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I am doing a challenge for myself that I thought I would share. So I’m doing year long challenge to see how much I can make $0 turn into by consecutively flipping items, and then using that money for something fun at the end of the year! (Something fun TBD but likely a vacation!)
My rules for myself are that I start with no money so I have to start by sourcing items for free and I can’t use anything I already own cause that feels a bit like cheating. So garbage day sourcing, dumpster diving, freecycle, free items on craigslist — all are legitimate (I know Joshua Sheats, you’ve said that you’re wife is a skilled curb collector!). I can then resell those items on ebay, craigslist, Facebook, etc etc depending on what makes sense and then use any profits to source new items and on and on and on. I will be keeping that money separate to see how much nothing I turn into something by the end of the year!
I decided yesterday to undertake this challenge and this afternoon picked up a Tassimo in a box (not sure if it works) and a leap frog baby toy (works) out of the garbage by driving along two side streets on the way to school pick up. If folks are interested I will share how I do with each flip.
Anyone interested in joining in a ‘Something from Nothing’ challenge??? -
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Sounds like a great challenge! I’ll be tracking your progress and rooting for you, but I have massive growth goals for 2017 so I think keeping the money I earn from free and paid for items would get muddled. Good luck! Hopefully you get a great vacation or other reward at the end!
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Do it! Shan and I are both professionals. We were burned out and wanted supplemental income, or more importantly, a business that could begin to replace our income in 2013. In January 2014 we began our own challenge of starting a business with nothing. We had both sold on eBay but decided we were wiping the slate and starting with zero as a type of social experiment. We started with stuff that was just laying around in our home or that we could obtain for free. Yes, we had our laptops and phone, wifi, and a roof over our head, but everything in the “business” was started from nothing else.
In the early days we searched things like Taco Bell sauce packets (think “will you marry me”?, packets. or bulk of limited flavors) and we would stop on our way home from work and grab a small handful without buying anything, if we did drive through it was Jack in the Box with a free antenna ball because the ball paid for the meal, we found toilet paper tubes and paper towel rolls were sought after by crafters in bulk and we encouraged family and friends to save all of them for us. Maybe our best “free” product was stickers from a regional coffee company. You could get 3-4 different ones with the purchase of a cup of coffee. At the time we were the first sellers of these and would make 8 or 9 bucks per sticker. Now there are over a hundred listings for the stickers. They were free.
We used every penny to buy inventory. We couldn’t spend everything in our paypal on inventory by March of that year(we didn’t use anything for personal expenses). In July of that year we learned about something called Amazon FBA and did a ton of research and invested our extra free cash in inventory. The first year we did 65k in sales between the two platforms. Our entire business and inventory today stems from that initial experiment. We have bought two rentals. We still sell on both.
Here are my thoughts on the experiment:
It is fun. Be creative in what you can sell. Don’t limit yourself to what you have lying around. Grab as many free stickers as you feel you can with only losing pride and not getting a rebuke. Which leads me to my next thought.
Pride isn’t your friend. We will pick up pennies in the parking lot. I have cruised through bottle return areas and pulled the grolsch type bottles with wired on type stoppers and sold them in lots. We love free boxes at yard sales. Some of our biggest scores were found there.
Be disciplined. The money goes back to the business.
The amount you work determines your success and pool of paypal money. We both worked 50-60 hours a week in our salaried jobs. Our experiment was done in the wee hours at night and in the morning.
Find your happiness. I do this full time just a couple of years later. Shan will join me by next year at the latest. This is who we are.
Continue to learn. We read everything and anything we can to expand what we do. That first year we looked for ways to create value from nothing and we tried things with no safety net. We failed in some, succeeded in others. But the bottom line is we have done well for ourselves.
Probably way more than you wanted to hear and not necessarily a challenge, but I am a long winded bastard.
whiskey
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Whiskey I LOVE your story! That’s what I try to tell mewbies–you can start a business with zero money! They never believe it. If you dedicate a Paypal account to only Ebay expenses and income (with a dedicated chkg acct.) you can tell automatically by your balances whether you are making money or spending too much. Just start with what you have–or scavenge–and keep flipping. The mistake most people make, I think, is that they fritter away their ebay income on various things–dinner here, paying a bill there, etc–so they don’t realize their progress. I’ve been just using my ebay income to pay extra on the mortgage or an occassional rare big expense. Watching that balance is very motivational. I’d love to heat Jay interview you!
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RevivalWares, I’ve actually been contemplating something like this for about a year now but focused only on video games. I even picked up a pair of special sunglasses with a mini camera in them with the intention of filming some of my thrift store and yard sale sourcing for this. Unfortunately my video game finds have been a lot less frequent in the last year so I never went forward with the idea. I’d love to do this challenge with you and focus on anything I can flip, maybe I’ll even get motivated enough to post video footage of my finds.
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Love it!
I have been wanting to do a similar thing for my son. He was given several Savings Bonds as a gift by well-meaning older relatives a few years ago, “to help with college expenses”, *cue laughter* The interest rate is awful, something like 0.34%, and they take 20 years to mature. I want to cash out the bonds, and then use the cash to buy inventory to flip for him. He will get $500 if we cash them out now, and $1000 in 17 years if we let them mature. I am positive I can get him more than $1000, and we won’t have to wait another 17 years to do it.
I think I will try that experiment after I clear my death piles. Death Pile Death Date is February 25, (the date of the next local auction).
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Quick update, Friday is one of two trash pickup days in my neighborhood so I went out this morning and found some interesting stuff. The camera glasses kept shutting off when I tried to record, but iPhone + selfie stick saved the day and I got a little bit of footage. I hope to edit together an intro to go with the footage and get a video up on YouTube for next Wednesday. I’m also going to list the items on a local Facebook yard sale group and hopefully I’ll have a little bit of cash in my pocket to do some more sourcing with next week!
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RevivalWares, how are you progressing? Had a chance to flip anything yet? I have to say I’m really impressed that I’ve already sold a few of the items I picked up out of the trash! I’m going to work on finishing a video tonight to post tomorrow. Next week I’ll hopefully have a synopsis of what sold and I already have plans to go to a church rummage sale this Saturday to spend my earned cash on new items to flip and also to do sourcing for my normal eBay business. I plan to use my iPhone and selfie stick to get more footage at the rummage.
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So far I flipped the toy I picked out of the garbage for $15 on Kijiji (like Craigslist but more popular here in Canada) two days later. I used that money to purchase a Dale of Norway sweater and vintage pair of Bostonian oxford wing-tips from a thrift store (the sweater is listed on ebay, the shoes will be). I also listed a patch that I removed from the sweater (truck patch).
The Tassimo coffee maker leaked water after I tested it with a coffee disc I bummed off my neighbour but I have listed the service disc and the drip tray in my ebay store.
Progress so far from $0:
$15
Will update as any of those items sell!
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Wow, great finds! What type of toy was it? $15 is really good especially for a toy from the trash. I ended up picking up larger items and have sold a broken bike and a wooden coat hanger/shelf. This challenge has very quickly reminded me why I hate selling on Facebook and Craigslist. So many people asking questions then never getting back to me and arrangements to meetup that get canceled at the last second. I give major props to anybody who sells full time on those platforms, I’d go nuts.
I didn’t get the video out yesterday but will hopefully find some time to edit it today. We are in the process of getting our house ready to sell and I spent all day cleaning and meeting with a realtor.
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