For any professional/full time reseller out there $1,600 is a drop in the bucket. But I am not that. I got into reselling a year ago for two reasons. First, was to find a new avenue for MS. Second, I wanted to earn a profit to offset my other MS costs and to build up a travel slush fund for when I take the family on trips. Basically, I wanted the travel budget to be self sufficient. $1,600 is a positive step towards that goal.
The reason why I am so excited about $1,600 profit is that I put up so little of my own money to earn it. When I started I had no idea what I was doing. Now I have a slight idea of what I am doing. I didn’t (and still don’t) want to risk much money if it all blew up in my face. So I staked myself $2,000. I would buy $1,000-$2,000 of product at a time, wait for the items to sell, then rinse and repeat. At the beginning things went real well. My bread and butter were iPads and the reselling gig worked great until that avenue dried up. Now things have slowed down as I look for other inventory.
Here are my stats from the last year.
| Inventory | Average Profit | Average ROI |
| iPad | $65 | 13.72% |
| PS4 | $53.20 | 12.55% |
| Apple Watch | $18.50 | 5.52% |
| HP All in One | $1.72 | .27% |
| HydroFlask Growler | $13.83 | 23.81% |
Total Spent = $15,314
Profit = $1,610
A couple of thoughts jump out at me. First, I need to diversify. Almost all of my profit was from the iPads. Everything else was me looking for alternatives after I was banned from Staples. Second, I am rethinking my approach. Early on, I was putting most of my eggs in one basket. I would buy 2 or 3 iPads, wait for them to sell, and then start over. In hindsight I do not think that is a smart approach. For one it exposes a good chunk of my own money if something goes wrong, such as a return.
Moving forward I am looking to diversify my inventory and look at smaller ticket items spread across multiple categories. My highest average ROI was not the iPads, it was on a $40 growler which sold just as fast as the iPads.
In the next 12 months I hope to earn at least as much profit. I probably won’t stake myself anymore money because I am focused on some other things in addition to the reselling. I hope my new strategy of smaller ticket items with higher ROI will increase my profits. Currently, I am about to send Amazon multiple items which are spread across different Amazon categories. I’m excited to see how it works out.