You know how Amazon FBA is supposed to be the ultimate solution to all your sales and fulfilment worries?

Yeah. They lost about three quarters of my stock.

Don’t get me wrong, they reimbursed me the cost of the stock, but a large portion of the profit I was supposed to make on this little side hustle just got flushed down the toilet thanks to their misplacing 42 pairs of headphones and a drone.

One of the most exploitative businesses in the world is the foreign exchange services at airports and on-street booths. The rates they charge are nothing short of robbery. They exploit the ignorance of the general population to charge a fortune for a service that deserves very little margin.

That may sound harsh, but when you look at the options available to everyone for foreign exchange transactions, it’s absolutely shocking that outlets charge what they do to switch your dollars for pounds, or euros for dollars.

In this article I’ll explain the problem and give you a few numerical examples to show you how bad it can get. Then I’ll provide alternative methods for getting foreign currency. Methods that won’t result in spending a ton of cash for a service that shouldn’t cost very much.

I like to have snacks available. Sometimes I get unexpectedly hungry, and having something to hand is always useful. If you’ve baked it yourself, it’s that much more satisfying.

This recipe is for super-simple oat cookies which I personally like to spice up with a little cinnamon. Once made, they must be hidden from my daughter, who has a thing for cinnamon.

They rate a ten-out-of-ten on the frugality scale as they cost so little to make. They’re not the healthiest foodstuff in the world, but you can’t be virtuous in all areas of life, all the time!

If you’ve rented a car from time to time, you’ll be familiar with a decision you have to take every time you pick the car up from the agency.

You get asked if you would like to “buy back the excess”, or “waive the excess for a fee”.

What this means is that you pay an extra amount per day, and they remove the excess on the car insurance. If you do not take this option and you have an accident, or a person steals or vandalises the car, you’ll have to pay the first £400 to £4000 of costs towards that damage before the car rental company’s insurance takes the rest. If you do take this option, that gets reduced to zero and you’re safe.

This option can cost anything between £5 to £45 per day, and if you think that’s a lot to pay to get rid of a risk, you’re right. You can get the same thing for much less money.

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.