Teacher Flips Sports Gear For $8,000/Month

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hello friends, listeners and side hustle school community. It's Chris Guillebeau here with you today. Now, as we approach the end of the year, today I have a classic reselling story for you. Reselling is probably the easiest thing that anyone can do with little money and little experience. If you're looking to get started in the world of side hustling, the risk is low.

You're not gonna lose any money and you'll begin learning on the job right away. Now this story in particular features a teacher who uses his law for sports memorabilia to bridge the financial gap between his teaching contracts. At first he just kind of wants to make extra money, but then he goes on to create a highly profitable business. How much can you earn by buying random items at thrift shops or garage sales and then reselling those items online? Well, this guy earns $8,000 a month.

So as I said, it's a pretty classic model. It's something that just about anybody can do in one way or another. Here's a shout out to our sponsor and then I'll tell you all about it. [Music]

Matt Myers knew the coming months were going to be financially tight. His yearly contract as a PE teacher was coming to an end and he needed money to bridge the gap between school years.

Back when Matt was a child, his dad had made extra money for the family by buying and reselling items he'd pick up from estate sales. So naturally Matt figured this could be a good solution for him too. Taking $500 from his savings account, he headed out to a couple of thrift stores, bought some stuff and tried to sell whatever he found on eBay. He figured if he was lucky, he would make some money. And if it didn't work, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And also in the worst case scenario, he felt confident that he wouldn't lose money. To guide his purchasing decisions, Matt focused mostly on items he'd once owned or had a strong emotional connection to. He figured if he'd bought it or wanted it as a kid, there was a good chance other people out there would have as well. On that first buying trip, he picked up all kinds of sports memorabilia. He acquired jerseys, jackets, caps and cards, anything else with his sports motif on it or anything that just felt like a good buy.

After stopping at several thrift stores, he came home with around 75 small items for his $500 investment. Over the course of the next few days, Matt used his phone to take pictures of the items and then uploaded them to eBay. He set his prices by looking at previously sold listings and choosing a competitive price based on what he'd personally paid for the item. He always set a buy now price so that anyone could purchase the item right away, but he also allowed eBay users to bid using a traditional auction. Interestingly, Matt's first sale didn't come from any of that sports memorabilia.

He'd bought an old iPod Touch. Remember those? I had one a long time ago. He bought an old iPod Touch for $2 at a garage sale, which sold within a couple hours for $140. That was a 6,900% profit margin and Matt couldn't help but feel he was onto something.

He used the money to treat his girlfriend, who is now his wife, to a nice dinner and then got right back to work the next morning. Although it was that iPod that brought Matt his first income, he decided he would stick with sports memorabilia as his focus. He knew more about sports than anything else and felt he could trust his instincts and intuition better than any other category. And as time went by, he also began to see sales of his sports products. Over the course of the next two years, Matt was able to make enough money from flipping to bridge the gaps in his teaching contracts and make a little extra cash whenever it was needed.

But he still saw it mostly as a hobby. He went to the occasional garage sale and thrift store, but nothing too major. That is, until he had another sale which showed him the real potential of his business. While at one of those garage sales, Matt stumbled upon a Boston Braves sports pennant from 1952. It was rare, but the woman running the stall was selling it for just 50 cents.

Matt bought it, immediately put it on eBay and sold it a few days later for $450. He had surpassed his previous record of a nearly 7,000% profit margin. With such a big win under his belt, Matt decided it was time to take the business more seriously. He created his own eBay store, which he named Kevin's Clubhouse in honor of his dad, and began to treat it as more of an e-commerce business than someone just flipping the occasional item. He took more time to consistently visit garage sales on weekends and during school breaks with the focus on finding new items each week to flip and sell.

The more time he invested, the better items he found and the more he ended up selling. Since starting this business, Matt has made $62,000 doing this, and he's ramping up. He now averages around $8,000 a month in profit. To anyone out there looking to start a similar venture with their own $500 investment, Matt recommends choosing a topic you're interested in, one you're knowledgeable about, and choosing items you feel an emotional connection with. He says you also shouldn't be worried about getting it right every time.

Sometimes you'll buy items that don't sell or don't sell for as much as you hope, and that's just the nature of the work. But if you get it right even 50% of the time, you'll be profitable. Looking ahead, Matt is now creating a standalone Kevin's Clubhouse website, and will spend the next year or so looking at how to optimize traffic to get more sales. [Music]

All right, as I said, reselling, one of the easiest and simplest things you can jump into doesn't mean you're gonna make $8,000 a month when you're first doing it, but there's not much risk and you can learn quickly. So in the spirit of leveling up, as we approach the end of the year, here's an abbreviated list of items you might consider reselling.

If you like, I wanna try this, but what do I resell? Well, here's a quick list. Books, video games, tablets, cameras, Lego, toys, gift cards. There's actually a whole market for buying and reselling gift cards. Fitness trackers, diabetic test strips.

Again, this is a whole market. And printers. So that's a quick list. Just rewind if you wanna catch all that again. But just as important, here are some characteristics of the kind of items that you want to look for, because it might not be those specific items, it might be something else.

But in general, you wanna look for items that are not inexpensive. So they could be expensive or they could just be moderate, but they shouldn't be too cheap because that's hard to make money from. You wanna look for something that's easy to ship. You wanna look for something that is collectible, perhaps something that is unbranded and or something related to an expensive hobby like golf. So with those characteristics in mind, here's a couple of examples of things that sell frequently, but you might not necessarily want to get into this business.

Bicycles sell frequently online, but they aren't the easiest thing to pack up and ship. Antiques, same situation. If you wanna sell antiques, maybe focus on small collectibles. Also, when I went looking for most frequently sold items on online auctions and other sites, I saw that screen protectors were a best-selling item. So a screen protector for your phone to make sure it doesn't get scratched.

Apparently those are selling in large amounts, but they only cost about a dollar each. So if you wanna go into the business of selling screen protectors, you're gonna have to sell a lot. It's probably better to find something you can have a better margin on. So I will leave you with that list today. Let me know if you decide to go out and resell something.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to Kevin's Clubhouse, anything else that I mentioned, are at sidehustleschool.com/727. Thanks so much. I'll be back again tomorrow. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.

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