How to make money on the side from franchising to reselling on eBay

Austin Ziegler built a shop on Etsy and listed 3D printed products

While Austin Ziegler is at his day job managing a team of engineers, he has a dozen 3D printers at home that print everything from soap boxes to coat hooks to keychains, which he sells on Etsy.

One of his most popular items is a gas can ornament with a hole in the middle designed to hold cash so you can give money as a gift.

In August 2023, it brought in $10,000 in a single week, mostly from the gas can trim.

He invests most of his profits back into the business, which he hopes to grow to the point where it brings in enough passive income to live off of.

“The whole point of 3D printing was to make some money so I could work in wood,” said Ziegler, who specifically wants to do epoxy projects. “The goal is to woodwork in the future and have a company that can generate enough money that I can spend minimal time on it and maximal time on woodworking.”

Jacob Shaidle began deep cleaning his neighbors’ grills

In the summer of 2021, Jacob Shaidle knocked on his neighbor’s door, explained that he was starting a business to pay for college, and asked if he could clean his grill. His neighbor agreed, and the next day he spent three hours cleaning his first customer’s grill.

The idea of ​​cleaning grills came after doing chores for his mother. She encouraged him to reach out to their neighbors in Hamilton, a Canadian port city in southern Ontario, where owning a house is practically synonymous with owning a barbecue, noted Shaidle: “There’s a pretty good market for it.”

He spent almost all of his savings, about $400, on wire brushes, scrapers, a degreaser and other cleaning equipment at Home Depot and got his first five door-to-door customers.

In 2023, with the help of one of his colleagues, he took the business online and began to expand. As of 2024, Shaidle Cleaning operates in multiple Canadian cities, has 20 students and has six figures in annual revenue. Canadian teenager earns enough to cover college expenses.

Nischa Shah created a YouTube channel and posted videos about her expertise: finance

While watching YouTube videos, investment banker Nischa Shah thought, “Why don’t I do this myself? I have nine years of experience in banking, I have the qualifications, everyone always asks me about money advice”.

She filmed, edited and uploaded her first YouTube video in December 2021 and has continued to post intermittent personal finance related videos on YouTube.

For a year, her side project generated no income. Then, in late 2022, one of her videos about being an investment banker went viral, and her subscribers snowballed: “It took me 11 months to get to 1,000 and then a month to get from 1,000 to 100,000″.

Soon after, he monetized his channel, started earning enough to cover his fixed costs, and quit his corporate job.

It’s been over a year since Shah turned his side project into a full-time gig. She believes in keeping your day job for as long as possible while simultaneously building your side hustle or business because it takes the pressure off; you can work on your side because you i want at, not because you they have to.

Sahaj Dhingra sold Costco products on Amazon for profit

Sahaj Dhingra learned about the vast business of e-commerce and its different strategies by watching YouTube videos. He decided to try Amazon retail arbitrage — buying products from retailers like Costco and Walmart, thrift stores or dollar stores and reselling them on Amazon for a profit — because it’s cheap and low-risk.

When he launched in May 2023, he was 19 years old and had a few months of summer vacation ahead of him. It was the perfect opportunity to expand a retail arbitrage operation.

It mainly sold products in the grocery category. The first product he bought and resold was a Fairlife protein shake.

It’s important to consider demand when selecting products, said Dhingra, who has grown to six figures in sales in less than four months: “Just profit means nothing if you can’t sell it. If there’s no demand for a listing, if the sales rank is really low – then there’s no point, because you could list it at whatever you want, but if nobody else is willing to pay for it, then you don’t have a market.”

Richard S. sold electronics and clothing on eBay

Richard S., who prefers not to share his last name for privacy reasons, plans to retire in his 40s thanks to the resale business he’s built over the past 15 years. The first item he sold on eBay was a T-Mobile Sidekick. Eventually, he moved from reselling electronics to clothing.

“Anyone can do it,” said the financially independent eBay veteran. “It took a minute or two to profile and list the items as best I could at the time. I wasn’t an expert. I didn’t know everything.”

In the resale business, “it doesn’t matter what I think is cool,” he added. “What matters is what the customer thinks is cool.”

Instead of guessing what might sell, use the tools available to understand what people are buying. He recommends browsing the “sold items” section of your eBay category to see what’s selling well and what’s not. When it comes time to stock up on an item, look it up on eBay before you buy it.

“You can go right into the eBay app and look at the comp,” he said. “In 2024, there’s no excuse to speculate on an item and there’s no excuse to lose money on an item because we have that luxury.”

Erika and Kareem Hall earn passive income from two football franchises

In 2017, Erika and Kareem Hall started looking for ways to earn passive income.

“We were both very happy in our careers, but at the same time we wanted another stream of income that could help us with other things like investing or just add to our life satisfaction” , said Erika, who is an associate professor. at Emory University’s business school. Kareem runs his own consulting firm.

What the Halls liked about investing in a franchise was that there was a pre-existing model for how the business should be run.

“We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel,” Erika said. “And the franchise gave us the opportunity where we wouldn’t have to start from scratch.”

The Halls, who own two Soccer Shots franchises in Georgia, have generated more than $1 million in revenue since launching in 2019.

Both plan to continue working full-time. Their wages cover their household expenses, while the profit from the franchise is extra money they can use to invest in their future or experiences they might not have otherwise enjoyed.