Ebay - my niche

 Yes you read the title correctly, sell vintage games. Ebay is setup well for those of us willing to hunt down vintage items and advertise them for sale. Just think about the last time you were after that spare part for your old car, that old game you can’t buy in the shops anymore, or that teacup to match the one you just chipped in your old tea set. Where does your mind immediately wander to..... Ebay!

I am not a fashionable guy. I can’t spot vintage clothing. But I have found an Ebay niche in board games. In particular MB board games. Connect 4, Mouse Trap, Frustration, old style. I loved those games as a kid, and I want my kids to enjoy them too, in the same way I did. It’s funny but even new versions of the same game don’t cut it. And others seem to think the same too. 

As to where to find them. Charity shops. Remember you are going to sell with a postage cost of about £3, so you need to buy these games at a low price, say less than £2. Buy anything that is an old MB game. Then sell it auction style on eBay for 4.99 plus postage.

If you sell for 4.99 plus 3 pounds postage, your fees are about 80 pence, which combined with a 2 pound purchase price, and less the 3 pound postage, leaves about 2 pounds profit. Not a huge amount, but it is profit! Sell 5 games and get an extra tenner a week. Some things sell for more than others, so this really is your minimum profit. Another game that sells well is the original monopoly, the red one, for which I have made £10 profit once.

Doing this trains you to convert ebay from a means for getting rid of your own stuff, to a business opportunity. Over time you’ll try different collectibles and find your own niche, but vintage boards is a great starter!

Ebay - a nice little earner

 Let's talk about Ebay. By far the easiest way to start supplementing your income, but in my experience one of the harder money making schemes to keep running. So many different things are sold on Ebay, from drills through to collectables, it makes it a real challenge to decide what your niche market could be for making money through the Ebay machine.

However, let's be realistic. Ebay is drenched with companies trying to make money. Many are well established power sellers buying stock in bulk at good rates and able to completely out price new Ebay sellers such as ourselves in their market of operation. You will struggle to compete. So I am going to let you into a secret - go back to basics.

What was Ebay setup for originally? To sell your second hand goods. That pile of stuff in the corner of your living room you never managed to get rid of. The "one mans rubbish is another mans gold" stuff. This is where you need to begin. Rummage around your house and sell everything you don't need. Those old blue-rays you never watch, books you never read, even furniture (recommend you ask for buyer to collect to avoid hefty postage costs off putting off all but the most uninformed buyers). You are not trying to be a professional at this point, just get some stuff on and start selling. You will learn the process through experience. Just get your postage correct - tip number 1 :) you can actually lose money if you underestimate the postage! And remember, Ebay charge 10% of the sold price PLUS postage (so for a £10 sale with £5 postage you will lose £1.50 in Ebay costs not £1 - remember this). Advertise on Ebay using the auction option not 'buy it now'. Auctions attract more Ebayer attention, as the low starting price is at least initially attractive, and bidders get addicted to potential of 'winning' an auction. Selling your unused items at this stage is all about getting some money in the kitty to go and really start your Ebay adventure. You might make tens or even hundreds of pounds at this stage. Don't then go and spend it. Keep that money somewhere safe, as just like in the Richest Man in Babylon we will be turning this small sum of money into a larger sum by launching the next phase of Ebaying - buying stock to sell into a niche market well suited to the Ebay platform.

Ebay doesn't earn me a huge sum of money, but I do make regularly up to £50 a month selling unused items, which I think is pretty neat, and periodically throughout the year hit £100 a month. I will let you in on my niche Ebay market in my next blog post! 

Read more to learn more

 "The most important book you will ever read," I read, as I looked at the reviews for George S. Clason's The Richest Man in Babylon. I wasn't sure. How many times can you be told the same thing about saving money, cutting your expenses, getting into the 'frugal' habit. I didn't want to be frugal, I wanted to make money, be wealthy. A book of 144 pages is hardly going to stack up against some of the other monsters in the 'teach yourself wealth' category on Amazon, is it. What on Earth were those other blogs on about, "most important book you will ever read"?

