Some of you reading this may know that one of my passions in life is traveling. I am a wanderer at heart. My folks moved around a lot when I was a youngster; I attended 9 different schools while growing up. That might freak out a lot of people. It did me at first, but after a couple of moves, I looked at each move after that as a new adventure. After high school, I joined the U.S. Air Force and had the good fortune to travel to many different countries around the world. After 8 years of Air Force life, I entered the corporate world and had the good fortune to again travel, both domestically and internationally. When I retired from the corporate world, I started my own business which at times required some International travel. After fully retiring, I made several more trips abroad… as a tourist. I’m now working on my bucket-list which includes curtailing International travel and traveling more domestically. In this regard, I purchased a cargo van and built it into a custom RV.
To read about some of my travels and view some photos of destinations of my international and domestic travels, go to my blog at:
http://www.wanderingwithbill.com.
The RV’ing chapter of my life began about 3 years ago when I purchased a pretty good sized Class C RV. After about 3 trips in that big RV, I decided the Class C RV was too big for my needs as a solo traveler, and parking that big rig is prohibited in a lot of places I wanted to visit. Plus, getting only 9-10 miles per gallon of gas was eating into my budget.
Since purchasing and building out my van, I’ve made 2 trips to the western states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. I am currently at my home in Georgia awaiting cataract surgery, or I would be out west now. Once the surgery is behind me, I’m heading out to spend the rest of the winter in the Sonoran Desert in southwest Arizona and surrounding areas. From there, I’ll be exploring the back roads and small towns of America. No calendar, no clock and no schedules. The only thing for certain is I’ll be following the sun as I wander around this great country searching out state and National Parks and other things of interest. Even driving to Alaska is on my bucket list.
Some of my friends and family have asked me how I finance my travels. In addition to my retirement funds, I have found other ways by which money can be made by anyone on the road. In the last few years, I’ve done a lot of research and learned a lot about making money on various platforms, all while traveling. People say, “how do you find goods to sell while traveling?” “How do you ship something?” “How do you get paid?” Good questions all.
Let’s take a look at some ways.
NOTE: This article is not about the ‘details’ of selling on any of these platforms, but to show you there’s a way to make money on or off the road. If anyone is interested in details, please contact me.
FLEA MARKETS: Most people go to flea markets to look for a needed item or just while away time browsing all the different stalls. I go to flea markets to browse as well, but I’m browsing for something I can pick up for a couple of bucks and then flip it on eBay or Amazon for 80-100 bucks.
RETAIL ARBITRAGE: An excellent way to make money. For those of you who might not know, Retail Arbitrage is simply finding items on retail store shelves that you can flip and sell for a profit online, such as Amazon, eBay, Craigslist etc. If I happen to be in a store, such as a Walmart or Target, I’ll spend a few minutes looking for close-outs that I might be able to flip for a nice profit. I have an Amazon app that I use to scan a barcode and that will tell me if that item is profitable, so I don’t waste time or money on something that might not return a profit to me. I don’t do a lot of this, because I don’t want to get bogged down with anything labor intensive while on the road, plus I don’t have a lot of room in my van to carry too many items.
ETSY STORE: I design coffee mugs to sell in my Etsy store. An Etsy Store can be had by anyone and there’s no cost to set up a store. Once it’s set up and you begin stocking it with items to sell, you’ll pay a 20 cent fee to list an item and of course there’s fees once you sell something.
I design my mugs on a platform by the name of Printify and list them on Etsy. Printify is partnered with and is integrated with Etsy. Once a sale is made on Etsy, Printify will print the mug and ship it to my customer. It’s a seamless operation and Etsy takes care of everything for me including getting paid. The beauty is, I don’t have any inventory and I only pay for the mugs once they are sold, so no upfront costs, no money tied up and I never have to touch anything but my laptop computer or my iPhone. To give you an idea, here’s the link to my Etsy Store.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/checkmymugs
MERCH BY AMAZON: This Amazon program affords anyone the opportunity to sell “print on demand” T-Shirts, hoodies, long-sleeved T-shirts, etc as well as some other items such as Pop-Sockets on their platform. This is an awesome program where one can sell shirts with no upfront money. You could easily start a business with this model. One simply uploads a T-Shirt design and Amazon does the rest. No cost at all to the seller. Your shirt will be printed and shipped usually within a day or so of receiving an order. Not only that, but Prime shipping is free! This can be a single shirt or multiple shirts. This is a great way to design and sell shirts. Amazon has made a significant investment in printing machines which cost something like $500K each and they have a warehouse the size of a football field housing these huge printing machines which are the size of a car and takes several people to operate. And, Amazon lets us use their machines at no cost to print and sell T-Shirts. You set your own price as to what you want to sell the shirts for. The only stipulation to pricing is that you make at least 1 cent profit. Therefore, if you were so inclined, you could design and sell shirts to groups such as Little League, church, etc. for just a penny over cost. How great is that?
