Today’s post will be a little bit different, as it is a guest post from my friend Jonathan Gosz. He is also selling online, and started within the past 6 months. I know that not everyone is able to quit their jobs and sell online full time, so hopefully his story will be helpful for those who are still working full time, and selling online part time. Here is his post:

Selling online part time – my story

Hello everyone, for starters just a little introduction about me, my name is Jonathan, I am 25 years old from the Twin Cities in MN.  I studied business at Winona State University while playing both golf and volleyball competitively there.

I have dabbled around a bit in the workforce holding jobs in athletics, the food industry, and more recently for the last 2 years in corporate sales.  Basically I am on a computer and phone all day attempting to contact companies to sell computer software…sounds fun right?

I have known Ryan for about 6 years from our early days in college together.  Ryan was looking for a roommate for the duplex he had recently purchased, and I was still living at home with my parents to save money.  Ryan asked me if I wanted to rent out a room at his house and by June we had the place ready and I moved in.  I first went out sourcing with Ryan mid-June and he got me hooked from the first time I went with around July of 2013.

When I purchased my first item online for resale, I had no clue what I was doing. And by no clue I mean I didn’t have an eBay account, and didn’t even know what FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) was.  This means that if I can learn ANYONE can.

There was quite a learning curve that I needed when I first started online selling, how do I buy shipping, how to package an item, what do I do after I ship the item to the buyer. I knew nothing; this is where Ryan came in very handy.  In terms of just getting started selling online I have learned the majority of what I know from Ryan,  he says I got “free” tuition, I call it paying rent, but in the end its just making money.

Being new to online selling, and having a very risk-adverse personality I did not know what to expect when I got started.  So I started like most people do with thrift shopping small items and selling them on eBay.  This helped me learn the system with very cheap investments in both money and time, mainly because I didn’t have a lot of either of them. Needless to say after my first eBay sale I was HOOKED.  The excitement of a sale and finding that next great treasure was not only fun but profitable.

As a new seller I did not want to be limited to just eBay so, with Ryan’s guidance, I quickly transitioned to Amazon.  My first Amazon sale was on August 24^th 2013.  It was an old book I had lying around that I made $1.95 profit from.  From the start on Amazon I went right into selling via FBA, quickly realized that as a part timer and not wanting to do more than 10-15 hours a week that this would be the best way for me to make money and save time.  The way I made this possible was by transitioning from thrift shopping to full on retail. Retail sourcing is very different from thrifting, retail is scan, scan, scan, whereas thrift you need more time and knowledge of product to know what you can buy for $1 and sell for $50.  Occasionally lower margins and higher costs but again as a part timer I realized this was my route for success.

Now for the good stuff, did I actually make any money doing this part time?

Like most retailers, and fellow online sellers, my best month was December, below is my largest individual day in terms of sales dollar amount as well as my largest month.  Largest day was not shockingly in December about 2 weeks before Christmas and largest month of course was December.

Largest individual day December 11^th 2013 (click to enlarge):

Largest Month Dec 2013 (Click to enlarge):

A little info into these numbers, I made over $3,000 in profit alone in December from my amazon and ebay sales, working approx. 15 hours.  This proves to me that even working part-time hours selling online I am able to increase my monthly income significantly and put myself in a much more comfortable position for the future.

Overall I am very happy with the results I have experienced so far selling online, especially since I am putting on average 10-15 hours a week into my efforts. Through 4 months with Amazon I have totaled around $15,000 in sales and from 6 months on eBay total around $8,000 in sales.  Surely there will be bigger and better numbers to come!

If you would like to find out more about my story and current success in part-time selling feel free to reach out by leaving a comment below, or contact me by email or facebook, links below:

Jonathan.gosz@yahoo.com

https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.gosz

Thanks to Jonathan for sharing his story through this guest post! As he said, feel free to reach out to him via email or through the comments below.  Have a story you would like to share? Send me an email at grant.ryanj@gmail.com.  Thanks for reading!