If it wasn't for the price of £5.95 including delivery, I may have given it a miss. Thank goodness I didn't. This book will be the most important book you will ever read. It will be the most important book you ever re-read. In fact it might be the most important book you ever re-purchase if like me you lend your first copy to your brother and it doesn't find it's way back!

The Richest Man in Babylon is a guide to personal wealth. No that is unfair, it is the framework for personal wealth. That sounds more accurate. And it is written simply. George Clason was in no way attempting to produce a novel that would keep you busy for weeks whilst you sit on a sun lounger on a beach somewhere nice. This is a framework, a set of rules, that at 144 pages you will read in an evening. A mantra that at 144 pages is short enough to re-read, repeat to yourself, even digest piecemeal whilst you have a few minutes spare in the water closet.

Babylon it seems was a place of great wealth, wealth that had flowed from a desire of individuals to be wealthy, and willingness to learn the trade. I picked up this book with that burning desire, and the same willingness, and what I found was reassurance, that I was not obsessed but merely following some kind of historical journey, much like those in the book who seek the wisdom of Arkad, one of the richest men in Babylon.

What I like about this book is how quickly you become engaged with the short stories, but also how quickly and succinctly those short stories deliver you to a stone tablet of knowledge. In fact in the space of a single chapter you will come away with seven "cures" for lean purse, including not least the equivalent of budgeting as discussed in my previous blog post . In another chapter you learn quickly of the five rules of gold and the simple, realistic, goals that flow from them, allowing you to walk away from the Richest Man in Babylon and take action.

The books lays to waste certain fallacies regarding luck, rapid massive wealth, and the "I can't possible become wealthy" viewpoint. Instead it provides you with direction for how you can make small changes to your finances to steer your family towards a better financial standing. Take, for instance, the logic of "pay yourself first". Savings and investments for me were things to aim for at the end of the month, with the money I had left. Actually, what sense does this make? Why should I pay myself last with leftovers. I earned that money, it is going to me first! Immediately I put the Richest Man in Babylon down and looked at what I was saving at the end of each month. I added 10% and said I would pay into savings the new figure at the start of every month. Do you know what, it wasn't a problem at all, so the next month I added another 10%. Eventually I found a point where I did start to struggle to make it to the end of the month, so backed off the savings a little, but was still saving, at the start of every month, a darn sight more than I was when I was saving at the end of the month. Simple changes make a big difference.

This book will not give you detailed step by step approaches to setting up a business, making ebay work for you, how to find a good bank account, how to invest in stocks or property. It is at a higher level than that. If you can go with the story of Babylon, imagine stone tablets engraved with short lessons or rules for wealth, and that is what you get. It really does give you that framework, the feeling that if you follow the rules you can sleep easy your wealth will grow. Take time to establish a baseline before you move onto specific routes for wealth. The Richest Man in Babylon will certainly give you this.

     

Make extra cash by having a budget

Sorting your budget is an important step in taking you and your family forward to financial freedom. It isn’t as exciting as other ways of “making money”, but it is by far the easiest way

you can do it, and I hope is within grasp of all of us. Even more important is that budgeting 

helps you understand the very nature of money, your money. It helps you understand where 

your money flows to and crucially where you may be able to make interventions to help more 

of your money flow into those useful places where it can work for you – savings and 

investments. It is here you can put your money to work, to make even more money! 

Budgeting helps prompt you to evaluate where you are spending too much, and where you 

are spending too little. The principles you learn through budgeting will stay with your forever. 

So start now! 

The three outcomes we are aiming for from budgeting are as follows:
1) An understanding of your money flow. 
2) Identification of interventions that reduce unnecessary expenditure.
3) Redirection of more money to savings and investments.

We all want to make more money (even those of us that say we don’t want or care about 

money, really do!). But when we come across more money, if we do not understand money 

flow of follow a budget, we will sure as anything haemorrhage that additional money as 

quickly as we came across it. Budgeting teaches us to understand two very simple principles: 

income; and expenditure. These are the very basics of financial knowledge and without 

knowing them inside out, and how they apply to your situation, you will fail on your journey to 

wealth and financial freedom.

