and have my only source of income from online selling collectibles via etsy, eBay and my own website.
Have any of you made this leap and can offer feedback/suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Have any of you made this leap and can offer feedback/suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
0
Comments
The grass always seems greener on the other side. Sometimes it is, but most times it isn't.
Best of luck if you do, as I have thought about it, but never did it.
Remember, once you work for yourself (and I have been doing it for 25+ years):
1. You pay BOTH parts of the Social Security tax (SE TAX).
2. NO medical benefits.
3. NO PAID vacation.
4. NO retirement. (I didn't care about that when I first started. Man, I sure do now!)
5. NO sick days.
Best of luck with whatever you decide.
Doug
Liquidating my collection for the 3rd and final time. Time for others to enjoy what I have enjoyed over the last several decades. Money could be put to better use.
<< <i>To take it one step further, does anybody in this forum own a store front? I know that is needed to buy wholesale modern but was just curious what the general margins are? >>
Thanks everyone for the advice so far.
My dad owns a pet store / hobby store and considered buying modern cards to sell in his hobby area. I can't remember the numbers but I remember it not being a lot of money (profit). Perhaps, though, someone else may be able to chime in with particulars.
edit to add: not a lot of profit
i've made some money where i could recently (roughly 20-30% margin after fees on most of what i've bought intentionally to resell), the biggest issues i've faced with trying to make it full time are:
1) i'm not an expert in enough different things or enough different sets/years to really know the prices well enough to ensure i'm buying at prices i can virtually guarantee i'll make money. i think most people underestimate how hard this is, because it's really easy to look at past auctions and say "i would have definitely bought that" without knowing what the real high bid was.
2) in the areas where i do actually have that knowledge, i just can't find enough deals (or big enough deals) to put enough money to work. Putting out a couple thousand is not too hard, but putting out say $10,000+ is a lot harder than it sounds. i haven't seen any deals that size (and some of that is because i'm only looking online), the best margins i've had are really on $100 or less types of items (see more on that below)
3) i started with my own inventory (which was my collection), but if you don't have that then you're going to end up building inventory FIRST, which means you won't actually be making money until some point later on but you're also going to have to keep reinvesting until you hit critical mass
4) there can be good margins in lower end cards, but you have to sell so many of them that it just ends up not really being worth it.
I obviously don't have a retail store, which could probably help in sales volume and the occasional walk in deal, but it also costs money to operate including employees and I'm just not convinced it would be so much better than just being on the internet only (unless you combo'd with something like custom framing and/or game room design, something like that).
At the end of the day, I know for sure I can make more money in a regular job although I'm sure I'd enjoy doing this a whole lot more. It's a tradeoff, but just not one I'm willing to make at this point for full time. Which is why I do it in my spare time, I just have more spare time right now than usual.
Again, just running some numbers, if you wanted to make say $48k a year doing this, then you would need a $20,000 inventory at least that you sold 100% of at 20% margins after fees EVERY SINGLE MONTH. That's $240,000 in sales, which is basically $5K PER WEEK. Now imagine trying to do this with like $10 or cheaper cards, you're having to pack and ship around 100 items per day. That not only takes time, any screw ups eliminate all profit from that deal and probably several others. The competition for higher priced cards is generally much greater, which means it's harder to get them at real deals most of the time but if you go after enough, you're bound to win from time to time.
For me, I just can't find that many things to buy but again knowledge is certainly part of it. If I knew a lot more about a lot more things, then it would certainly help. But that takes time to build the knowledge, and I've found that in memorabilia and cards time is generally not your friend.
The best deals for me have always been either things that were mislabeled entirely on eBay (and there's plenty out there, but you have to look at literally thousands and thousands of auctions to find them and that takes a lot of time) or larger lots of items where there were a handful of good things but mostly junk. You gotta make a profit on the good ones only, if you're counting on the junk to get you to a profit you'll slowly just build an inventory of junk that is really hard to sell.
Bottom line for me is that's it's best as a hobby, not a business.
Hope that helps, and good luck to you if you do go for it.
<< <i>To take it one step further, does anybody in this forum own a store front? I know that is needed to buy wholesale modern but was just curious what the general margins are? >>
it's been years ago, so not sure how this holds up anymore, but in the late 80s/early 90s my parents financed a baseball card store for me and we were dealers with Upper Deck and Topps.
back then, we were normally able to make between 30-50% on wax if you packed it out, less if you were selling/pre-selling boxes. just depended on the product.
however, we had limits on what we could purchase and it got to a point where we couldn't just pick and choose. we had to buy some of almost everything to improve our allocation for the good stuff. we made zero on the crap products, so the returns were reduced because we had to spend more.
most of what the companies sold back then went to various grocery and other distributors, or the big regional card wholesalers. seems to me it's probably still like that today.
one thing we didn't have was the internet, but i'm convinced that actually has decreased margins, although it does open up better opportunities if something pops since you've got a larger population looking, not just your locals clients.
Some quick thoughts.
1) Make sure you have enough capital (money that you can afford to lose) to last you about 2 years. I didn't have a lot of capital to start, and ran out in a big hurry. Having been in business before, I knew that this would be a longshot without adequate capital, but when sales didn't pan out right away I was screwed. bounce was spot on in that you need about 20K/month to make a meager living, lots more if you actually want to live well. I never got close to that number. And don't underestimate the time it takes to mail out 100 packages a day. For just cards that would take me about 3 hours and I'm very, very good at it.
