You’ve hopefully been following my auction reselling experiment, where I bought a lot of returned goods at auction and resold them on eBay and Amazon.

The questions I wanted to answer were :

• Can I break even, or even make some money from this hustle, without any prior experience or track record?
• Does this scale well, such that I can make a meaningful amount of money by increasing the volume and effort?
• Is it worth the time it takes?

I have those answers now.

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.

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.