MJ DeMarco
I followed the science; all I found was money.
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Folks, there is a really great bootstrapping thread going on over at the Lambo forum.
I guess the story is this: A lambo guy has been helping a friend get over a job loss (or something) and started running a "pawn shop" type operation just by trolling Craigslist.
The short of it, buy stuff from distressed sellers and resell for quick 20 percent, 50 percent, 100 percent profit. I think the guy said he was able to to $17K/mo. Of course, you need some working capital to buy.
Here is the link.
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I guess the story is this: A lambo guy has been helping a friend get over a job loss (or something) and started running a "pawn shop" type operation just by trolling Craigslist.
The short of it, buy stuff from distressed sellers and resell for quick 20 percent, 50 percent, 100 percent profit. I think the guy said he was able to to $17K/mo. Of course, you need some working capital to buy.
Here is the link.
Board Message
(YOU NEED TO LOGIN TO VIEW)
I’ve got nothing to gain here, there is so much opportunity out there to do this type of stuff in a variety of geographic and demographic. You can do it with $500 or $500,000.
So don’t worry about crossing swords.
A few of the questions:
Q: In your post you indicated that you wrote $500 on each day of the calendar...was that the profit goal for each day?
A: The goal was to essentially buy product that would yield $500 in profit each day, not necessarily buy a certain value amount. For example, you could buy 5 iPad for $100 profit a piece or buy one jet ski that had $500 profit in it. Not so much about volume of transaction, about margin.
Q: you also said that each day you bankrolled him $5000...was his goal to buy $5000 worth of "product" every day? or simply the cash made available to him?
A: No. Not necessarily, but sometimes on big ticket items he needed $5K to jump start the day or a transaction. Only rarely did we consume all $5K, I think maybe once or twice to buy a car.
Q: what was the daily purchasing goal?
A: None.
Q: what was spent gross earning the $17k?
A: $42,000 was the total spend
Q: Is the bread and butter in smaller things like cell phones and computers?
or larger things like used cars?
A: Bread and butter are the following, with stars on the heavy volume items
--$5000 and under passenger cars
--Motorcycles of every price
--Recreation vehicles (Jet skiis, boats, RVs, travel trailers)
--Bicycles of every type, especially high-end offroad and onroad cycles
--Oakley and other brand high-end sunglasses
--Women's purses (ultra-highend only)
--Time Shares, low-end only
--Land (acreage only, no houses)
--Rims and Tires
--Laptops (current models only)
--iPhones, iPads, and all other Apple branded products
--Flat televisions
--Guns
--Safes
--Broken Gold
--Consoles (Xbox, Playstations, etc) and video games
--High-end furniture in excellent condition
--Trailer, car haulers
Q: What kind of mark up are you shooting to attain? 25%? 50%? 100%+?
A:Not necessarily a percentage, just as much as possible. I used this as a guide: $100 or less: double the money. $500 or more, 50% on a 7-day turn rate.
Q: Same city CL relist or nearby city?
A: Same city, unless it was an eBay sale or unless it was much more appropriate out of town (buy a snow blower in Houston, sell it in Minneapolis for example)
Q: Wait a period of time before relisting?
A: Immediately relist it.
Q: What are the best most readily available and easy to sell items?
A: Apple Products, cheap cars and motorcycles
Q: DO you ever get stuck with merchandise that you cant move?
A: Haven’t yet. Sure I will
Q:How can you decide what to pay for items?
A: This is the tough part. Use your mojo, or if you don’t have any mojo then use eBay, it’ generally a good starting point. Don’t buy anything you don’t know what to pay for.
Are you looking to pay half of the going retail or some fixed number?
A: You have to find the right mix for your area. Don’t spend a ton of time trying to figure it out. Just go buy a bunch of stuff and try it out. If you are uncomfortable with that, stick to Apple products only - as they are extremely easy to sell and even easier easy to buy.
Q: Do you test purchases on the premises?
A: Yes
Q:All offers are face to face?
A: This is sort of the magic beans. You don’t want to waste your time running all around town, but at the same time you need to set the expectations for the seller. I don’t have the answer for this, but I will tell you that when I offer $500 for an item worth $1000 over the phone, I almost always get the item for $300 when I show up with cash. Make sense?
Q: $5k total for a month or daily?
A: Again, it’s a function of cash. The more you have, the more you can buy.
Q: Do you lowball people?
A: That's the whole point. 85% of the people will hang up on you. 15% will sell you something. You do the math. If you don't like rejection you'll fail, because it's 85% "go screw yourself" responses.
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