Side Hustle Catastrophe or Maybe Victory? The Purse Summary

Well, looking back, I think I could have seen this coming a mile away. Since moving into my place in September, I have been on a kick to side hustle for curiosity sake. I hoped that I could find a happy middle where the activity was interesting and that it paid. Doing some basic research lead me to a couple of ideas, including this website.

Purses:

The first major side hustle that was brought on was the flipping of purses. I found a source of a GoodWill online auction (www.shopgoodwill.com/) that I thought would be perfect. How you look at the Goodwill distribution of wealth is one thing but helping, even if it is only a little bit, should build some good karma in my thinking. I was also thinking that doing something that my girlfriend might find interesting might be enough to bring her own board too.

Boy, oh boy, was I ever wrong.

Me being me I quickly acquired near two dozen purses which still have not sold. The girlfriend did jump on board but only for the purchasing of the purses. She quickly got bored in the process of selling them. In its entirety, the whole experiment was, and still is, a failure but it is nothing that I got disappointed about. After all, not everything is going to be a home run and knowing that is going to be half of the adventure.

The bright side of this was that I noted the girlfriend's disinterest into the project about half way. Thinking to myself that if she was not going to be interested in doing this, than I should start buying or investing in things that I am interested and passionate about. Soon after that realization, I found myself no longer making purchases of purses and started to move towards acoustic guitars and electronics (mainly a camera and handheld radio). The most surprising was the interest in the camera that I listed for sale which eclipsed all of the views of the purses three times over. The camera still has not been sold just because I have not followed up with the people that would like to buy it which is completely my fault. At the time of writing, I have not sold a thing off of the GoodWill experiment and am currently in the hole over a $1,000.

I remain optimistic though for several reasons and lessons that I have learned.

1) Do stuff that you want to do. Don't compromise to another party as they may lose interest just as fast as you. It is like starting the project off on the right foot and hit the ground running.

2) Niche it if possible. Similar to the top one, I would try to niche your project as focus.

3) Set targets of acquiring items and not exceed them. Similar to gambling, only bring as much as you are willing to lose.