Minimum Wage No More Pt. 1
College creates an interesting quandary: living away from your parents while trying to extend yourself socially, while at the same time keeping your head above water academically, all with little or no money.
So how can you maintain your grades and make some dough with out sacrificing anything in class or on the job?
Simple, don't one...
I have personally been working for relatively meager hourly wages since the age of 16: Pizza places, Dry Cleaning and even a stint at a 40-year-old-virgin-esque "We Sell it for you on eBay" store. They were all were very good experiences, but the pay left something to be desired.
I believe the key in college is to use you time as wisely as possible., and an hourly, part-time job may not be the best use of 20 hours a week. Allow me to help you think outside the box of a text book "job".
In the first in a series of articles "Minimum Wage No More: Money at College with out a Paycheck", I am going to be exploring many ways to make some spare money at college, while leaving plenty of time for class, homework, and parting.
The key to any fiscal market is buying low and selling high, and this can be applied to simple examples like craigslist or eBay.
You can easily take a look through the FREE section of craigslist and see if you can pick up anything of potential value for free. This technique best works if you have a car, or dealing with smaller items that are located relatively close. There is little or no monetary risk since the items cost nothing to you. The majority of the items listed in FREE are older and dusty, nothing some light cleaning couldn't fix. Then when its all clean, snap a few pictures and repost the item back on craigslist, preferably for more than what you paid for it.
You can apply the same tactic to eBay. Buying low and selling high. I only suggest tackling products that you are highly familiar with. For instance, I am/used to be a huge collector of sneakers, mostly Nikes; and would be able to pin point deals and rip offs on eBay right away, and was able to "flip" many pairs of shoes for a nice profit.
Both craigslist and eBay have ups and downs when compared to each other. craigslist is free and you can almost always get immediate response to your items, the buyers are local and they usually offer cash. But unlike eBay, where you are able to showcase your item to virtually the whole world, craigslist is limited to a local geographic area. So by limiting your audience, you could be potentially limiting the sale value of your item. But also on the flip side of that, eBay has restructured their fee policy, now charging up front, and after the sale of your item. And add PayPal or other payment fees, and the time it may take for a buyer to get you your money, it may take 3-4 weeks until any cash gets to your pocket.
In the typical minimum wage, young person job, it takes about 12 hours of work to make $50 (factoring taxes and such). And this money is tied in to a set schedule, and you only get a check every two weeks.
While at the same time it could take a person a small fraction of that same to make the same amount of money by flipping any number of items online. No set schedules, no annoying boss, no taxes.
So how can you maintain your grades and make some dough with out sacrificing anything in class or on the job?
Simple, don't one...
I have personally been working for relatively meager hourly wages since the age of 16: Pizza places, Dry Cleaning and even a stint at a 40-year-old-virgin-esque "We Sell it for you on eBay" store. They were all were very good experiences, but the pay left something to be desired.
I believe the key in college is to use you time as wisely as possible., and an hourly, part-time job may not be the best use of 20 hours a week. Allow me to help you think outside the box of a text book "job".
In the first in a series of articles "Minimum Wage No More: Money at College with out a Paycheck", I am going to be exploring many ways to make some spare money at college, while leaving plenty of time for class, homework, and parting.
The key to any fiscal market is buying low and selling high, and this can be applied to simple examples like craigslist or eBay.
You can easily take a look through the FREE section of craigslist and see if you can pick up anything of potential value for free. This technique best works if you have a car, or dealing with smaller items that are located relatively close. There is little or no monetary risk since the items cost nothing to you. The majority of the items listed in FREE are older and dusty, nothing some light cleaning couldn't fix. Then when its all clean, snap a few pictures and repost the item back on craigslist, preferably for more than what you paid for it.
You can apply the same tactic to eBay. Buying low and selling high. I only suggest tackling products that you are highly familiar with. For instance, I am/used to be a huge collector of sneakers, mostly Nikes; and would be able to pin point deals and rip offs on eBay right away, and was able to "flip" many pairs of shoes for a nice profit.
Both craigslist and eBay have ups and downs when compared to each other. craigslist is free and you can almost always get immediate response to your items, the buyers are local and they usually offer cash. But unlike eBay, where you are able to showcase your item to virtually the whole world, craigslist is limited to a local geographic area. So by limiting your audience, you could be potentially limiting the sale value of your item. But also on the flip side of that, eBay has restructured their fee policy, now charging up front, and after the sale of your item. And add PayPal or other payment fees, and the time it may take for a buyer to get you your money, it may take 3-4 weeks until any cash gets to your pocket.
In the typical minimum wage, young person job, it takes about 12 hours of work to make $50 (factoring taxes and such). And this money is tied in to a set schedule, and you only get a check every two weeks.
While at the same time it could take a person a small fraction of that same to make the same amount of money by flipping any number of items online. No set schedules, no annoying boss, no taxes.
Labels: craigslist, ebay, money
