How to: Multiply $100 from buying/reselling from Craigslist

[Kinsey6287]

LOOKS LIKE IT'S A CHALLENGE! WHO'S IN??? READ BELOW!

Fastlaners! I'm back! Been gone for a little while (deployed) but I'm back and with vengeance.

Here is the plan. I have an incredible invention idea that I need a substantial amount of start-up funds in order to build a few prototypes. Here is my plan:

I am going to take $100, and scan my local craigslist for a really good bargain (or two). By the item/s, and then turn around and sell it/them for a quick profit. Because I know cars, car parts, furniture items, and some sporting goods, that is where I will focus my efforts.

With that profit, I'll by another one or two items that are a great bargain and re-sell.

This is mainly just for the fun of it, as I'll be saving on the side to buy the items for my prototypes, but I figured it would be cool to track how you can inflate $100 into more and in what type of time frame. So, here we go.

Each day I'll update as to what I am buying/selling and what my profits are at.

Guidelines/Rules I will go by:

#1 - Only possess one or two items at a time, I'm not trying to become a hoarder. lol
#2 - Only utilize my local chapter of craigslist
#3 - Only use original $100 plus any profits for purchasing further items. (so if I buy a couch for $100 and sell it for $150, then I must use the $150 for the next purchase and no more)
#4 - Only sell what I bought (no grabbing stuff from my garage to sell for more profits to make it seem that I am making more.)
#5 - If the item needs to be cleaned/repaired and you can do it yourself you can, HOWEVER any money used to repair/refurbish it must be from the original $100 and any profits, and MUST BE DONE BY YOU

Stay tuned!

[The-J]

wanna make this into a challenge that we can all participate in?

[Kinsey6287]

wanna make this into a challenge that we can all participate in?

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! lol

Alright, lets do it. I will edit my original post to reflect.

Edit: Can't change the Subject. Can someone change it from "How To" to "Challenge!"?

[G-man422]

I'm in! Sounds like fun.

[zendolphin]

Here is a repost on someone doing a craiglist biz. I think its already on this site, but since I clip and keep these kinds of tidbits for business models, then


Some one posted how they get to X income on using Craiglist. Below is the snip i kept from that post

Read........


I’ve got nothing to gain here, there is so much opportunity out there to do this type of stuff in a variety of geographic and demographic. You can do it with $500 or $500,000.

So don’t worry about crossing swords.

A few of the questions:

Q: In your post you indicated that you wrote $500 on each day of the calendar...was that the profit goal for each day?
A: The goal was to essentially buy product that would yield $500 in profit each day, not necessarily buy a certain value amount. For example, you could buy 5 iPad for $100 profit a piece or buy one jet ski that had $500 profit in it. Not so much about volume of transaction, about margin.

Q: you also said that each day you bankrolled him $5000...was his goal to buy $5000 worth of "product" every day? or simply the cash made available to him?
A: No. Not necessarily, but sometimes on big ticket items he needed $5K to jump start the day or a transaction. Only rarely did we consume all $5K, I think maybe once or twice to buy a car.

Q: what was the daily purchasing goal?
A: None.

Q: what was spent gross earning the $17k?
A: $42,000 was the total spend

Q: Is the bread and butter in smaller things like cell phones and computers?
or larger things like used cars?
A: Bread and butter are the following, with stars on the heavy volume items

--$5000 and under passenger cars
--Motorcycles of every price
--Recreation vehicles (Jet skiis, boats, RVs, travel trailers)
--Bicycles of every type, especially high-end offroad and onroad cycles
--Oakley and other brand high-end sunglasses
--Women's purses (ultra-highend only)
--Time Shares, low-end only
--Land (acreage only, no houses)
--Rims and Tires
--Laptops (current models only)
--iPhones, iPads, and all other Apple branded products
--Flat televisions
--Guns
--Safes
--Broken Gold
--Consoles (Xbox, Playstations, etc) and video games
--High-end furniture in excellent condition
--Trailer, car haulers

Q: What kind of mark up are you shooting to attain? 25%? 50%? 100%+?
A:Not necessarily a percentage, just as much as possible. I used this as a guide: $100 or less: double the money. $500 or more, 50% on a 7-day turn rate.

Q: Same city CL relist or nearby city?
A: Same city, unless it was an eBay sale or unless it was much more appropriate out of town (buy a snow blower in Houston, sell it in Minneapolis for example)

Q: Wait a period of time before relisting?
A: Immediately relist it.

Q: What are the best most readily available and easy to sell items?
A: Apple Products, cheap cars and motorcycles

Q: DO you ever get stuck with merchandise that you cant move?
A: Haven’t yet. Sure I will

Q:How can you decide what to pay for items?
A: This is the tough part. Use your mojo, or if you don’t have any mojo then use eBay, it’ generally a good starting point. Don’t buy anything you don’t know what to pay for.

Are you looking to pay half of the going retail or some fixed number?
A: You have to find the right mix for your area. Don’t spend a ton of time trying to figure it out. Just go buy a bunch of stuff and try it out. If you are uncomfortable with that, stick to Apple products only - as they are extremely easy to sell and even easier easy to buy.

