I bought a limited edition collectors item a while back at a huge discount; like 70% off, thinking I could make some money on it by selling it later on that Auction Site. I held on to it until there were none on the market, and the selling season was hot. I did my best to get the most I could for it.
Obviously, I’m not a professional seller, and don’t have the process down to a science, plus I wasted some time trying to selling craigslist, but I wasn’t a noob about this. Even so, if you take that wasted time out, and the fact that I had my money tied up for quite a long time sitting on the item, this is a very, very poor way to make money. Maybe, if I could sell a dozen a day in this price range it might be worth the effort, but I can’t see ow to make this sort of thing profitable.
Here is the break down:
Purchased Collector’s Item ~$100
shipping ~ $35 (it was fairly large and I lost money here)
Paypal fee on $185 $5.67
Ebay final value fee 10% 18.5
Sold for 188% of Purchase cost
Netted only 27%
Cost ~ $159
Sale $185
Net ~ $26
At the end of it I made less than $20 an hour. I feel like I just worked for a big online retailer to earn them free money while I was paid minimum wage. I feel like I was working for a fast food joint or something. Jaded! I’m not sure how anyone could stay with this sort of endeavor, even if they had a very good source of low price products. It would be much better to actually go to work for a coffee shop and hopefully earn benefits on top.
Anyway. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.
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