Tag Archives: ebay business

Creating Opportunities To Become Rich Using eBay

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I once worked with a technical contractor (let’s call him Bill) that had the special gift of seeing opportunities that others would consider as garbage.  Not only was Bill a technical contractor, Bill was also became an accidental eBay entrepreneur!

During a four-year time span, my friend became an expert at creating opportunities on eBay which helped him become rich!  Today, I’m going to tell his story of the way he made over $100, 000 on eBay by selling what some considered junk Cisco parts and routers!

It was the year 2001, and the tech industry was coming out of a spending freeze.  A few years in the tech market is like 20 years in normal time, or so it seems.  Many of the companies had old outdated Cisco routers and now those businesses suddenly had a budget for spending on new technology once again.  So many companies pitch or sold their Cisco routers at bargain prices since most businesses considered them junk because they were older and slower than the new Cisco stuff.

Back then, Bill had a desire to learn the ins and outs of Cisco routers, so he went on eBay and started looking to buy a few routers that he could use to setup a lab to help him get Cisco certified.  He quickly found a few cheap routers and bought them.  To his surprise, he realized that the price he paid for the router didn’t take into consider the  T1 communications card.  The T1 card was worth as much as he paid for the entire router!   Also surprising was the fact that there were a huge number of these exact routers for sell on eBay.  Instantly, Bill realized the great opportunity that he had!

You see Bill only paid around $1,000 for each router, but he could take the T1 card out of the Cisco router and turn around and sell both the card and the Cisco router for around $2,000!  That is a $1,000 profit, and a 100% profit margin percentage return!  He didn’t waste any time buying and selling this Cisco cash cow that he discovered!

As he was making money via his discovery, he still got his Cisco certification with the routers that he bought to learn with.  This is when he came up with the brilliant idea of creating a Cisco Certification kit!   He would provide the configuration need to accomplish 2 types of certification and sell his new creation for a more profitable price that just selling the Cisco routers alone.  This little modification increased his profit margin percentage return to 160% on his Cisco certification kits!

Both fortunately and unfortunately, demand outstripped the amount that he could buy.  Since we worked as a contractor, he would miss deal during work hours and during night.  At least until he came up with the idea of writing a program that would detect the auctions of this particular Cisco router target, and email him.  He had his application setup so that if he replied to an email, his application would buy the Cisco routers for him!  This enabled him to overcome the supply problems because he was not buying them up as fast as they would be listed on eBay!

He actually went so far as to modify this program to automatically buy such auctions when they came online, but he only used it a few times because of the potential risk associated with a bad buy.

During these times, Bill confided to me that he was making over $80,000 a year on his little eBay business that he created.  And the beauty was that it was big bucks right from the start!  Often times a new business could take years to build up to profitability, but here he was making great money right of the bat!

Just guessing what he was making as a contractor at the time, I would have to guess that he was clearing over $200,000 per year from working as a contractor and selling his lucrative Cisco kits!

I learned from my friend to keep my eyes open for opportunities, because there are opportunities all around us, waiting to be discovered.

-MR

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Raising Savvy Business Kids

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Flash to the Past

When I was growing up, my dad wanted me to get a college degree so that I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps by creating my own small business like he did (and my grandfather too).  Sadly, I was not destined to be a savvy Business kid…

Both my dad and grandfather had fairly successful businesses (my dad still have his business, my grandfather has past away).  They were trying to save me from the hours they put in to grow their businesses.  I remember my dad, looking at blueprints during basketball games down in a recreation room many a night!

Flash Forward

I’m doing the opposite with my kids!  I’m actually trying to raise my kids as Savvy Business Kids!

I decided to change direction from my dad because the company employee paradigm from his era no long applies today!  Company loyalty (while still may exist at a very small subset of companies), is going the same way of company pensions, they are becoming nonexistent…, extinct…, dust in the wind…

So what have I done to help my kids become business savvy?

  • I started introducing basic math early, especially getting them to recognize which coins had more value!
  • I bought a game called “Cash Flow For Kids” and to give them an incentive to play, I embellished the game for doing the following.  If they won, I paid them whatever they would spin on a spin dial.  the had the opportunity to win a 25 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar, 2 dollars or 5 dollar.  So far, I’ve been luck and they haven’t won the highest amount yet ($5.oo).
  • I started an eBay business with my son so he could learn that it’s possible to make money at an early age.   Ironically, this ended up working really well for me too!  We were able to buy a product from a supplier and sell the item on eBay at a pretty decent markup.  It was a good experience for the both of us (the taxes did sucked though).
  • We put prices on their toys and sold them in garage sales.
  • They would occasionally put up a lemonade stand.
  • My son has a deal with my dad to mow my parent’s lawn.  This actually works out great because he gets paid for mowing, but plays for a bit on the riding lawnmower at the same time (it’s a win-win).
  • My son has expressed an interest in selling some of his Pokémon cards on eBay.  We will start this adventure next!
  • ICarly has inspired son to think about blogging, but we haven’t done anything yet because he’s got too much going on as is.
  • My daughter has created drawings for sale (most of which my wife and I bought), and also had her own lemonade stands.

I’m hoping that the small business experiments that I’ve been working on with them will help in the future!  I think the lessons in investing and some small business exposure will help them see opportunities that others might miss in the future!

Do you think I’m trying too hard?  Do you have any suggestions? 

I’m an employee, so any suggestions would be appreciated from any small business folks out there!

-MR

Creating An Entrepreneur Snowball

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A while ago, when I was still in college, for a short stint of time I was a computer consultant.  So I was an entrepreneur for a short stint of time (not even a full year).  I could have continued with this route, but I decided I would be better off getting a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

Four years ago, I got the entrepreneur bug again.  But this time I didn’t have the free time or money to start such an endeavor.  I didn’t have the free time because I had a full-time job, not to mention spending time with my kids.  I didn’t have the money because I was still paying the mortgage on my house.

So what I did I do?

I decided to start a small  business selling merchandise on eBay.  My spin was I bought the product online and would end up selling it on eBay where it would be bided up to a 50 to 100% premium over where I bought it.  I didn’t have time to sell many units, so I limited myself initially to two products a week.  Later, after I got comfortable with the process, I was selling four to five units a week.  I was fun, exciting and fresh!

I stopped selling stuff on eBay because the supplier I use to buy from discontinued selling the product I was selling.  I couldn’t find the product anywhere else for such a bargain price.

Next, I took some of the money from selling my product on eBay and started this blog (www.moneyreasons.com).  While not making as much as I use to make on eBay, it’s still a lot of fun, and by far the best hobby that I’ve ever had!  I will keep blogging for years, and any money that it generates will help fund future entrepreneur activities.

I’m not sure what the next entrepreneur activities I will be involved with.  It might be a simple expansion of my blogging activities with the creation of additional blogs, or it might be something all together different.  I may even use the money from blogging to help with the down-payment on real estate, if blogging starts to take off.

For the next few years though, I hope to continue to refine my writing and develop a following.  We’ll see, time will tell 🙂

Do you have any entrepreneur plans in the near future?

-MR