New item to sell

I stopped off at a garage sale yesterday, was very little there.  The lady said that they had sold most of their stuff the day before.  I saw a ceramic coaster with a rooster laying on a table, I asked the lady if she had the others in that set.  She said she did not and said I could have that one.  So I have a coaster to sell, and the best part is the price.  You cannot beat free for a price.  Now I happen to know that this set will sell for around $10 if all four was there.  I am going to put this one up for 99 cents, $2.99 shipping I believe.  I will have to weight it first to make sure about the shipping, it may not sell but I have nothing to lose if it doesn't.  Eventually I will have items start to sell, then the business will grow a lot faster, right now keep in mind I only have 45 cents for capital :).  Anyway, nothing that will set the world on fire, but if one of these 2 items sell it will give me a little more to work with.

Found pennies

One thing I have noticed is, money is all around you.  Once you start looking for change, you find it often.  I found another penny today, so am up to 45 cents plus the coffee cup that is on ebay.  Still no bids on the coffee cup, but I am hopeful.  It will be hard to sell the first few items due to feedback score.  Eventually someone will come along and want the coffee cup, it may have to be relisted a couple of times.  Still keeping my eye out for stuff to buy as well, the field is rather limited with just 45 cents though.

A couple of pennies found and my first item bought.

I stopped by the car wash this morning, was looking around and found 2 pennies which raised my total capital to 69 cents.  Later on in the day I stopped at the local thrift store and starting looking around.  Right away I noticed their coffee cups were on sale for a quarter each.  I started looking through them and found a beautiful piece of american pottery.  It is unmarked, but the design, feel, and USA stamp looks just like McCoy.  I am about positive it is a McCoy coffee cup.  McCoy is an american pottery company whose pottery is very collectible.  Now this coffee cup is not worth a whole lot, maybe $10 at the most.  I will start it on auction for probably .99 and shipping + 10% just to make sure I do not lose money on it.  Really after feedback as much or more than profit.  This should sell quick, may make 3 or 4 dollars profit off of it.  Will definitely not lose any.  Will post the link to the item page as soon as it is up.  So to recap, we are down to 44 cents, and have a coffee cup to sell. Listing For This Item

New Ebay Account Set Up

Armed with the total amount of 67 cents that I have found in the course of my Penny Millions, and a new eBay account with no feedback I am ready to go. I will hopefully find my first item soon.  New eBay Account .  I linked it here because I wanted to show proof that it is a new eBay account.  I have heard many people saying that they cannot sell on eBay because they have no feedback, I will show that to be false.  Of course very few people will trust you to buy a $1000 item, but for small items $10 or less most people will not even care about feedback.  I could raise my feedback by buying a bunch of cheap stuff and reselling it, but I will do it the hard way by selling.  I will let you guys know when I buy my first item and have it up.  I am excited about this new project I hope you will all follow me, there will be an eBook to follow eventually.

Just to remind you where the 67 cents came from, the first step of penny millions is, start looking on the ground for change.  You will find pennies often, and the occasional nickel, dime, or quarter.  I have even found a $20 bill before.  So if you want to follow along start getting change, open up your eBay account, open a pay-pal account, link the paypal to a bank account, then link the paypal to your ebay account and you are in business.  It sounds like a lot of hassle but is actually easier than it sounds :). 

Good places to look for change

Start wherever you are.  You can find change in parking lots of places you normally go, just about anywhere.  Better than average places are laundromats, coin op car washes, around the vending machines, in the coin returns of vending machines.  I have found a couple of dollars in quarters at a car wash several times.  Do not drive out of your way to go to these places, just stop by if you are passing them anyway.  Otherwise you will be spending more gas than the change you find.  You will get looked at funny for picking up a penny, do not worry about it just smile and go on your way.  Most people are too lazy to bend down and pick it up.

Benefits of finding money

Instead of using your own money and worrying that the item will not sell, if you are using found money you will have no worry.  It is not your money, you are risking nothing.

Fees and Shipping

If you are selling on eBay with Pay Pal you need to know the fees, you get 50 free listing fees a month with an occasional free listing offer of many more per month.  After that 50 it costs a certain amount to list depending on what you are listing.  Avoid these listing fees completely till you are doing decent volume on eBay.  They also charge a final value fee of 10%.  this is charged on the shipping and item price.  so if you sell an item for .99 with 2.99 shipping it will cost 40 cents in a final value fee.  PayPal also charges a fee, pay pal charges .30 plus 2.9%.  So pay pal fees on that item would be 30 cents plus 12 cents.  Add those fees together and you get 

eBay .40

PayPal .42

Fees  Total: .82

3.98 - .82 = 3.16

If it cost 2.00 to ship you would have 1.16 left after all fees and shipping.  Be careful when selling low dollar items, you can easily lose money on them.  You are looking for an item that you can get cheap, that sells for $5 or more, preferably over $10.  So if you find an item that costs a quarter, that sell for 5.00 costs $2 to ship it would look more like this.  

Sold for $5 plus $2 shipping.  

7.00

- ebay fee of .70

- pay pal fee of .30 plus .21

-shipping 2.00

That would give you a profit of 3.79 off of a quarter investmen, or put in another way 1519% profit.  That may sound like a lot, but these deals are out there often if you know what to look for.  It just takes a little experience and the willingness to look stuff up on ebay and amazon so you can make an educated decision.  It will make more sense once I start showing you the items I have bought, what they sold for, what I paid, and how long it took to sell.

At first I will be selling stuff on auction starting out pretty cheap, so I can keep building my capital.  Once I hit a certain point, I will start asking more closely to what they are worth and holding longer if needed.

So now maybe you understand the fee structure and what is required to start an eBay business, and some of the costs to expect.  Notice I did not mention gas, wear and tear on the car, eating out while getting inventory, there are many small expenses that can get out of hand and cause you to not profit.  We will be getting around that by only stopping at a place that we are close by.  I will be stopping at yard sales on the way back from taking my son to school, stopping at thrift store on the way to buy groceries, etc.  It should cost nothing extra until I get a decent amount of money to buy product with.  Then I will start factoring in the other costs.

I hope you are looking forward to following me on this project, if you are please link to me, leave a comment, link me on your social media sites etc.  Happy Picking!

Project No Money Business Start Up

My new project will be starting soon.  I will be using money that I have found on the ground, from my penny millions days.  I have 67 cents right now that has been found.  So I will use that money to purchase something to resell.  I will open up a separate E-Bay account to prove that anyone can do this from scratch.  If I do not a lot of people will use it as an excuse, well I do not have any feedback so I cannot sell on E-Bay.  I do not want to leave any room for excuses :).  My plan is to build this into a part time business, the same way I have built my current business.  I will keep hunting for dropped change etc. throughout just to add to my capital.  I will start out picking at yard sales, thrift stores, etc.  And eventually move up to buying from E-Bay to resell and buying wholesale.  I will document each step, what I bought, what I payed, what it sold for, shipping cost, gas if it was not on my normal route, Ebay fees, paypal fees, the whole nine yards.  When I get enough data I will start writing the E-book, should be an educational journey for us all.  I will probably try some Crowd Funding on this project as well.  Regardless the things I will be doing are not difficult and anyone can do it.  That is the point, keep it simple and help people start a business to make a part time income, or even a full time income.  It will not be easy, it will take time, there will be some items that lose money.  All the pitfalls will be there, this is not going to be a book full of hype, just a realistic step by step manual for starting an E-commerce business.