How I Got Started Flipping Books on eBay

If any of you are familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk and have been consuming his content this year, then you have probably heard about his 2017 Flipping Challenge. If you haven't, you can find a link to the video here. I recommend watching the video as Gary has an incredibly powerful way of kicking you in the ass and motivating the shit out of you, but if you don't have ten minutes to watch his video, the basic idea is this: Sell stuff around your house and stuff you pick up at garage sales, second hand stores, and thrift shops online or on craigslist and make $20,170 in profit.

I thought the idea of $20,170 in profit seemed a little out of my realm of possibilities since I didn't want to devote as much time to it, but the challenge struck a chord with me. I felt compelled to at least try it out. Besides, the worst thing that could happen is I get rid of some shit that was just collecting dust around the house.

I didn't actually see Gary's video until May of this year so I was already a few months behind anyway, but I wanted to give it a shot and see what I could do. I'm always up for trying new things to make money on the side and I felt I would at least learn something through the challenge.

The timing of me seeing the video was great. You see, I live in a medium sized city in the US and went to college here in town. Therefore, I still have a lot of connections at the university I attended and was still part of the private Facebook group where people put things up for sale and to give away. May, was right around graduation time, and a huge majority of the graduating seniors weren't staying in town. I immediately snatched up a desk and dresser for $10 and was off to the races.

The dresser was nice solid wood so I put it up on craigslist for $60. Within a day or so, I had a buyer willing to pick it up for full price. The desk took a little longer to sell and after a week or so of sitting unsold, I took a $30 offer from someone at the same school I bought it. I felt selling to someone in need would give me some karma points. Overall, a cool $80 profit in a week.

Things slowed down quite a bit after the initial hype. Sourcing items became more difficult as the good stuff in the Facebook group was snatched up. I decided to turn my attention to items I had laying around my own house. This is where my journey to selling items on eBay really got going.

I'm an avid reader and have been for quite some time. As is the case with many avid readers, I have stray books seemingly everywhere. In an effort to declutter my relatively small space and to make a few bucks, I decided to throw a few listings up on eBay for some business books I had long since finished and didn't feel the need to keep around.

Not exactly the same number of books as me, but you get the idea.

I sold a couple and made some pretty paltry profits after fees, packaging materials, and shipping costs, but I wasn't losing money and I wanted to get rid of stuff anyway so there was no harm.

Since that first book sold in May, I've sold nine other books for a total profit of $61.71. Nothing to write home about by any means, but a couple of these books were actually thrift store finds and a couple came from our neighborhood book exchange bins (I'm probably going to hell for those).

I also sold an office chair I found sitting next to the dumpster at my office building for $20 and an 8 GB memory card that a co-worker gave me for $12. A total profit of $27.81 between the two of them.

For those of you keeping score at home, since May I have profited a total of $169.42. While that is still a far ways off from the goal of $20,170, the simple fact that I have made any money doing this is already an accomplishment in my eyes.

My 60-Day Ebay Revenue Total - Not all of that is profit!

I have spent probably a total of 3 hours working on flipping things, creating eBay listings, and browsing the Facebook marketplace so $56 an hour is nothing to scoff at in my opinion. Part of me thinks that I could probably make much more by really going in on the whole flipping business, the other part of me just doesn't want to put forth the effort. I've easily spent more time on other projects that have returned $0 that I simply enjoy more.

I write all of this not to necessarily persuade you to go out and sell things taking up space in your garage, but rather to open your mind to new and potentially creative ways of earning income on the side. You're reading this on Steemit, which already means that you are open to new sources of income, so why not take the plunge and sell a couple of those old books that are lying around your house. Spoiler alert: You're never going to read them again.

I will be posting more updates on my Flipping Journey to my blog so follow @brandonp to get those posts (and more great content) directly to your feed.