The devil is in the details, they say. Today I bring you a couple of stinky little anecdotes to bring this lesson to life. Just because they’re details doesn’t mean the damage isn’t significant!

First I’ll talk about how you only find out your stock is damaged when it’s too late, then you’re managing a problem and not making money. Then I’ll cover how Amazon’s grinding monster of an FBA machine made my life a confusing hell since I sent them a parcel, ages ago.

You know there will be fees. You understand that companies like Amazon and eBay make their money from the commission they charge for selling your stuff through their portals.

Despite that knowledge, the reality of the economics of selling through eBay and Amazon can take you by surprise if you haven’t calculated it all in advance.

Sometimes it feels like everyone else gets more out of your effort than you do.

Let’s take a closer look at the selling value chain for the auction flipping side hustle.

Having ordered three boxes of middling-quality electronics (among other things), I now had to offload them on these two platforms.

The general impression I had from the testimony of others who have done this and bragged about it on their blogs was: This is easy! Just throw it up there and you’re done.

It’s not quite so simple.

I bought a ton of stuff at auction, but at the end of each auction, the auctioneer sends me a strongly-worded message indicating that my new possessions must be removed from their premises immediately or I will be charged by the day.

Their premises are on the other side of the country, so I have to contract with a shipping provider. This I do (thank you ParcelForce), and the package is picked up and brought to me.

The logistics are intimidating from a distance, but actually this turns out to be one of the less problematic parts of this entire process.

As you’ll know if you read the previous instalment, I’m trying out a side hustle – for experimental purposes – which I referred to as auction flipping. I’m buying stuff at auction and selling it, primarily on eBay and Amazon.

The first step in this process is to get stuff to sell, and that’s where the auctions are involved. In this episode, I’ll talk about how I obtained my first two lots of stock and the various challenges and lessons learned in the process.

If you’re reading this and you have some experience to share, I’d be very happy for you to comment below. If this is something you have a lot of experience with, then please reach out if you want to be featured at the end.

I’m going to try out a business idea – Auction Flipping. That means buying stuff at auction and “flipping” it on eBay and Amazon. Apparently there’s money in this, and on the face of it that looks like it’s true.

I’m going to explain everything I’m doing in my attempt to launch this business. I’ll describe all the difficulties, hurdles, costs, earnings, workload and worries as they occur, and then publish them all on my blog. I’m performing this experiment in a glass box with full transparency so you get the best possible view of what happens and you can learn as much as possible from it.

Follow my attempt at making money from this blow-by-blow and judge for yourself whether you think this is a legitimate business.

You’ve been browsing Pinterest and Facebook and various blogs for months, and everyone’s telling you there’s thousands of dollars out there, and all you have to do is reach out. They’ve all done it, why can’t you?

Frustrated?

I know.

Type “side hustle” into Pinterest and you get a tsunami of carefully designed pins telling you that Swagbucks or Toluna or YouGov or MySurvey will make you the side income you need to buy all your holiday gifts and have enough left over for a second home.

That little voice in your head that says, “Really?”  It’s onto something.

What about the website that says you can earn tens of thousands from Amazon FBA if you just pay $689 for their online course first. Is it about making money from Amazon FBA or is it about making money $689 at a time?

Hard to tell. Lots of people made their fortunes on FBA, but how hard is it really?

How do you find out which of all these side hustle ideas have real potential? How hard they are to put into practice, what the risks are and how much effort it really takes?

I’m going to find out.

I enjoy writing about finance, monetary freedoms and the disciplines we need to master to get to that goal. I don’t enjoy doing this on an empty stomach, however.

Not wanting to let my budget get shredded to pieces by my gastromonic impulses, I’ve had to build a collection of affordable meals I can cook at home over time. I’ll be collecting these into a group post once I have enough of them, but in the meantime, here is the first.

I made this last night when I had a sweet tooth and spent a quarter hour in the shop looking at the chocolate and biscuits and talking myself out of buying any. The ingredients are easy to find, the process simple, the result very satisfying.

For the enjoyment of your taste buds, I present to you, my Tarte Fine Aux Pommes, otherwise known as a (thin) apple tart.

You’ve heard the story. John Doe makes $17,523 per month in seven minutes a day while holding down a full time job.

So some people exaggerate. We’ll call that artistic license. But if you want to dominate your finances, part of that equation is likely to involve finding  time to earn some extra cash.

John doesn’t earn his $17k in seven minutes, and Mary didn’t build a $101k business overnight (I made these examples up). Successful side hustlers – on average – dedicated many hours and much effort to the construction of their particular hustle.

So if we ditch the idea that it’s all quick wins and easy money, where do you find time for a side hustle?

One of many things you can do to keep your costs down over time is to ensure that you’re not overpaying for things you subscribe to or purchase on contract.

This includes a long list of things that include

• Utility bills (gas, electricity, water)
  
• Home Internet
• Cable / Netflix / Hulu / Amazon Prime
• Home Insurance
• Car Insurance
• Car Lease
• Mobile Telephone Contract
  
• Mortgages and Home Rental
• Loans and Credit Card Debt

Each of these things can be renegotiated, but often only at a specific moment in time. In some cases, these things auto-renew for an additional year and if you miss the window, it become impossible to alter for yet another year.

Have trouble sticking to a budget?

There are many reasons why we don’t always manage to hit the targets we set ourselves, often despite our best intentions. You may set out to stick to a budget and find yourself challenged by decisions you don’t remember making, or lapses you regret after the fact.

The principal culprits are often bad habits and losing sight of our objectives. We need some tricks and tactics to keep our eye on the prize.

Of course you should ensure that when you set out on a project like this, you are clear about the goals, and why you want to achieve them. If you are not committed up-front, then you’ll have forgotten all about it when then next project idea comes along. There isn’t room in our minds for several large personal projects all at once.

 But if you’ve made that decision and you’re afraid you’ll miss your targets, or you’ve experienced difficulty getting this kind of project off the ground in the past, here are five things you should consider.

When we start examining our spending, it’s usually a good idea to take a month or two to do a detailed spending analysis. This typically involves recording and analyzing every aspect of our expenditure to capture all our expenses, including those that typically slip under the radar.

Once we’ve done that, we execute a turn, a motivated, coherent adjustment to certain aspects of our financial lives. This includes things like

• Setting up and paying into an emergency fund
  
• Picking budget categories to tackle and setting up projects to tackle them (groceries, utilities, etc)
• Scheduling a half-day each month to do the next month’s budgets, incorporating lessons learned so far
• Finding new sources of income, or enhancing existing income

Going forward, we’re going to need to keep track of our spending and our financial improvement efforts, to make sure the effort bears fruit.

It’s not realistic to continue to monitor every single aspect of your spending, because that takes too much time and effort, and you have more important things to spend your discipline and attention on than recording the fact that today’s commute cost you £2.40.

You need to find a long-term budgeting and tracking exercise that works for you.