This is small potatoes but I’ve sold 6 watches since the end of December. I’ve generated about $1150 in sales and about $300 in profit. I’m doing this in my free time and it’s not currently taking that much time.

Why do this? I’m using the profits as a revenue stream to buy more S&P 500 ETF, VOO.

I throw cash at voo monthly, but I throw credit card cash back, watch flipping profits and any random refunds, or excess cash right into VOO.

I started doing this just because I like watches, but now I’m seriously interested in seeing if there is a way to scale it. To do that I need to simplify finding deals with meat on the bone. That’s the hardest part of the process.

The next part of the process is to reduce my costs with eBay, the only way I can think to do this is to find new sales channels, like Instagram, a Shopify storefront, and by converting eBay buyers to store visitors by leaving a card in the package to inform them we buy and sell.

I need to scale my inventory, but finding deals is the difficult part. It takes scrolling through tons of listings to find the right seller. Sourcing from wholesalers isn’t going to work especially with eBay’s cut. The real question is, is it cheaper to pay for ads to find customers or is it cheaper to pay ebay?

The long term way to make it profitable is to become an AD with Citizen and Seiko and open up an actual retail location, which at this stage of the game, is too early to contemplate. That solves the problem of finding inventory, but having an existing customer base would make this a lot more feasible.

My next steps will be:

1: Set up saved searches on sites I buy inventory from

2: Order business cards for my watch side hustle that has a QR code for my mailing list and website

3: Start sending out a monthly list with current inventory and special pricing to members.