Amazon lists these shirts and products on their site and a nice thing about this too, is these items qualify for Prime Shipping. Amazon takes care of everything such as listing the items, selling them, shipping them and collecting the money and if there’s a customer service issue, Amazon takes care of that as well. Amazon then sends me a check for the profit. It doesn’t get any better than that. I’ve been selling T-shirts with this program almost since its beginning.
eBAY: I’ve been selling on eBay for years. Again, the only issue I have with this platform is handling products. The seller has to take the photos of goods they want to sell, list the item, write a description and when a sale is made, pack that item and ship it to the buyer. It’s an easy way to make extra or even full time money, but as you can probably tell by now, I’m just not crazy about handling products. I used to sell a ton of books through eBay, but that entailed a lot of driving around to used book stores, Goodwill, library sales and the like and rummaging through hundreds of books and trying to determine if a book was profitable. They’re also quite heavy and can be costly to ship. I made some good money, but I spent a lot of time in book stores to make that money.
AMAZON FBA (FULFILLMENT BY AMAZON: I am what is known as a PRO Seller on Amazon. When I want to sell something on Amazon, I use their FBA Program as opposed to their FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) Program. As a PRO Seller, I get to take advantage of Amazon’s UPS rates. UPS is a major partner of Amazon and therefore when using FBA, my rates are much cheaper than other logistic companies such as FedEx, DHL or the US Postal Service. UPS Stores are an online seller’s best friend. Look around; you’ll find UPS Stores in every town and city. So when shipping to Amazon, I take my items to a UPS Store and ship to Amazon. Amazon receives my package(s); unpacks them, lists my items on their platform, sells them, ships them, and handles all the customer service including any returns. They then deduct their fees and electronically deposit proceeds directly to my bank account. All this makes selling on Amazon’s platform while traveling a breeze.
STEEMIT: Steemit is a blogging and social networking website owned by Steemit, Inc that uses the Steem blockchain to reward publishers and curators. I’ve only been involved on Steemit for a few months and have not been as active as perhaps I should. But from a money making standpoint, it is, perhaps, the best social media site out there, because it’s the perfect opportunity to make money writing. I’m still learning Steemit, but from what I’ve gathered, the more you write and post, the more money you can make. Two (2) posts per day is what is recommended from the person who introduced me to Steemit. There doesn’t seem to be a limit as to how much one can earn. So far, I’ve made over 100 posts and. From what I can gather, you make money when your post is upvoted by other “Steemers.” I have a lot of posts on Steemit that have not yielded a single penny but I have some that have paid anywhere from 2-3 cents to 25 cents to a few dollars. The most I was paid for a single post was $96.00 and change, one post in the $29.00 range. Steemit works on cryptocurrency, but don’t let that confuse you here. You can exchange the cryptocurrency for dollars. Here is my basic grasp of it. Steemit is a social media site built on a block-chain and everything you do on it is recorded. All of your writings are considered a transaction and will be recorded. Because of its transparency and the fact that anyone can look to see how much you have earned and look at your history to see what you have withdrawn, makes it a rather honest place to be. Basically how Steemit works is that everyone creates posts and these posts receive upvotes. When they are upvoted, you earn some money on them. You can upvote your favorite posts too and receive a small percentage of that post’s earnings as well.
Some of my posts have been perhaps a full page or a little more. I’ve also posted just a photo with maybe a one sentence or paragraph description of the photo. So far I can’t tell the difference in terms of money earned. So I’m thinking, for the next 15-20 posts or so, rather than take the time to research for an article, I will post some interesting photos of my travels and perhaps a sentence or 2 describing the photo and see what happens.
I’ve seen some posts with just a photo and description earning as much as several hundred dollars. I’ve also seen some lengthy posts bringing in that amount. So there is money to be earned posting on Steemit. I know of no other social media sites paying for posting articles.
Feel free to check out my Steemit site at:
https://steemit.com/@billjones
IMPORTING: I do some light importing and sell those goods on eBay, Amazon, Craig’s List, and even Facebook using the drop-ship method, so I never have to touch the products. I purchase directly from manufacturers in China and have it drop-shipped via U.S. Mail from China directly to my customer in approximately 12-20 days. I don’t purchase large items because of potential shipping issues and cost. I purchase small items such as survival items, cell phone cases, dash mounted phone holders, even knock-off type Go-Pro Cameras, etc and I’ve never paid more than $3.00 for shipping. In a lot of cases, I get free shipping. These are all profitable items that sell well and because I deal only with reputable factories and sellers in China, I’ve never had an issue with a lost shipment or credit card abuse.
With all the research I’ve done, I could probably write a book on this subject. (Now there’s an idea for yet another stream of income). In fact I have one book on Amazon Kindle now, but it’s related to my former profession as a Private Investigator.
I am in the process of setting up a YouTube Channel for uploading videos on while traveling. Once it’s up and I’m on the road, I’ll write another post as to the YouTube address, etc. And of course, I’ll be posting on my blog as well at:
http://www.wanderingwithbill.com
If anyone has any comments, suggestions, etc, please contact me at:
http://www.billjones411@gmail.com
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.
“If you liked this article, please follow me. I’ll be bringing you more good quality content in the weeks to come.”
Until next time…