Q: Do you test purchases on the premises?
A: Yes

Q:All offers are face to face?
A: This is sort of the magic beans. You don’t want to waste your time running all around town, but at the same time you need to set the expectations for the seller. I don’t have the answer for this, but I will tell you that when I offer $500 for an item worth $1000 over the phone, I almost always get the item for $300 when I show up with cash. Make sense?

Q: $5k total for a month or daily?
A: Again, it’s a function of cash. The more you have, the more you can buy.

Q: Do you lowball people?
A: That's the whole point. 85% of the people will hang up on you. 15% will sell you something. You do the math. If you don't like rejection you'll fail, because it's 85% "go screw yourself" responses.

[77startup]

Good luck guys, I'm eager to see your results.

[Brootal]

subscribed...

MJ posted the original in a thread about this here: Great bootstrapping thread - how to create money.

You have to sign up tot he lambo forum, but there are some gems in that thread.

Good luck

[Kinsey6287]

Great info guys! Thanks!

First purchase will take place tomorrow. It's a Holley 750cfm double pumper (car carberator) for $75. Found a rebuild kit for it on Craigslist for $15, and figure about $9 in Carb Cleaner. I'll have it rebuilt and posted back up before the end of the night for $200.

I'll let you guys know how it works out.

[JackEdwards]

Good Luck..I think this is a great way to make money.

If I had craigslist when I was 20.. Easy money..

[MikeC]

I've been itching to do this for a few days. I think I'll join in.

Only problem is I don't have a reliable car, but I'm sure there are ways around that.

[Davidla]

Started buying/selling on craigslist last week

So far bought a droid for 90$ sold for 130$ and got an iphone 4 for 290$ set to sell for 370$ tomorrow.
Not sure how I can participate in the challenge because my plan is to work with a larger budget (maybe have the proceeds from the droid separately?), but I'm def keeping an eye on this one

[JamItFast]

I started emailing and calling people today. I met for an iphone but didn't buy it I offered $270, I think it'd be good to post to see what price items are actually buying and selling for because I'm not sure what the max I should pay is.

[RichKid]

It's on like donkey kong.

I'm not following your rules exactly but I will stick with the rule of the $100 starting amount.

[Pete799p]

Count me in.

[oddball]

As a college student this is what I do so I'm in. I actually just had an item I paid $55 for that I sold for $175(minus fees) on ebay.
Like RyanDrake, I am not going exactly by your runs. I will obviously only start with $100 and not sell anything around the house. But I am not going to just stick with craigslist, just annoying to deal with sometimes.

[The-J]

hmmm, i want in. i just don't think i have a lot of time to put into this challenge: i have 16 credits, a start-up venture, a video project, kung-fu, and a girlfriend. :P

[Davidla]

As a college student this is what I do so I'm in. I actually just had an item I paid $55 for that I sold for $175(minus fees) on ebay.
Like RyanDrake, I am not going exactly by your runs. I will obviously only start with $100 and not sell anything around the house. But I am not going to just stick with craigslist, just annoying to deal with sometimes.

As an unexperienced ebay seller i feel like craigslist is more simple.
I listed an Iphone on both ebay and craigslist to see what sells first and CL won.
I had a non paypal buyer on ebay so I decided not to go with him after researching some common ebay scams.
However, profit margins on ebay seem to be much higher so I'm definitely learning that as well.

hmmm, i want in. i just don't think i have a lot of time to put into this challenge: i have 16 credits, a start-up venture, a video project, kung-fu, and a girlfriend. :P

Get rid of the girlfriend

[oddball]

As an unexperienced ebay seller i feel like craigslist is more simple.
I listed an Iphone on both ebay and craigslist to see what sells first and CL won.
I had a non paypal buyer on ebay so I decided not to go with him after researching some common ebay scams.
However, profit margins on ebay seem to be much higher so I'm definitely learning that as well.

They both have their pros and cons. eBay/paypal hits you hard with fees. CL doesn't have them. I've also driven to meet people to sell something I had on CL and then they don't want it, so you can waste time. You get a lot ofemails from people trying to scam you on CL so that gets old fast. For me, eBay is simple because I put it up, when it sells I just ship it out. The PO is 2 minutes away so I don't mind.

In all honesty, Amazon was actually the best. Only problem is they do not support sellers very much. I had 1 problem and they kicked me off. I was making way more money on there then eBay or CL. So now I am back on eBay still making money but not as much. Getting kicked off that set me back quite a bit but I'm still making the green stuff so can't complain.

[Kinsey6287]

I'm siked to see a lot of you guys joining in. Hope it gets fun for everyone, and most importantly PROFITABLE!

So update: Bought a Holley 750cfm Carb for $75, thought I was going to have to rebuild it. Turns out it's in pretty decent shape, so re-listed for $175, hoping to get $150 for it and double my initial investment and move to the next piece. I'll let ya'll know what it sells for.

How about everyone else? What have you bought/sold???

[Giles]

I do this occasionally with cars. My last deal was a BMW bought for $3100, sold for $3150 (I rushed, and the car presented some issues one I bought it).

Deal before that was a Mitsubishi bought for $500, sold for $2200

Looking for the next one now...