I am 29 and unfortunately didn't find my passion for the hustle until 1 year ago.

There is nothing more I love than trying to find a way to earn an extra buck while providing something of use. For me it all started when i decided I wanted to buy a house. I was looking for a way to earn some extra money to use for a down payment. I started my search on YouTube where of course I came across drop shipping.

To me with so many people pitching how easy it was and how they made so much money seemed way to odd for me. I know nothing in life comes free and you have to work for every you gain. This made me quickly move on to find something different. Next I found a couple of videos on Amazon FBA and knew that was it. That is what lead me down the road to so many more amazing things that I could invest my time and energy into to make more money.

Weeks 1-6

I started with the mindset of if I am going to do this and dive in head first I need to do this right and set myself up to grow. I setup a LLC in my state, registered to collect sales tax, setup a business checking account, and got myself a business credit card. All of that ended up taking almost a full month to process. So while I was waiting I dove deep into YouTube and every article I could find online.

After watching 20-30 videos on YouTube about FBA and reading 20 articles I decided to start with books like many were suggesting. I spent $100 on a used KDC200i scanner and another $50 on an app to go scan books. Over the next couple of weeks I went to every single Goodwill and Salvation Army in my city, and I did find some books. The issue I had is I would spend so much time in a store to only find one or two book. Every once and while I would find something that would net me $50+ but most of the time it was $5-10.

I shipped out around 100 lbs of books in my first month and they did start to sell. I could see I was making some money but sometimes I would go days without a sale. The issue I had is that books can take a long time to sell especially because most of what you are buying is text books. Don't get me wrong this will work and it will make you money but you have to be able to source a ton of books all the time to turn a consistent profit year round. For my area the books didn't have a high turn around so I was very limited by book inventory I could source.

Weeks 6-7

My next evolution was retail arbitrage which was the lightening bolt for me. This was toward the end of my first month in the FBA game and I realized after starting with books I needed to find stuff that I could sell year around and with a quick turnaround so I could take my profits to go out and buy more product. When I started this whole process I decided I wanted to limit myself to $1,000 in so if it all failed I wouldn't be out that much. All money I earned I kept in my business checking and turned that over and over.

I was easily able to spend the remaining $600 I had after buying all the supplies one needs for FBA. A scale, bar code scanner, boxes, tape, label remove, poly bags, ect... it adds up to a decent amount that I under estimated from my original $1,000 investment. Using the Amazon sellers app on my cell I went around to local Target's and Walmart to start and my $600 was gone after 4 stores.

That is when I realized there is so much out there for anyone to go out and flip. Using just an app on your phone anyone can go out to millions of retail stores, scan items, and find things that are selling for more on Amazon. Finding inventory was no longer my issue, I needed more money to buy stuff. This is where the snowball effect comes in when flipping stuff.

I always recommend to keep your day job and use that money to live on and hopefully you are able to save some of that to invest in whatever other things interest you. Don't pay yourself out of whatever amount you set aside for your hustle, think of that money as being gone. Using all profits you earn from whatever hustle you are doing will let you grow so much faster than if you start taking a little out here and there to cover some extra cost.

 

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Photo by Alexandru Tugui on Unsplash