Make Some Extra Money While In Lockdown

[Ananta]

1 minute ago, Preety_India said:

@Average Investor  the sales are doing well. 

But my issue now is food. The grocery stores near me have ran out of food. 

I'm just surviving on soup packs. I'm barely getting by. My refrigerator is empty. 

Just about everything is out of stock. 

 

Ugh, its nuts! Try calling stores and seeing when they are getting major deliveries in, if you really have nothing. That's terrible.

[Average Investor]

@Anna1I had to pay $10 for the delivery and they forgot an item I seemed to get charged for.  I found around 4pm to be a good time to go when I did. Because they would restock for people getting off of work. Good luck to you too! 

I had seen costco does online orders if you are a member. I am going to try to get some cashews coming in if they have them lol. 

[Ananta]

@Average Investor Thank you, I'm good now for at least another week or two. So, I won't worry about it for a bit. It was a super Wal-mart, so even though it was pretty bare in some areas and isles, it probably had more then many regular grocery stores do. I won't complain hearing @Preety_India is practically starving ?

[Average Investor]

@Anna1 Yeah, I agree with you lol. I got irritated because I am eating sauerkraut with regular water and not purified water lmao. So my problems sound pretty superficial. I had just made a big effort to remove all that kind of stuff and I had a whole bunch of them stored that were with regular water I was not eating. They were $1, so I bought like 20 or so at the time haha. So I lucked out with that. I had been trying to eat only organic too, but that is not fully the case. It is what it is. I am happy to just be able to eat and if I have to eat stuff I eliminated to survive, then I would. 

I assume there is plenty enough for everyone. But because there is fear and panic, then everyone has to buy it all up. Which ironically just makes people have to go to the store more. 

[Ananta]

13 minutes ago, Average Investor said:

I am happy to just be able to eat and if I have to eat stuff I eliminated to survive, then I would. 

Yeah. I was trying to clean up my diet a bit (not as good as you tho). Now, between stress and crap food to eat that's gone out the window. 

16 minutes ago, Average Investor said:

because there is fear and panic, then everyone has to buy it all up

Yes, and last week I heard one of the saddest things, which is that all the infant formula was bought up and most the the soft baby food too. I couldn't imagine. 

[Average Investor]

@Anna1 Yeah, it is a tough one. It has taken me over 2 years of constant dedication. I went from someone who ate taco bell all the time to eliminating meat, added sugar, dairy, oil, processed food, frozen foods (besides fruit), etc. I don't think everyone needs to go that in depth. To be fair I could have never seen myself doing that in the past, so it really is possible. Takes patience though. Your taste buds also adjust after about 3 months. So fruits and vegetables taste really good now. I even make my own sauces and stuff too. I have to admit I invest probably about 1-2 hours into making food a day, so that is an extra drain if you don't have the time. There is a good balance for everyone though. I also eat nearly the same thing daily, but with making my own sauce and stuff it changes. The smoothie always has a variety of different fruits and other things added. I have a big mix of vegetables that go in, so not really a lack of stuff. The most helpful thing I did for improvement was just working on doing one meal and making that as best I could. I started with just the smoothie and that progressively spilled into all the other things I ate. I eat a lot of different nuts throughout the day too. Nuts are an incredible food source and require no prep time. 

Yeah, I am not sure what can even be done with stuff like that. It's really a shame how it works like that. In the future I will have a bit of stock pile I think from now on lol. 

[Ananta]

3 minutes ago, Average Investor said:

I went from someone who ate taco bell all the time to eliminating meat, added sugar, dairy, oil, processed food, frozen foods (besides fruit), 

 Dang

Thats awesome!

[supremeyingyang]

@Preety_India Sry to hear that. In which Country do you life?

@Average Investor  Selling is not Problem for me. My problem was last time the supply - how can I decide which kind of item I should buy to sell.

Any unusual tips on where to buy?

[Average Investor]

@supremeyingyang I really like garage sales the most. But thrift stores are good too especially if you frequent one enough. There is really no limit to the categories you can enter. That is why I sell such a broad range of stuff. It is good to specialize in probably like 3 areas though. But the more you do it and the more you go you will start to pick up on it more. 

Always try to buy new old stock stuff. You could find something like a old windows 7 copy for example new and that would sell well. I have sold those for $90 within the last year. 

Don't be afraid to take some risks sometimes. That is really what has made me improve the most. You get burnt on something, then you will likely not make that mistake again. You will also learn a lot in the process. I usually do that by buying things in big quantities that I want to learn about for a low price. 

