I'm new to the forum but I thought I'd share what I've been doing for the past decade. This is more of a side hustle because it's not really scalable past what I'm doing, but I've been able to become quite wealthy doing this. Now I've gotten into investment properties and I don't need to do this anymore so I thought I'd share what I did to make this kind of money. So what did I do to make $15,000/month working 3 hours per day? I flipped MacBooks. I sold 3-5 MacBooks per day making an average of $150 profit per MacBook. It was quite easy. First I had to find a source to acquire cheap MacBooks. Where did I find that source? Well I can't tell you, but if you're willing to do the leg work you can find sources for everything. What I liked about MacBooks was that they're basically all the same and easy to work on. Apple has a standardized hardware test that you can run on them to make sure they're not going to crap out on somebody the day after you sell them.
Once I secured my sources (I had many), I could buy as many MacBooks as I wanted. Selling as many as 150 MacBooks per month is pretty easy once you get a system set up. So why is this not scalable? Because I only sold on Craigslist. See, the best selling MacBooks are under $500, and for that price they're going to be old (7+ years). If you sell these things online, you're going to have way too many headaches. At only $150 profit each, you'll be in trouble if you get more than a small percentage of people that have problems. Remember, I didn't get into this to work 12 hour days. I don't want to mess with problems. If the thing dies a few weeks later, I don't want to hear about it. It's a used MacBook that's 10 years old. What did you expect? I made sure to sell every MacBook in public and I always made sure to tell people that I didn't warranty them. Despite this, I did hand out a couple of business cards to everyone I sold to. It simply said "XXXXXX - The Mac Guy" with my phone #. This helped bring in referrals and helped me get up to the 3-5 sales per day.
Yes, there were problems. Yes, there were pissed off people. But all in all it was a fun side hustle. I'm still doing it, but have ramped down quite a bit. I don't list on Craigslist anymore and am surviving off my referrals and new business from new cards I hand out to the people that buy stuff from me.
My favorite part of this was when people would bring me their old MacBooks. They'd either just go ahead and give them to me or ask if I'd take $50 off or whatever. I took these in and if they didn't pass the hardware test I'd list them on eBay for parts with the results of the hardware test. I usually didn't fix them (too time-consuming).
I'm glad I don't have to do this for a living nowadays because FaceBook Marketplace has taken a lot of people away from Craigslist. I can't stand FaceBook Marketplace. So many dumbasses on there and people that don't respond or jerk you around. With Craigslist it was easy because everyone CALLED you and you could tell within 5 seconds if it was a dipshit or not. Now with FaceBook you have to spend 20 minutes going back and forth with said dipshit while 20 other dipshits send you the same mind-numbing message: "is it still available?" to which you respond "Yes, when would you like to look at it?" and 90% of the time you get no response. Who the F*ck thought this was better than just calling someone and setting up a time to meet?
Anyway, rant over. If you can find a good source of a product that is in demand and buy/sell it repeatedly, you've got yourself a good system. Simply grow that system and keep attacking your niche and you'll be making bank in no time. I'm doing the same thing with my investment properties. I have one niche and one type of tenant that I target (I'm careful not to discriminate, but you start to see trends of what types of people go after what types of houses when you get into this business and you learn what to avoid and what to jump on). If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I'll try to answer them.
Once I secured my sources (I had many), I could buy as many MacBooks as I wanted. Selling as many as 150 MacBooks per month is pretty easy once you get a system set up. So why is this not scalable? Because I only sold on Craigslist. See, the best selling MacBooks are under $500, and for that price they're going to be old (7+ years). If you sell these things online, you're going to have way too many headaches. At only $150 profit each, you'll be in trouble if you get more than a small percentage of people that have problems. Remember, I didn't get into this to work 12 hour days. I don't want to mess with problems. If the thing dies a few weeks later, I don't want to hear about it. It's a used MacBook that's 10 years old. What did you expect? I made sure to sell every MacBook in public and I always made sure to tell people that I didn't warranty them. Despite this, I did hand out a couple of business cards to everyone I sold to. It simply said "XXXXXX - The Mac Guy" with my phone #. This helped bring in referrals and helped me get up to the 3-5 sales per day.
Yes, there were problems. Yes, there were pissed off people. But all in all it was a fun side hustle. I'm still doing it, but have ramped down quite a bit. I don't list on Craigslist anymore and am surviving off my referrals and new business from new cards I hand out to the people that buy stuff from me.
My favorite part of this was when people would bring me their old MacBooks. They'd either just go ahead and give them to me or ask if I'd take $50 off or whatever. I took these in and if they didn't pass the hardware test I'd list them on eBay for parts with the results of the hardware test. I usually didn't fix them (too time-consuming).
I'm glad I don't have to do this for a living nowadays because FaceBook Marketplace has taken a lot of people away from Craigslist. I can't stand FaceBook Marketplace. So many dumbasses on there and people that don't respond or jerk you around. With Craigslist it was easy because everyone CALLED you and you could tell within 5 seconds if it was a dipshit or not. Now with FaceBook you have to spend 20 minutes going back and forth with said dipshit while 20 other dipshits send you the same mind-numbing message: "is it still available?" to which you respond "Yes, when would you like to look at it?" and 90% of the time you get no response. Who the F*ck thought this was better than just calling someone and setting up a time to meet?
Anyway, rant over. If you can find a good source of a product that is in demand and buy/sell it repeatedly, you've got yourself a good system. Simply grow that system and keep attacking your niche and you'll be making bank in no time. I'm doing the same thing with my investment properties. I have one niche and one type of tenant that I target (I'm careful not to discriminate, but you start to see trends of what types of people go after what types of houses when you get into this business and you learn what to avoid and what to jump on). If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I'll try to answer them.
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