2) Unless you are east of the Rockies, don't plan on people bringing in hoards of vintage cards and collectibles. If you advertise that you will buy sports cards and collectibles, 95% of your phone calls and walk-ins will have 1990s common junk and Operation Bullpen autographed forgeries. You might get ONE decent collection a year.
3) Margins on new cards are too small to rely on profits for those. You need higher margin stuff like shirts and souvenirs and you need to buy very low on your vintage stuff.
4) Working on low margins is a quick path to the poor house. As a sole proprietor you also have to remember you are responsible for taxes. Social Security alone is 15.3%. In my state income is also taxed at 15%.
5) If you plan on using your own collection to start your inventory, be prepared for you best stuff to get picked over, leaving you with the stuff that no one wants. I know three other guys in the 1990s that did this and they did not last very long. After their good stuff was gone they couldn't replace it with equivalent stuff because they couldn't/wouldn't pay higher prices.
6) If you are only mildly annoyed at your day job, I'd suggest keeping it, or at the very least, test the waters first. If you really can't stand your job, I'd suggest trying to find another first, before dropping it all to go into business. One thing you really need to consider is that self-employment on a resume is a sure way to make sure your resume doesn't get past the trash can. I've been self employed for almost my entire life and I can't even get an interview for entry level tech jobs (of which I am very qualified to do). One of my good customers (also a collector) is a corporate recruiter and he point blank told me that my self-employment history was going to work against me.
Good luck and whatever path you follow.
<< <i>It may infringe on your sleeping, but why don't you try putting in 4 hours each night (if u work days) and 8-10 hours on Saturday or Sunday AND KEEP YOUR JOB. Try it for a year and see how it works out.
Remember, once you work for yourself (and I have been doing it for 25+ years):
1. You pay BOTH parts of the Social Security tax (SE TAX).
2. NO medical benefits.
3. NO PAID vacation.
4. NO retirement. (I didn't care about that when I first started. Man, I sure do now!)
5. NO sick days.
>>
Doug, you hit the nail on the head. I too have been on my own for 25+ years (27 years, 2 months & 18 days to be exact)
Website: http://www.qualitycards.com
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Besides the normal items like rent, utilities, inventory, store fixtures and advertising dollars, you will have costs such as
security. Some type of alarm system and window bars are a must for card shops. You will also be required to carry an insurance
policy in case somebody is injured on your property, the renter will require a certain amount.
There is an old saying that you should have enough capital (cash) behind you to operate for 2 years minimum with out a single sale
to be successful. I am not saying it's impossible to succeed, but you will need to be very creative, excellent customer service qualities,
street smart and common sense, plus a little luck!! Either way, good luck.
I have found my small niche vs the giants and have never looked back.
The one big thing I had going was my vast superior knowledge and experience.
If you don't know the answers to all the questions asked....you are probably not ready to jump in full time.
Dboneesq has goop points. My advice is simply start part time and see how it goes.
Nothing ventured...nothing gained.
Just don't set yourself up for failure.
Time is money..........the smaller the sale the more you need to sell....ie more work.
You will need a constant influx of new product. Where are you going to get that?????
One possible way is to scour ebay for high end cards that have big demand you can resell for a profit (ie over VCP cards).
I see some major sellers doing just that
Good luck.
1948-76 Topps FB Sets
FB & BB HOF Player sets
1948-1993 NY Yankee Team Sets
I currently have a full time job and the last couple years have been buying/selling cards on the side both as a hobby and to try it out. One thing I stressed was realizing if I was making a profit. So since day 1 any card, set, box etc..I bought was logged in excel. I was mostly sending cards to PSA for grading as well. For example, I once purchased a 1988 Score traded Glossy set for $56. I sent in Grace, Alomar, Biggio for grading from that set. All got graded a 10. Alomar sold for $300 Biggio $440 and Grace $25. I would log what I paid for the set, grading, ebay/paypal fees plus profit/loss. Of course this situation was a large profit but had many with a loss. Last year I profited about $10,000 doing this part time (found that some months were much hotter selling than others) but between scanning, packaging, listing & logging, it was getting to be too much at one point. But hey an average of an extra $830 a month wasn't bad on top of my full time salary. I would normally send about 2 or 3 decent sized submissions a month to be graded. Most of the time the subs were graded very quickly but some not so much. And the times that lasted the 45 biz days I was buying without having much to sell. The last couple of subs I sent were sort of head scratchers and since then (april) I still have not sent another sub for grading. And since my weekends were spent mostly working on this (8 hours sat/sun each like someone else mentioned) I decided to hang it up for now and enjoy my first child who turned 8 months in April and is just too much fun at this stage to miss out on . But I definitely learned a lot about what hurts and helps with making this work. And if I choose to continue this part time I would probably just go to shows as much as I can and try to purchase a few high grade raw Vintage cards or Modern hot prospect autos. A lot less work involved than selling bulk lower $ cards plus the profit is greater. But the last 5 months I sure do miss ripping!
FYI my profit probably would have been much higher had I not got sucked into the 80's wax box ripping that I got addicted too for 6 months. Just didn't profit and this was before the unopened prices blew up. Haven't bought a box to rip in a very long time. Just some Modern.
-Marc