In these tough economic times, it's crucial to find new and creative ways to earn money. One of the top ways to make some spare cash is by selling items on eBay, the world's largest online marketplace. Before starting my venture, I searched online for the closest thrift shops to my house and then visited each of the nearest five. When I first started this venture, I would just buy a whole bunch of random items that looked appealing, and then attempt to sell them on eBay for profit - this method obviously didn't work. One of the keys to becoming profitable was investing in a smartphone with Internet access. Once I had that, I could instantly search the completed similar items on eBay while I was still inside a thrift store deciding what items to buy. What I discovered is that some of the best items to sell are vintage sports jerseys. Most thrift stores have a section set aside for sports jerseys, and you'll likely have to dig through a pile of gently used high school and college jerseys just to find a few rare gems buried underneath. From my experience, I found that thrift stores price "old jerseys" very low because of their slightly worn, vintage appearance. For example, I found a Champion-brand vintage Chicago Bulls jersey from a local thrift store for $2 and I was able to sell it on eBay for $35. I also found an old New York Rangers Brian Leetch jersey for $5, and I was able to flip it for a $50 profit on eBay. I made sure to search the items online on my smartphone while I was still inside the thrift store, to make sure these were items that sell for decent money on eBay. It's not quite as simple as finding a two dollar item at a thrift store and flipping it for $20 on eBay, as you have to keep in mind a variety of fees that will cut into your bottom line. When all is said and done, approximately 10-15% of your overall profit will go to eBay and Paypal fees. You also have to remember to charge enough to cover shipping costs, and keep in mind small expenses that add up like gas money to drive to the thrift stores and the post office when you ship your items out. Packaging costs such as tape, boxes and envelopes, is another key consideration for mapping out your expenses. Once you have the items that you want to sell, there's a few things you can do to make them more appealing online. One of the things I did was to offer free shipping on my items, because eBay boosts you up in the search results when a seller does that. Since I was mostly selling vintage sports jerseys, the shipping on these items was only $3 or $4, so it was worth eating the shipping cost in order to get boosted in search results. There's no such thing as a get-rich-quick scheme that will work on eBay, as this method does take some hard work and a little research. My year-end tally was $24,000 in sales, minus $7,000 in shipping fees, $4,000 in inventory costs (items purchased from the thrift stores), and approximately $3,000 between eBay and Paypal fees - making my overall profit close to $10,000. As you can see, the shipping fees, eBay and Paypal fees, and inventory costs, were extremely significant, so you'll need to keep that in mind before getting started.
I know . At the time, I was depressed... didn't believe in myself, and doubted I could do any job because of neck pain. So I took the Kroger's gig regardless of the pay. I don't pay any bills though since I live with my mom, which is good. It's certainly not a job that was meant to pay any rent, utilities, bills of any kind lol.
I don't get this post? Are you trying say that sacking groceries is beneath you? Are you the manager of Kroger making minimum wage? Are you a stocker? Checker? Are you the kid with the iPod gathering all of the carts in the parking lot? I guess that I find it humorous that while you have a job at Kroger, that your friend "hooked" you up with, making minimum wage, and complaining about being broke that you scoff at sacking groceries. I guess in the current stage in your life (lol) you can't imagine the idea of sinking to putting items in a bag (paper or plastic?). SMH
Okay so lets talk about this turk thing. I repped you btw anyway so why not do this turk amazon thing full time? Do you think someone could live full time doing this if going 40 hours a week? What type of income would your project at 40 hours a week approx? How quickly can you get paid from the time that you do it? So you actually know people that are doing this and making income?no internet bs plz. Do you see it getting saturated with not enough available work? there are jobs there and some of the $10 job seem easy enough then there are other people offering 5 cent jobs with all kinds of steps and hoops. Just seems really weird.. and from a working from home point of view seems to good to be true almost. I am looking for a side deal and I am thinking of experimenting this week and going hard on this turk thing to see if I can generate some cash. I am going to lock myself in a room for 72 hours and do some high grade drugs then sit there and jam out 500 surveys or translate some stuff. What do you think about this plan? If I can do 300 HITs or whatever the heck that is :grin: at $10 a pop I'm thinking that $3000 right there a month. If I work 40 hours doing 7.5 an hour I can make $3000. Am I reading this right? Could I outsource a team of indians and go even harder ya think? very interesting.
