I finally found an opportunity for starting a business that I've been looking for and my husband and I are taking a leap to see if we can make it work. This week we took a big risk and bought products to start up our Amazon FBA and Ebay businesses again.

You see before Steemit and before motherhood I had Amazon/Ebay stores of my own and was doing really well at it. I'd find products to sell here and there and I made a little pocket money from my work. I was smart about choosing good products to sell and never lost money but I was a small time seller. I really wanted to expand and put an effort into increasing my sales to see if I could make as much money as a full time job. Others do it so why couldn't I? It wasn't easy to expand. Finding products to consistently sell and competing against others in the market is hard. Then, we moved cross country so I sold off all of my products beforehand to have less to move. Then, I found out I was pregnant and had a baby and got so busy I went away from the idea of having an online business.

Until this week that is...I discovered the world of "liquidations." When people return items they've bought to big corporation owned stores they often get thrown in a box and sold off to people who then auction off big pallets of stuff for pretty cheap. Some of the products are brand new and some are total junk. You take a risk buying these pallets. My cousin who is in this world introduced me to a guy who holds these auctions. I took a risk, bid on two pallets of goods, and won.

One of my pallets

Today, I've been sifting through two big huge pallets of products returned to Walmart and I think I've got enough products I can double my money reselling them online. I've spent all day sifting and researching and I got a nice mix of wonderful products and pure trash.

We had to rent a U-Haul (one of the costs of not owning a truck and ate away at our profits)

I got lucky with one pallet that had nothing but vacuums on it. I got three brand new robot vacuums that will make me my money back spent on that pallet. It had tons of opened vacuums so I need to test them all out but if they work I'll make a nice profit. On the other pallet I got a new fancy clock worth $170 and some brand new furniture which will earn me back my money on the second pallet but the rest is junk so I won't profit much on that one.

You see with these pallets you get lots of boxes that say they contain one thing but they don't actually have those things in them. Returns are thrown in empty boxes. A box saying it has a computer may actually have clothes. Sadly, my boxes contained mostly store returns of kitchen appliances people had broken so lots of products will go in the trash. And there was toilet paper. Yes, lots and lots of boxes of toilet paper. We'll have toilet paper well into next year thanks to Walmart pulling torn bags off of their shelves and auctioning them off.

Three big boxes of toilet paper and some paper towels

It's fun the world of buying and re-selling. It's a rush because you could get anything. We unexpectedly got toilet paper but next time maybe we'll get something amazing. Finding a seller of liquidation pallets has been my dream for many years. Someone else who bid on a different pallet at the same auction bought a mystery pallet covered in black plastic and ended up with over a 100 new video game systems and other electronics. They will make thousands of dollars for a small investment. Its a world of risk and reward. Sometimes you lose money and sometimes you get lucky and make a lot. I went into my auctions knowing I could easily lose a lot of money since this was my first time. I have a lot to learn and lots of mistakes to make before I really know what I'm doing.

Should be interesting to see what happens. So far our first liquidation pallets will make us our investment back with a nice profit. We made some mistakes by picking one pallet with lots of junk hidden in unmarked boxes and will have to learn as we go what is a good investment and what is not. Right now my house is full of pallet items and I'm feeling claustrophobic with all the vacuums everywhere. I'll be glad when they are all gone and we can move onto the next pallet adventure.

All photos are my own.