You can do storage units or buy bulk wholesale stuff. I have a guy that will deliver 4000 dvds to my house all at once. You can make connection like that with all sorts of categories like books, cds, etc. A lot of it comes down to knowing more though and getting more practice. I can get so many items now that I have a hard time selling them all. I have got a lot of stuff at thrift stores, but I really do favor garage sales much more. Lot better deals usually and a you can barter. 

Are you in the US? 

Edit: Are you looking to buy while in lock down or just in general? I should have asked that lol. 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Average Investor

[Average Investor]

@kellyon What kind of industry are you in? What platform are you trying to bring clients to? 

[supremeyingyang]

3 hours ago, Average Investor said:

Are you in the US? 

Edit: Are you looking to buy while in lock down or just in general? I should have asked that lol. 

No, I'm in Europe.

No, I want to buy & sell in general as a side hustle. I have a regular 9 to 5 but I want to have multiple sources of income (3-5) in the future.

 

3 hours ago, Average Investor said:

@supremeyingyang I really like garage sales the most. But thrift stores are good too especially if you frequent one enough. There is really no limit to the categories you can enter. That is why I sell such a broad range of stuff. It is good to specialize in probably like 3 areas though. But the more you do it and the more you go you will start to pick up on it more. 

Always try to buy new old stock stuff. You could find something like a old windows 7 copy for example new and that would sell well. I have sold those for $90 within the last year. 

Don't be afraid to take some risks sometimes. That is really what has made me improve the most. You get burnt on something, then you will likely not make that mistake again. You will also learn a lot in the process. I usually do that by buying things in big quantities that I want to learn about for a low price. 

You can do storage units or buy bulk wholesale stuff. I have a guy that will deliver 4000 dvds to my house all at once. You can make connection like that with all sorts of categories like books, cds, etc. A lot of it comes down to knowing more though and getting more practice. I can get so many items now that I have a hard time selling them all. I have got a lot of stuff at thrift stores, but I really do favor garage sales much more. Lot better deals usually and a you can barter.

Great Advice. Is it true that this work needs a lot of working? I thought that way the last time. Any time you sell a new thing you have to learn what it does and how much people want to pay for it. I would put a price on a thing and wait if someone would buy it within a few days. Then I would go lower and lower. I could do that strategy because I got those stuff cheap or for free and I needed money to pay the rent. So I did like 200€ with 5€-50€ items.

 

 

 

 

 

[Average Investor]

@supremeyingyang What I do to avoid that is try to have a lot of items in the store. So I will generally be able to cover my expenses just from shipping stuff for awhile and it kicks me into gear more if it slows down. But having a big variety of items and a lot of them can help. It all depends on what business model works best for you. I like doing that and have a good mix of cheap and more expensive items. It really helps my store stay more active throughout the year too. If you just sold clothes for example there are seasons that are poor for them and times where only certain ones do well. But that is not to say that just having a couple niches is bad either if you are really good at them.

To be fair I do take offers on items often. But I make a profit on them regardless. I don't always have to get the most recent sold. I am taking some offers on stuff I just listed, but not much off the asking. Just moving products as I am uncertain what the next few months could hold. Rather have a good surplus of cash coming in now. Not to mention a lot of the items that are selling are a bit harder to move. Which I assume is the result of amazon slowing down their non essentials and some larger business competitors in the same field have closed up shop for the time being. So now is a good time for me to move those expensive music cds, dvds, etc. 

 A lot of the time when I buy stuff I will have an item that pays for all of it and the rest can kind of just sell for whatever really. That usually results in me having a big pile of stuff laying around though lol. But I do get to it gradually. I just sell the one most expensive item from that group. 

 Learning the most about shipping is really going to be in your favor. That is one of the biggest expenses and you can cut it down dramatically by investing time into learning more about the options you have. Of course if you can find better items and stuff, then that is good. But for example I have made some really big sales on large speakers. People practically give away high end speakers, when they move and stuff in the summer because they are hard to sell or most assume the don't have value. I can take those and I will ship 100lbs packages to people and make hundreds for just a few hours of work. But that is something that most will not do, so I can easily pick those kind of items up having my knowledge of shipping. 

 

[Average Investor]

12 hours ago, supremeyingyang said:

Great Advice. Is it true that this work needs a lot of working?