http://www.novumprs.com/ So when I was a broke college student sacking groceries every third weekend to make a little $ I too ran into the issue of needing extra cash. I donated plasma a couple times but then I heard about this place in the link. Easiest $ i ever made. I know it sounds crazy doing a pharmaceutical research study but this place mainly tests drugs that have expiring patents against their generic version to make sure the generic versions have the same absorption rate. I was involved in the clinical trial of allegra's generic alternative, a muscle relaxer, and many others. This is not guienea pig random unknown drugs so don't think like that but here's how it goes: -Call for a screening appointment for an upcoming study -Do lab work make sure you have no stds & are healthy one afternoon for a few hours -get a call back saying you're good to go & sign up for a study -get there really early on a Friday early afternoon as the studys had like 35 people but it was first come first serve -eat pizza hut and chill and watch movies, play pool, play video games fri night -wake up on sat morning, eat Mcdonalds breakfast -take medicine -get blood drawn in tiny vials about 5 times -eat boston market lunch -get blood drawn a couple more times while chillin playing pool, watchin movies -eat a pretty good dinner -chill watch tv, movies, play pool, video games -go to sleep -wake up sunday morning -give blood -leave do this again the next weekend and get a $600 to $1000 check depending on how many times your blood is drawn. You can only do these studies every so often but it was so worth it-I probably did about 5 or 6 and always had my buddies wanting to do it with me. Look into it and if you sign up, you can get paid on referrals for bringing friends with you. You basically hang out and get fed pretty good food to donate tiny amounts of blood. Easiest money I ever made was being a 'lab rat'!
So do you or do you not pay any bills? If you don't, what is wrong with minimum wage? Just extra spending money.
No, I don't pay any house bills. It's just with gas, food, and miscellaneous expenses... I don't have a lot of income per week and my check isn't lasting me right now. I guess technically I could never go out or spend anything but what I spend on gas/food, but I want more money per week to do other things. Buy books at B&N, make an Amazon purchase or something, etc.
Add go out w/ friends to the list. Nothing extravagant, but after gas + food + 1 social outing a week, I'd really like to have an extra say... $50-$75. :\
The best suggestion I've heard thus far is to max out your student loans. This is what I did, while I worked as well, to put myself through school. Some advantages to doing this: 1) Low interest rate, I think nowadays it runs 5-8%. 2) You don't have to pay as long as you're going to school. 3) You can write off the interest on your tax return, it's a full credit, that is...unless you make too much. This past year it began phasing out at $60,000. Another thing I did recently was something on Amazon called "Fulfillment by Amazon". Basically what you do is enter the stuff you want to sell, then send it to Amazon and they hold it until it sells and ship it for you. The good thing about this is that you don't have to make constant trips to the post office/UPS/FedEx stores. You list all of your stuff, ship 1 box, and you're done. So go through your stuff and see what you can find, search Amazon and see how much it goes for (be sure you're looking at the used stuff). I found out that one of my old Super Nintendo games goes for $150. Another thing I thought about doing, if you're in need of money and have extra time on your hands, is going to a place like half price books and using the barcode scanner on your phone to see how much a book goes for on Amazon. One I had was $25, so there are some that go for a lot. Anyway, use that barcode scanner to get a quick price, see how much it goes for, see how much they're selling it for, and decide if the difference is enough for you to make a profit on when you calculate in shipping and the price you pay to Amazon. Good luck, stay in school, that should be your first priority. Pugs Edit: Here is another thing you can do, that I've posted before. It's called Plaza Research. They do Focus Groups and pay $100-$150 for 2 hours. Here is the link if you'd like to sign up.
I recommend this route from personal experience. http://www.jalr.com has a nationwide index of research facilities.
Yeah, I'd ideally not want to max out any student loans right now. I don't think I have much of value for Amazon either, lol. I've looked in the past and it's maybe like 20-30% of it's value. No $30 + items I'd want to part with at any rate. Half-price Books, for me, was a sham. I remember the last time I took my books there. It was a mix of old and new sci-fi (this was a year or so ago, the titles escape me) titles, about 25 of them, and I got like $15 and they weren't all copies of I-Robot, Fahrenheit 451, or other extremely common books. I understand that half-price can't quite pay you a lot, but it wasn't very much at all.
I believe you can do the studies every 8 weeks, same amount of time between giving blood. You can make about an extra 4k a year if you do it right. Get a few friends to do it with you and you can make 5k a year-at least based on studies when I did them about 2002 to 2004. Wouldn't surprise me if they paid more now. Lab was at beltway 8 west and westheimer area
Regarding Half Price books, I wasn't saying go in there to sell your books. I was saying go in there with your phone and the barcode scanner app. Pick up a book, scan the barcode on it, and with that you can quickly see how much it goes for on Amazon. If it goes for $5 on Amazon, but it's $.50 at Half Price books, you could buy it. Get 10 like this, list them all like I posted above, and it's cost you $5+shipping to Amazon, so probably about $15 total if you include boxes/tape/gas. If they sell for $5 each, that's a nice profit you've made. If they're not selling, you can always go and change the price. The only true questions are, do you have the time for this? Can you afford to pay $20 now to make $50 later? Pugs
There is a place out off Wilcrest and Richmond Novum I think I did that a few times. Easy Money. . . helped me get over my fear of needles Rocket River
