Sometimes you have to get really creative when trying to work from home. Maybe you can’t stand to do phone work. Perhaps you have young children you have to take care of every day. Maybe you are shy, have no experience in most things, etc. You have to really brainstorm and think of what you could do.
One possible option is having a unique ebay and craigslist business. The only cost to start would be however much you spent on initial inventory, plus ebay listing fees. Placing ads on craigslist is free.
What you would do is frequent yard sales and estate sales, looking for bargains. The goal is simple: To buy low and sell for a profit. If you have children you can take them along with you, and depending on their age, they can really help you out and get involved with the business with you.
For me, going to yard sales and estate sales is fun, so doing it as a business would be awesome. You never know what you might find and sometimes you can really find that treasure or that awesome bargain. It might even be difficult to let go of some stuff.
With experience, you will get better at yard sales and estate sales. You will learn how to negotiate. If you buy a lot of stuff, sellers are much more willing to bargain with you than if you just buy an item or two. Some sales are junky and overpriced. You will learn to take a quick look and make a quick exit to find a better sale. And some sales are a dream come true. They have unique stuff, old stuff, fun or valuable stuff at really cheap prices. I have been to several estate sales, many being 3 days. Different places may do things in different ways. But the ones I went to, mostly everything was over priced. On the first day, it was next to impossible to get a deal unless you were buying something very expensive or a lot of items. On the second day, they were more than willing to negotiate on the price. And on the last day, everything was automatically 50% off, plus they were often willing to drop down well below that. One time I got wonderful items that were originally priced well over $200 for only $50. The risk is, you never know what will be left on the last day. Anyway, with more experience you will get used to all that. On some days you will have great finds and feel like you just found a lost treasure and on others you will come home empty handed and frusterated.
Now that you have the items, you have to mark them up and sell them. Now, for ebay, this can be tricky. You will have to do research and see what items are selling well and what kinds of prices they are selling for. With ebay, you just never know until you do research. One market it may seem like no one is buying anything, even for really low prices while another market may be on fire. You also have to do research with ebay to avoid wasting listing fees. It costs to list on ebay and if your item doesn’t sell, you are out of the listing fee. You may , where you pay the same fee every month and then a commission on items that sell instead of a listing fee for every item. If you have a lot of items, this would be a better option.
On craigslist however, it’s free to list items, so if your item doesn’t sell, you aren’t out anything. Your success on craigslist will depend largely on where you live. Craigslist is divided into all the major cities of the U.S. and some cities pages are busy and thriving while others are slow and halfway dead. If you live far from any of the listed cities on craigslist, this will probably not be an option either since craigslist is all about dealing locally.
Some people have had quite some success on craigslist. They would buy something, furniture for example for a low price at a yard sale and turn around, sell it on craigslist and make a $100 profit in a day.
If your area has those free local classifieds, you can try that too. Just list your items for free and hopefully someone will buy them. The classifieds are free because they sell advertising to businesses. The businesses pay for ads because a lot of people are reading the papers looking for bargains.
The busy time in your business will be summer and the slow time will be winter since most all yard sales are held in the summer.
The great thing about this business, is it’s fun and interesting, you never get bored, it’s flexible, and you make all of the decisions such as what to buy, how much to mark up the price, and where to sell it at.