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.