$940 in Found Money!

At the start of the year I wrote down my goals for 2008.  One of these goals was to create found money, which is money created outside of my normal income.  For now I have embarked on this goal primarily by selling unused stuff on eBay for extra cash.  Most of what I have sold is old inventory from my failed multi-level marketing business.  I bought this stuff for about $2,000 and the debt is still hanging around on my credit cards.

I have finally completed all of my auctions and tallied up the results.  I had a lot of sales, when you look at the gross amount, but unfortunately I found that the fees and shipping expenses greatly cut into my returns.  The gross amount taken in from all of the auctions was $940!  Next, we subtract the PayPal fees that averaged 4.5% and we end up with $898 that arrived in my checking account.  Next we must subtract approximately $45 in listing and final value fees paid to eBay (or about 4.8% of the gross).  Next we must subtract the shipping costs.  I was completely blown away by how much shipping has gone up because of fuel costs and surcharges.  Thankfully I learned quickly and increased the amount I charged after shipping the first round of product and loosing money on two of the sales.  In total I spent $272 on shipping.  That leaves me with $581 in "profit."

My return of $581 equates to a massive loss for the MLM business venture (should I write off the loss on my 2008 taxes?), but then again a few days ago all of this stuff was just sitting in a closet taking up space.  It is important to realize that $581 is much better than $0.  I hope this may inspire some readers to dig out their closets and start to pull in extra cash in the same way.  As to where the money will be spent, it seems that we needed new work clothes/shoes, text books, a printer for the computer, and repairs for the car.  In the end I think there may be a few extra bucks left for debt payment, but only a few.  That is another battle that is just getting started.  I wish everyone luck with their own efforts to create found money.