We all have an income of some sort – the money coming in. All of us have outgoings – the 

money going out. But can we all say exactly where and how much of each we have? Where 

is your income going? What is the difference between your income and outgoings? Could it 

be better? If these are questions you cannot answer now, you should be establishing or 

reviewing your budget to find out. I have been budgeting for years, and yet even in my own 

annual budget review, I still identify improvements that could be made. Maybe a mortgage 

has reduced in cost, freeing up additional cash forgotten about through the year. Maybe a 

new child has come into the family, and the additional cost there has eaten up a chunk of 

your income that is perhaps larger than you thought. Maybe you didn’t realise you spend 

£200 a week on your food shop, which is £100 more per week than you wished you had 

spent, or £5200 extra per year! Budgeting helps you identify these trends, these areas for 

intervention, to give you a very important baseline from day zero on your journey to wealth: 

a money flow that goes minimally to costs or liabilities and maximally to assets (savings and 

investments). More on assets and liabilities later, but for now concentrate of establishing your 

budget and review it yearly (at least, to ensure you are not falling into bad habits. We all do!).

I have generated the following tool to help you establish your budget. Essentially it aims to 

capture your yearly income and outgoings, so you can see your money flow. Try it for yourself,

 and please be honest. There is no use in fiddling the numbers at this stage – remember you 

are starting your journey here with the rest of us. Things will improve no matter how the 

budget looks right now! When you have completed your budget, grab a cup of tea and look at 

the numbers. Study them. What are they telling you? Are you ending the year with a net 

income, or are you in the red? Either way there will be room for improvement. Remember we 

are wanting to reduce our outgoings to maximise our ability to save and invest in other money

 making assets. This is the wonderful cycle of making money – the more you can save, the 

more you can invest, and the more money you can make which you can then reinvest, etc!

Right so you have studied your budget. Let’s look at specifics that often come up in budgets. 

How much money goes on clothes, on food, on gyms, on your phone bill? How much goes 

into savings? This is where your opportunity to make money begins. Do you need to spend 

£150 per week on food – what about £125 instead, would that work, could you cope? It is £25

a week yes, but that is £1300 per year. Redirecting the flow of that £1300 from costs and 

towards investments, such as a simple bank account earning 5% interest would earn you an 

additional £65 a year! If you can skim a further £25 off your weekly food shop, that saves your

£2600 per year and at 5% earns you £130! This is easy money, and even during the recent 

period of abysmal bank account interest rates a 5% rate was available up to about a month 

ago. Keep going with this “red teaming” of your budget – really attack it, dig into the detail, in 

fact get someone else to look at it, and note those moments where they say “how much?”, as 

these are the hints as to areas where you likely can improve. Your mortgage, can you switch 

and save? I recently switched from a 3% fixed deal to a 1.3% fixed deal, saving me £200 per 

month, or £2400 per year, or £12000 across the 5 year fixed mortgage period. That pays for 

my new car in 5 years time.  Do you really need to upgrade your iphone to the latest version 

and pay £30 or £40 per month on your contract? Keep your older version, and go sim only for

£5 per month! Redirect the flow of that £25 per month, or £300 per year, into savings and 

investments, and make your money work for you! You might surprise yourself as to how much 

you could save.

When you have worked out where and what you could save, make it happen. Don’t reach for 

the moon just yet though, implement realistic changes. Don’t set yourself up to fail, but do 

take action. There are numerous websites that can help you find better deals on your various 

contracts etc, and numerous websites to help you find good saving accounts for your saved 

cash. Try and perhaps save 10% of your expenditure and redirect that to savings. You have to

get your house in order before you take on the World of making money!

One final point. Where you do reduce your expenditure, actively move that saved money 

monthly into a separate account. Don’t leave it in your main account because you will spend 

it! Then you can watch your pot of savings grow and start thinking about other exciting ways 

to put that money to work for you.

Next time I will be reviewing one of the most important books I have, and I hope you, will ever 

read, on the subject of wealth.

Enjoy the budget planner, and please do leave comments below.