I have watched TV shows in which people make up a goal figure of money they want to earn and then up sell items until they earn the money they want. Perhaps they will start off by purchasing a $100 dollar item they could sell for $150 and then use that money to buy something they could sell for more and so on until they reach like a $4000 mark. Have any of you tried this and do you think it would work?
I haven't actually tried such a thing with hard assets, other than a few real estate transactions over the years. But if you could somehow buy items cheap, keep any expenses (such as advertising, shipping, transportation, any labor, etc) down, avoid having to give much in the way of refunds due to defects or whatnot, and if you could be able to find enough buyers to buy those items from you for significantly more than what you paid for them, it could work in theory. Basically buying wholesale and selling retail.
I had thought about it by using eBay as my selling platform, but eBay has become shady over the years, and my luck is that I would lose money on fees and shipping. My best bet would be to find someone who was looking for the item then I could find the item for cheap and then sell it to that person directly and keep going from there...I think.
Finding something to sell that people want to buy is always the key to making a profit and as with any form of sales, if they don't want what you have to sell, it's your job to convince them that they do anyway. Ebay might not be as powerful as it once was, but I still think there is money to be made on there for the right kind of product.
As any store based merchant will tell you, the trick is spotting the trend before it happens. That is not easy since no one has a crystal ball. I suppose if you had the capital and the ability to sit on an investment if need be, you could make some money. This is what many antique dealers and craftsmen do. It is just a shame if you are doing the one of a kind sort of thing and there suddenly is a demand you can't meet. Buying lots of stuff might be the best solution but it is a gamble. I think you could have a better chance at selling some product through a franchise type opportunity. For example the place we buy our company checks from is a franchise sales that gets a commission from orders. It is pretty turnkey if you get in one of the better established companies. You just have to be ready to do the ground work to keep the sales flowing.
Movies are not realistic. It is not as simple as it seems since it depends on what you buy and where you are located. Thank God for the internet since you can sell anything online.
It's a TV show and we all know things are manipulated so in real life it's not always possible. You can flip items but you need to know your market and what it's worth. People do this all the time in markets and buy and then upsell, especially from yard sales and auctions. There is a lot of competition for this and consider if you can't sell it on, then you are stuck with the item and that's not a good idea. Many people buy items and know they will have a buyer in mind, or somewhere that would be interested.
This reminds me of those barter success stories that went around years ago. For example, some guy started with something small, like a paperweight or such, and kept trading it up for something of higher value. He eventually got to the point where he was trading power tools, then a motorcycle, then an apartment, finally a house. Or something like that. But it was done with careful bartering versus using money. I always secretly wanted to try that!