Week 5 kicked off with an absolute bang.
After promoting most of my listings, on the first day of this week I sold.
4 pieces of clothing and a DVD
On the 23rd I sold another piece of clothing and that vintage Mr. Squiggle I found in week 4, which actually sold as an auction. My first and only successful auction.
The 24th was another piece of clothing and a DVD
The 25th was just a DVD
the 26th I sold two pieces of clothing and another vintage toy. This time it was a Wittman’s promotional Tweety bird that I also picked up in an Op-Shop for a few dollars.
Nothing on the 27th or 28th.
Then on the 29th I sold two more pieces of clothing, a book, and a graphic novel. Giving me a total profit of $150.35
Which was more than I had made in the 4 weeks prior.
I was feeling on top of the world, this was it, I was making money.

However, looking at my spreadsheet I noticed that all of the clothing I was selling, that I spent literal hours, sourcing, washing, steaming, measuring and photographing was only netting me between 6-10 dollars profit. Where as every single DVD I already owned was netting me $5 profit, and listing DVD’s take about a minute, if you look up ones that have already sold and hit that little “sell one like it” button.

This week made me reevaluate if selling used clothing was really the way to go. It takes a lot of time, it takes up a bunch of storage, and unless it is a really sort after item, it is pretty low profit.
It looks so enticing at first, If you buy something for $1 and sell it for $14 with shipping, you are making roughly 108% return on your investment, who wouldn’t be happy with that?
But after eBay takes their cut you walk away with about $10, which would be an awesome way to make money if you could sell 10 items of clothing a day.
But is the time I spent, driving to the Op-Shop, rummaging through cages, steaming, measuring, photographing and listing worth $10?
I don’t think so.