How Can I Make More Money From This?

[Hooman]

I'll keep this short. Due to the recession, I've noticed a few of my coworkers having personal money troubles. They needed cash for rent and food, so I offered to buy their unused electronics.

I bought a coworker's netbook for $190. I sold it on eBay for $330. ($210 Profit)
I bought another coworker's Amazon Kindle 2 for $100. I sold it on Craigslist for $225. ($125 Profit)

I've helped them get the cash they need fast, while helping myself with some very quick and easy profit. Both of these were barely used, practically new.

Next up, the same coworker who sold me the netbook happened to need $200 cash for rent. So I wrote up a quick loan contract charging 3% compounded daily. He will owe me $285 on 12/17.

-----

So that's about $450 made fairly effortlessly. I'm wondering how I can grow this into a larger service. I did a bit of searching and noticed there are no pawn shops in my town. A possible idea would be to create a mobile pawn shop service that goes to the person. Another idea would be provide cash advance services. I'm not sure what the legal requirements would be to provide these services, but I'm looking into it.

Do you have any other ideas on how I could expand this sort of income?

[ndawson293]

Sounds like a good idea but don't forget that if you loan money and they don't pay back, it will wipe out a large ammount of profit.

[myfayt]

Unless you are a legitimate business, it'd be near impossible to force people to pay you back. Setup an LLC or Sore Prop, and make a legally binding contract. You may state on it for late payments, and if they wish to put up anything they own on it (car, house, computer, etc). It needs to be approved by a notary to make it legal.

[sweetfranky]

I have a friend who used to do this thing but he could never turn it into a legitimate business. It always was more of a part time thing. How big is your town? Maybe its time to open a pawn shop.

[The Stealthy One]

You should look at prosper.com - a great way to make money by loaning it to other people! Also, your charitable side may be interested in checking out Kiva.org - you won't make any money there, but you will earn back your principal and help out some great entrepreneurs in the process.

[KofiLGS]

You're basically a hard money lender and pawn shop rolled into one.

[Bodge4]

I like your idea of a mobile pawn shop. I would explore that further. Loaning money if you are not a bank is illegal in most states. Be careful with that.

[allen87]

I'll keep this short. Due to the recession, I've noticed a few of my coworkers having personal money troubles. They needed cash for rent and food, so I offered to buy their unused electronics.

I bought a coworker's netbook for $190. I sold it on eBay for $330. ($210 Profit)
I bought another coworker's Amazon Kindle 2 for $100. I sold it on Craigslist for $225. ($125 Profit)

I've helped them get the cash they need fast, while helping myself with some very quick and easy profit. Both of these were barely used, practically new.

Next up, the same coworker who sold me the netbook happened to need $200 cash for rent. So I wrote up a quick loan contract charging 3% compounded daily. He will owe me $285 on 12/17.

-----

So that's about $450 made fairly effortlessly. I'm wondering how I can grow this into a larger service. I did a bit of searching and noticed there are no pawn shops in my town. A possible idea would be to create a mobile pawn shop service that goes to the person. Another idea would be provide cash advance services. I'm not sure what the legal requirements would be to provide these services, but I'm looking into it.

Do you have any other ideas on how I could expand this sort of income?

Sound like a good idea,but why dont you think of this way to extend your business,you can open pawn shops on the web.on one hand, you can find the good wholesalers from all over the world, on the other hand ,you search from the internet to find some needs and launch the goods information.

[Lambo]

post an ad on craigs list about your service and see what happens

[DdotG]

You're basically a hard money lender and pawn shop rolled into one.

Haha, you pretty much said what I was going to.