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!

Bank of America Referral Program

Bank of America has a referral program that pays a $25 dollar fee to both the referrer and the referred to open a new checking account. Before I go further, let me start from the beginning.

Last night I visited my PayPal account and realized I had $43 in it. I had forgotten that I had it. So I decided to draw the money out. As I was trying to get the money out of paypal I realized that it was linked to a bank account that I have not had in years. No problem I will just add my current account. So I enter the information and PayPal denies it. PayPal states that it is in use already. At this point I realize that my wife is using that account on her PayPal. PayPal will only allow one PayPal account per bank account. Well, my last option is to request a check. Again PayPal has issues. It states that I cannot request a check because my account has not been verified. So I thought for a few minutes "How in the world am I going to get this money out that is rightfully mine?". The more I thought the more perturbed I became at PayPal. But this headache was about to become a blessing in disguise.

The solution finally dawned on me. Open a new account, and that will become my penny millions account. So off I go on a quest to find a checking account with no minimum balance requirements, and no monthly fees. It was at this point that I remembered a post I had read at "The Richest Man in Atherstone" about bank referral bonuses. So now my quest has become more complex. Not only do I need a bank that has no minimum balance and no monthly fees, but I also need one that pays a referral bonus. Well, I found the bank and they have so much more this is the perfect penny millions, or doubling bank. The bank is Bank of America. They pay a $25 referral fee to the referrer and also 25 to the referred for opening a checking account. But it gets better, much better. I am not sure if you have heard of one of their more innovative ideas, the "Keep the Change" program. Here are the details, if you have a checking account and a savings account through bank of America, and sign up for this program, every purchase you make will be rounded to the nearest dollar and the difference added to your savings. But, here is the good part. For the first three months they also match that amount 100%. For example, let's say you buy a soft drink. The total comes to $1.52. If you pay with your debit card they will debit your account 2.00. They will transfer 48 cents to your savings account, and pay you 48 cents as a match. After the first three months they match 5% for the rest of the year. Is that not incredible? Folks this is free money for basically doing nothing! I almost signed up with them immediately then I had another brainstorm. I have found someone to refer me. If you are not a Bank of America customer, email me. I will be more than happy to send you a referral invitation by email.

Also I wanted to let you know, I am not anti paypal. Paypal is a wonderful concept and is almost a necessity for online transactions. Their security policies and procedures while absolutely necessary can be irritating at times like any financial institution. This blog was just my opportunity to vent a little frustration. I will keep you up to date as far as referrals and how long it takes to pay etc.