Family Travel

It seems my pyramid scheme to sell garage sale items on Ebay has failed. Here are the reasons that I think aided in my failure

• I have no niche expertise that allows me to filter the crap from valuable items amongst the heaps of baby clothes and abused toys (we did find some cool place mats).
• I have no true motivation to get out and "Garage Sale". It is not a social event for me.

So....

I am trying a new technique called "Funding Travel with my Salary".

Here are the plans or more correctly the windows for travel left in 2009:

• Thanksgiving - 21 November to 29 November
• Xmas - 19 December - 3 January

Buzz Items:

• Possible Amtrak trip over Thanksgiving
• Possible Ski trip over Xmas

The Prize - Travel

I have not looked at things with a realistic eye nor should I. This is an experiment and I am going to dream big, bold, and unrealistic.

The three locales that jump to the front of my mind when it comes to spending my moneys earned are:

• Switzerland
• Fiji
• Aruba

A caveat to Aruba is that a coworker of mine is bashing it from her trip. In her words it is a desert with a beach and is infested with man sized iguanas. These are the words of diva and have yet to sway my plans.

So now I need to jump start my eBay/Garage Sale empire but what is my niche? Where does my knowledge base center?

No hits on my Items on eBay

The first road block has arose with funding my travel to far off exotic places. My two items, the first items, did not sell and no money was made. Actually to be clear I am $1.00 in the hole in my mini-project to raise enough through eBay by January to travel somewhere cool.

I have made an observation:

• I am not going to move enough items at $ 0.50 to fund my travel if I am selling two items at a time.
• There are too many video games posted on the internet to make any steady sales, I need a niche market.
• I need to visit more garage sales, I have only visited that one since starting this social experiment.

We will see if I can right the ship before it become too late

First Two Items Purchased

Over this past weekend, I made my initial investment of $1.00 into my eBay store. Two video games were purchased at a garage sale and now are posted on eBay.

This is my first time putting something on eBay so I don't know all the tricks and such.

Wish me luck. At .50 cents a pop this might be a long long trip to Switzerland.

Ebay Store from Garage Sales to pay for Travel

I read a post on one of my favorite blogs called Get Rich Slowly and it got my mind to spinning wildly out of control.

I am a man of three's as a rule of thumb so here are my observations:

1. Ebay Store
2. Garage Sales
3. Travel

This is going to be my $100.00 experiment. I am going to purchase $100.00 worth of Garage Sale stuff and sell it on Ebay to see if I can raise enough in 6 1/2 months to take my Diva and I on a Vacation.

Rules:

1. Experiment ends Jan1, 2010
2. 100.00 in crap plus shipping and handling (I will pay back shipping and handling from profits so in the end it is genuinely only $100.00 invested.)
3. Vacation must be realistic

Caveat: I purchased a bunch of soft cover books at a thrift shop awhile ago and tried to sell them on Amazon with no success.