I spent 80 hours a week for awhile to really get this off the ground. But I wanted it to be my income so bad that I was willing to do anything for it. But it is a lot of work for sure. It depends how much you enjoy it to be honest. I get inspired to do it and feel good doing it a lot of the time. Plus I really enjoy going out and looking for items. That is by far my favorite part. 

[Yog]

On 3/26/2020 at 3:21 AM, Preety_India said:

@Average Investor  the sales are doing well. 

But my issue now is food. The grocery stores near me have ran out of food. 

I'm just surviving on soup packs. I'm barely getting by. My refrigerator is empty. 

Just about everything is out of stock. 

 

Ah, damn, this whole thing may last for long.

Try going to a fitness-supplement shop and buy couple of bags of protein. You can have about 30 shakes/small meals per kilo, you can cook with it too, people aren't going to the gym now and regular folk will overlook it, it also might be on sale because of this reason. Other than that, if there are any stores that do delivery around you go for it..

As a last resort I would do a quick research and find the nearest market dense area, protect myself well, get a big backpack, avoid crowds and head there.  

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Yog

[montecristo]

daytrading, it isnt hard.

if you dont have much money or experience you can try trading options on robinhood, they have a very user friendly interface. And options allow you to increase your exposure to the underlying stock.

if you only have $100 you could either buy $100 worth of shares or you could buy an option and get exposure to $10,000 worth of stock while still only risking your $100. it's kinda too good to be true.

best part is, no need to leave the house!

 

[supremeyingyang]

@Average Investor My goal is to have a Sidehustle that makes around 200€ a Month. I think after the first corona hype and before another crash will be the time buy relatively cheap. This is the chance for so many things. I think I'll experiment this 3-5 Hustles and one of them will be 'buy low, sell with profit' in your Style. I want to buy Stocks, get a little Sidejob and learn more programming with the perspective to freelance. And I have my Dayjob as a Software Developer.

Which platforms do you use to sell?

[Average Investor]

@supremeyingyang I currently just sell on eBay and Facebook marketplace. I halted Facebook sales for now though. Which kind of sucks because I actually bring in pretty good money locally. I just sell big lots of dvds lol. Both are really good platforms to sell on. I would like to cross post to mercari though too. Possibly a few others. I have an amazon account, but have not bothered to sell there yet. Most of the stuff I sell I don't really have a chance to be ungated on amazon to sell.

That is a lot of stuff at once. While I admit I am guilty of running a bit of stuff at once it sounds like you already do the coding for the software development? If so and you want to do coding I would honestly just go right to that. But that is totally up to you. Investing is good in general. If you can make money while you sleep you are going to get much further financially. A business brings in the most money the fastest usually though and you can control it, so keep that in mind while investing. 

You can totally get some stuff cheap. You could even buy stuff from people on eBay cheap now and resell it. I bought myself a book that typically goes for $30+ for $19.5 for personal use. But before this I would not even of had a chance. The only one left of that same book for sale is $37. I could resale that because shipping is like $3 media mail. But I actually want the book. That and if you have really good knowledge of certain items you can favorite search results. Let's say if you realize people list lots of stuff without knowing much about it using certain phrases. Let's say a lot of toys. The seller may not be aware of individual values on those toys and could sell them really cheap and that is a good way to pick up lots. Or some people will buy from ebay, then sell it on amazon or the opposite because there is quite a price gap sometimes. Just something to keep in mind for a way you can do at home. 

[Average Investor]

@montecristo I thought about trading a before. I am not sure how much I would be all that into it. I do like investing a bit though, but I mostly just do long term stuff. It takes a lot of time to sit there and watch the news and all of that. But I do see how it can be really profitable though and enjoyable. I spent a lot of time researching and doing the news around the covid-19 for awhile. I don't think I could live like that daily though haha. 

[montecristo]

the other neat thing about daytrading is that you arent roped into a long term thing, you can pick it up and drop on a whim and for appealing for a non-commital type like me haha.

every single day there are opportunities in the market to make 100's of percent gains

[Average Investor]

@montecristo You are right about that. I bought some boeing stock under $100 and figured when it was sitting around $180 it would be worth selling as it had too much continuous gains in a short period. I was right, but I also did not do anything because I liked the price point of my position. I am using vanguard and it would bring some fees to trade in my roth ira. But I think for tax reasons I would want to do it there. I am not really interested in making a regular income, but more so a long term income of dividends. 

I will try to add some extras to trade with in there and see how it goes! I will look into the fees a bit more and see what I am getting into.