Searching for my winning lottery ticket

Over the last few weeks, I have been attempting different ways to generate an extra income (Goal 6 – to generate an extra $150 a week). I read a book recently called the 4-hour work week by Timothy Ferris. In the book he explains that we don’t need jobs, we need an income, and a bloody good income can be achieved by working just 4 hours a week. I loved this idea. The book then furthers to tell you how to spend your new found freedom away from the office and how to live life to the max. I loved this idea too. Anyway he gives a few examples on how to generate an extra income and some of these include finding a product overseas, purchasing a very good price then resell at market rate in your own country. I loved this idea even more. 

So a few weeks ago I joined alibaba.com – biggest online marketplace based out of Asia and started to look at what people were buying from Trade Me (New Zealand’s version of ebay). I settled on video cameras and found a company who were willing to sell me ten 12 megapixel video cameras to sample before placing a larger order. I got them at a bargain of $25 per piece and my research showed I could sell them for between $55 - $65 each. I also decided to buy 10 mp3 players complete with an inbuilt camera for $8 per piece when I had researched that I could sell them for a minimum of $20 each. I thought this was my winning lottery ticket! Hahahahahahahahaha… so naive. My first box arrived and I was like a child on Christmas Day and when I opened them it actually reminded me of a few Christmas Day situations from my childhood – I was very confused and not sure what the hell was in the package – this is not how it looked in the brochure. The video cameras seemed very small, then I investigated further and they were in fact very small, and plastic and toy like. Then I tested them and it got worse, they were not 12 megapixel, at a push maybe 1 megapixel, and the internal memory was so shocking I could only record a few seconds of footage. EPIC FAIL! I am slowly getting rid of them at a very low price, being extremely honest about the quality and marketing them as Kids Cameras …….. as for the mp3 players – must have been a scam because they never arrived!

So I’m sure there is a lesson here and I am so glad I only spend about $350 rather than $3500 however I do feel like my dream has just been ripped away as quickly as it appeared. I will likely attempt a final purchase and see what happens next but for now I am happy selling household items on Trade Me. Its slow, boring  and time consuming and I’ve only made $200 in the last month but I am actually getting rid of a lot of unnecessary crap I was hording (oh and a couple of video cameras!).

I have 2 other ideas for an additional income stream, one is creating a workbook for a specific business topic and I have thought about the idea for a while now just have zero inspiration on where to start. The next to create a new blog focused more on articles and how to’s etc. – I can’t give away too many details or you may steal my idea. Despite having all this time off work, I actually don’t know when I will have time to fit this in. I have been busy with friends, fitness, hiking, snowboarding, boxing, writing, cooking – those 8 hours a day I would usually spend in work are surprisingly easily filled. So instead of progressing on my writing or income stream ideas I am now off to snowboard with a few mates and enjoy the sunshine in the bloody cold temperature of minus 3 degrees!