This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh, hello, welcome to Sidus Will School. Welcome as well to the last day of October, at least for those in real time with me here. You could be listening later, of course, but happy last day of October, 2022, at least for me. Today's episode is part of a new feature we're doing in 2022 called Your First Thousand Dollars. I've been running this every single Monday throughout the year and it's been very popular.
As you might guess, it's all about how someone made their first thousand dollars. I hope your year has been well. I hope you have accomplished some of the goals that you set way back in January or whenever you set them. But if you didn't, then well, there's still time. You can't control what's happened up to this point, but you can, at least to some degree, control what happens today and tomorrow.
So I hope you are taking action toward your goals. Now, as mentioned, first thousand dollars, how did someone get to that point? How did they begin to, in fact, make real money? Apart from their day job, using a skill they already had. Maybe developing that skill a bit further or learning something new.
And today's feature, I'm excited about this one. It is from a reseller. I used to resell stuff. So I always enjoy working on these stories. This feature comes from Jacob, the college MacBook reseller.
He is buying and selling MacBooks. He's doing quite well with it, actually earning more than a thousand dollars a week doing this activity part-time. So well done, Jacob, let's hear the story from him. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hey, this is Jacob.
I've been earning more than a thousand dollars a week reselling laptops at my college campus. I learned how to do this by listening to your show actually and through trial and error. The first thing I'd say is it's a lot of work, but it's not actually that complicated. You just need to be organized and communicative. And then you also need to decide what you're going to resell and making this decision in advance helped me a lot.
I didn't want to be a jack of all trades. So I decided to specialize in late model MacBooks, not PCs, not phones, not iMacs, and not even MacBooks from more than a few years ago. Basically, I wanted to be the MacBook guy. Now being on campus, it helps that this is the most popular computer. It also helps that some students are lazy.
They want to save money, which I mean, I totally understand, but they also aren't going to shop around a ton here. Even though many of them are frugal, I guess they value convenience. To be a successful reseller, you need to manage both sides of the operation, the buying of inventory and then selling it for a profit. My three tips are first, be extremely communicative. I mean, I take orders and answer questions by phone, text, or direct message.
I even try to get back to people within 10 minutes of their question. Yes, that's right, 10 minutes. I know I do sleep at night, but otherwise I always try to pounce on inbound communication. I can't tell you how many sales I've made right away simply by being available. Then second, check in with the customer a couple of days after purchase.
I've never heard of a problem and they always seem to appreciate a quick text message asking if everything's okay. More than once it's led to a referral from a friend of theirs who also wanted a laptop. Okay, third, stick to a profit margin. I aim to make a profit of between 200 and $300 on every laptop sale much more than that would be difficult, but much less seems like it's not worth it. I don't really negotiate on my prices, especially since I've been doing this a while and know what things are worth, but this also means you need to buy at a low enough price to be able to earn that profit margin, and you'll get better at that over time.
I don't know if I'll always be able to profit $1,000 a week. I mean, I've already noticed that some weeks are much busier than others, but I'm pretty sure I can keep doing this in some fashion for quite a while. Hey, thanks for the show and for all your inspiration. If you're ever looking for a gently used late model MacBook, let me know. - Thank you so much, Jacob, really appreciate you sharing.
That story takes me back to my days buying and selling. I never actually bought and resold computers, at least not that much. I did some random computer gear, but never really specialized in that. So I do think the decision to specialize is smart and to become the MacBook guy on campus. Listeners, I hope you found it encouraging.
Even if you don't wanna be a reseller, I think there's always lessons to be learned in these stories and just kind of that general motivation of like, hey, there's somebody out there who's being creative and working hard and finding a way to create economic empowerment for themselves. That's what it's all about here. So again, good work, Jacob. And listeners, if you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, as we come to the end of the year, the final two months of the year, just visit sidehustleschool.com/questions. You can also follow me on Twitter @chrisguillebeau.
193 countries on Instagram, 193. And of course there are a wealth of archival episodes on sidehustleschool.com. All 2,130 episodes, completely free. You can subscribe or follow for future episodes wherever you like to listen. That's it for today.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
