So you've made a plan....now what?
Well based on my experience, you make a backup plan, and a backup plan for your backup plan, because trust me things seldom go as planned. Last year I made plans to make signs from upcycled pallet wood, I made some product, priced it reasonably, and let people know what I sold. A week went by, two weeks, a month, six months, and I realized quick that I wasn't going to be able to live off that alone...at least not yet!
So I went back to my plan and switched it up. I knew I wanted to be in retail, but what? Well my wife and I had talked about reselling, and we had always wanted to do it, but we never pulled the trigger. With the signs not moving like we had hoped, we decided to jump in and we purchased $165 worth of product. We quickly sorted through the items and was happy to find that just the smaller items put us up $46, and with the bigger items we would be up almost $300. That means we will almost triple what we paid!
The next thing I decided was to create an eBay and Amazon account, which I was hesitant to do at first, but after talking with others, I decided that would be best. First thing I did was do a ton of research about selling on these platforms, and what I found was you want to sale different things, but you definitely want a niche. Now time to put some time into finding something I am passionate about, but has a good market. This was probably the easiest, because I kind of knew it would be toys, and after researching it I found it had a huge market.
Now to my first real problem...None of the product I purchased was toy related. So now what? Well, I decided to look through some of the toys I've collected over the years and post them. I didn't want to get rid of my entire collection, but I had a few things, mainly diecast that I could post, and to my surprise a couple of them were selling well.
So now I have my niche, and I was able to find some of my items to sale, which is great because I didn't not have to spend anymore money to get it started. Now, the next obstacle. What to do once I've sold all my collectibles, and have no more toys to post? I have already been looking at sources, and I will take the money I make and reinvest it into buying more product. The issue is I'm in a rural area, with only a few stores to rely on, and what happens if that is not enough supply...Well there's other options available to me, I will likely buy products online for lower than their value, plus there's Facebook marketplace, which I'm not happy about, because I hate Facebook, but I need several sources and if there's a great deal out there I want to make sure I see it. I will also use bulq.com, as well as Craigslist and garage sales, because I want to use every resource I have available to me, I'll also hopefully build some great relationships which may benefit me down the road.
For someone who's just getting started, I may be looking too far into the future, but I'd rather be prepared for when it happens, than get overwhelmed and not having enough items on hand and end up have no products to post.
All photos used in this post was free to use under creative commons