Today, I have a great interview that I want to share with you! I’ve recently interviewed Melissa from Flea Market Flipper on how to buy and sell items by flipping for a great profit!
Melissa and her husband Rob started their business as a side hustle and now flipping items has become their full-time job. In 2016, they earned $133,000 by flipping items; definitely a profitable business!
They created the course Flipper University, where they teach the exact strategies they utilize to flip items for a substantial profit! If you are looking for a side job or ways to earn extra income then this is the course you might want to consider. You can start the art of flipping items for profit as a side hustle or even as a new job!
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Here is the Full Interview on How to Make Money By Flipping Items
Melissa, please tell us about yourself
Hi Shirley! Thank you so much for this interview opportunity with your Smart Cents For Life blog. I am a wife, a mom to three little kids (ages 4, 3, & 1), a personal trainer and nutrition coach, and I help my husband run our flea market flipping business from home.
What is flipping exactly?
According to Wikipedia here is the definition of flipping:
“Product flipping. Outside of real estate and cars, all consumer products can be flipped. Product flipping entails buying products at a low price and selling it at a higher price for profit. Products can be new or used items.”
Flipping for us is buying items at a low cost from flea markets, yard sales, thrift stores, and auctions, then selling them online – usually eBay for a substantial profit.
Why the name Flea Market Flipper?
Our name is Flea Market Flipper because my husband Rob buys most of his items from the flea market. He loves going almost every single weekend, and even wakes up early (without an alarm clock) to see what deals he can find. Rob loves going to the flea market because there are so many booths and vendors there.
He usually finds something good to flip, and he loves the treasure hunt. We still like going to yard sales, thrift stores, and auctions as well, we just use the flea market the most to find our items.
I actually really enjoy searching for yard sales. It is like a treasure hunt itself! We don’t go a ton because it’s the same day as the flea market, but sometimes we will hit a few on the way back home.
How did you start flea market flipping? How much time per week do you invest selling and buying items?
Rob actually started flipping items when he was 16. (21 years ago!) He started buying Nordic Tracks ski machines from a local auction. He could get them for $15-$20, and sell them for $300-$500 to someone on eBay who lived up north. It was a great gig for a high school kid to make some extra money.
But it didn’t stop there. He has done it all these years – sometimes part time, sometimes full-time, and has done well with it. Now we support a family of five with our flipping business.
When we did this part time for the past few years we would spend about 5-15 hours per week at it (and in 2015 we made $42,000 part time). Since last May we have been full time and spend about 25-35 hours per week usually on our eBay business. (Last year we made $133,000 full time).
What type of items does a flipper typically buy and sells?
This one is tough because we buy all sorts of items. We have sold things from every category I think. Our prerequisite is pretty much whatever will make us a profit. I tend to like things I know like exercise equipment and baby/kid items. (There are some strollers that sell for crazy amounts of money!)
Rob tends to like more commercial items now – in any category. He likes lawn equipment, restaurant equipment, medical equipment, and anything that can be unique.
How much money can an average person make flipping items? Could you give us an estimate on a part-time or full-time basis?
Like I mentioned before, we made $42,000 part time and $133,000 when we went full time, but that is from years of experience. A person just starting out shouldn’t plan to make that money right off the bat, but they can definitely make enough to make it worth their time.
I would suggest someone start out part time at first, while they are getting the hang of it, and they could easily make $500-$2,000 in a months time if they put some effort into it.
How much does it cost to start a flipping business?
I love this question because it can take a very little amount to start. Rob even wrote an e-book recently titled 5 Ways To Get FREE Items to Resell for Profit. Because you can find so many items for free! And even if you don’t find the free items, it doesn’t take a lot to get started.
We tell our students to start with $20-$50, that should be enough to start making some money. They should be able to take that money and turn it into $150-$300 without too much difficulty.
Where do you sell the items? Which one is your favorite place to sell flipped items?
This is a very easy answer because eBay is our number one income source. We sell 80% of our finds on eBay for a profit, and the other sales usually come from Craigslist or Facebook.
What recommendations or tips would you give to someone who wants to flip items to make extra income?
We tell our Flipper University students to start with a small amount of investment ($20-$50) and to find items that they know about already.
For instance, if they are a parent they may know some baby items that are worth good money. Or maybe they have a hobby in horse riding, or sports memorabilia, or crafts, and know what items are worth the most money.
That is a perfect place to start because you don’t have to do a lot of research. But even if a person doesn’t have a specific knowledge base, they can still do very well because of the amazing invention of the smartphone!
It’s incredible how much information you can get now in the palm of your hand. The smartphone has changed the game for flipping items, you really can find out what something is worth instantly.
Please, tell us about your course and what we can find there.
We created Flipper University in 2015 to help others make an extra or a full-time income from home. Spending time with family is the biggest thing to us and having a home-based business allows us to do just that.
We pick our schedule as a family, and if we want to take a day to go to a theme park (we live in Orlando), we do just that. We can do our posting and shipping once the kiddos are asleep, so we don’t miss out on all the moments they are little.
In our course, we teach people how to find items of value to buy, then resell them for a profit. We show how and when to use eBay, Paypal, Offer Up, Craigslist, & Facebook Marketplace to make the most profit on the items purchased.
Then we show the ins and outs of packaging and shipping items, as that can be a roadblock for many people. We also wrote a whole e-book just on shipping large items because we do it quite regularly (And it helped us increase our sales!) The book is called The Art Of Shipping: How to Package and Ship Large Items for eBay.
We created Flipper University because we wanted to create something that took someone from start to finish in the flipping business, even if they had never done it before. We want our students to be successful in their flipping business so they can make an extra income or full-time income for their family as well.
Definitely, Flea Market Flipper sounds like a great way to make extra income! You can learn more about Melissa and Rob’s course: Flipper University here. Or take advantage and take their FREE webinar about flipping here
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