Phase 1: Raising Cash
It was the year 2013. We had just bought a repoed house that needed a lot of work (like we completely gutted it). Our daughter (our first) was on the way and we had not a penny in savings.
We were desperate for extra cash. Between fixing the house and working, we didn’t have time or energy for second jobs.
Thankfully, we stumbled on Swagbucks. We played around a little and quickly realized it was a legitimate way to make extra spending money. It wasn’t going to get us rich, but it would help.
We had a $50 Amazon gift card sitting around. I can’t remember where it came from (it might have been a housewarming or baby shower present) but we decided to make our first business investment… We used it to buy a pair of no-contract smartphones.
With smartphones in hand, we signed up for Swagbucks and started watching ads and doing surveys. Swagbucks has done a great job of gamifying the whole thing and it was kinda fun (I still use Swagbucks from time to time to pay for my reading habit).
I tried my hand at Mechanical Turk, and it was fine, but soul-murderingly dull. Swagbucks was and still is my top choice.
We also expanded into the exciting world of online surveys. We signed up with Survey Junkie and soon we had made enough extra cash to make our second business investment: I bought parts to fix up an old desktop PC I had from high school. (BTW, I have continued to fix that PC up and I still use it as my main work computer.)
Meanwhile, we were still searching for ways to make extra cash.
Phase 2: Flea Market Flipping
It was about this time that we stumbled upon Flea Market Flippers and things started to change forever.
The Flea Market Flippers make six figures per year buying from yard sales, flea markets, and thrift stores and flipping them. We soaked up their wisdom and…
A few weeks later we cashed out about $50 from Swagbucks (our re-investments had paid for themselves, yay!) and we took our cash to a flea market about 30 miles from our house.
(And we kept on earning from Swagbucks. We have made hundreds of dollars from Swagbucks now).
We spent our $50 and sold everything we bought on eBay for a profit of $100. Thank you Flea Market Flippers!
Then we took that $100 to a pair of Goodwills near us, spent it all, and sold it all on eBay again.
That $100 grew into $250. (And we were still earning from Swagbucks).
We opened a separate bank account to keep track. We were earning, on average, more than a 100% return on our investments, so we decided to reinvest 100% of our earnings back into our flipping business. Working with small amounts of money like we were, there was just nowhere else we could invest for such high returns.
This was one of the most fun times in our lives. We still love going to flea markets and picking flips.
We even started picking on vacations and had quite a few times we nearly paid for the whole trip with our flea market flipping.
By this point, we had a few thousand dollars banked in our business account and were still looking for ways to make more money.
And that’s when we found a pair of blogs that took us to the next level.
Phase 3: Retail Arbitrage
The Selling Family and Full Time FBA entered our lives at the same time and I honestly can’t tell you who made us more money.
We created our professional seller account through Amazon’s FBA program, pulled about $100 from the business bank account, and took a trip to a local CVS.
We ended up buying a few things off their clearance shelf (we didn’t spend the full $100) but everything we bought that day sold within a week of arriving at the Amazon warehouse.
This is when things really took off.
We loved Flea Market Flipping, and we got much higher returns from flea markets (we often doubled and tripled our money with flea market flips) but retail arbitrage had more opportunities (we generally made around 30% return on investment, but sold in higher volumes).
We were still hitting flea markets and having huge success with surplus stores.
Within a year we got to the point where we couldn’t spend all the money we were making. To give you an idea of how crazy things got, we once bought an entire aisle at our local Target.
I mean the whole aisle. We packed both of our SUVs floor to roof.
And sold it all within the month.
By now we had made enough to pay off our cars and have our unfinished basement converted into a beautiful living space (that is honestly the best space in our house now).
I should also point out that we did all of this while we were working full-time. We had our circuit around town and we would set out early on Saturday mornings and be done by noon.
Cash began piling up in the bank account and we wanted to put it to good use. Cars, cards, and personal loans now paid off, we started looking for new opportunities.
Phase 4: Legit Wholesale Storefront
That’s when we decided to build a legitimate online store.
The only problem was, we didn’t want to spend all of our time packing boxes and shipping orders. And we didn’t want to buy or rent warehouse space for inventory.
Luckily by this point, we had a solid two years of experience with Amazon FBA.
With Amazon FBA, Amazon will store your inventory and pick, pack, and ship your orders. They charge fees for all of this but, by our math, the fees you pay are still way less than rent and overhead doing it yourself.
We really struggled at this point. The challenge was finding things to sell. There is so much on Amazon and so much of it has so much competition and so low profit that it just isn’t worth it.
Finally, we stumbled on the next life-changing course.
The Wholesale Formula.
We bought their course. It was expensive and I wasn’t very confident that we had made the right choice.
But I was so wrong.
The course showed us how to find inventory ideas, how to contact manufacturers, place orders…. everything. I want to make that clear: This course has everything you need to start a legitimate Amazon Business.
Once we got through all the training (there is a ton of material) we applied for an LLC (something we should have done much sooner) and turned our side hustle into a legit on-the-books business.
Then, once we found our first suppliers we placed the smallest order possible.
And we should have bought so much more than we did. We just weren’t confident with this new direction our business had taken.
Had I not let my fears get in the way, we would have paid for the training in our first order.
Overall, the return on investment is lower (We aim for a 20% return on investment now) but volume is much higher, reliability is much higher, and most importantly….
The amount of time we work is much lower.
Like, you-wouldn’t-believe-me percent lower.
It’s been a few years now and the business continues to grow, and our systems continue to get more efficient. That means we are constantly finding new ways to work fewer hours but make more money.
Last year we made as much from this segment of our business as I did from my ‘real’ job (we are teachers) AND we only worked a few hours per month. Altogether, I would estimate that we work less than 50 hours per year now on our side-business-turned-real-income.
I can not overstate how much The Wholesale Formula has changed our lives.
Phase 5: Investing
There is one last part to this story.
I had been interested in investing for a long time, ever since a class, I took in college. I just never had any extra dollars to work with.
I used to paper trade all the time, but it wasn’t until we started retail arbitrage that I felt comfortable putting money into an investment account. Even then, we didn’t invest much. It was too scary.
Ask any successful investor what they regret and I bet they say the same thing (myself included):
I wish I had started earlier and invested more.
Now we plan to invest at least ⅓ of our profit each quarter.
Last year, we made more from our completely passive investments than from our storefront.
And it is completely passive. I love that our Amazon store only takes a few hours per year, but it blows my mind that I made five figures in investment income without lifting a finger.
This is where we stand today.
Our Amazon business requires very little time and we generally earn more than 100% on the money we have invested in it over the course of the year. We keep as much money in inventory as we can reasonably expect to sell. The extra is profit. ⅓ goes to us for spending. ⅓ is reinvested to grow and start new businesses (like this blog). And ⅓ is invested in the market.
Our investment portfolio takes no time at all and is growing its earnings by more than 15% per year. This year it will likely pass our storefront as our largest source of income.
And if it wasn’t for the work we do on this blog, the whole thing would take less than two work weeks per year to maintain. Even with this blog included, we work less than three months per year.
What Does This Mean For You?
Can you do this too?
Of course you can. That’s why we built this website.
There are a million and one blogs out there on making extra cash or side hustles, but we think they are mostly missing the point.
We are already working too much. We don’t need to add to our workload.
Instead, we should be focusing on ways to grow our wealth without sacrificing more hours to the work gods.
Is this still possible?
Or has the window of opportunity closed?
I think it is even more achievable now. Back when we started, it was much harder to find reliable sites that paid for surveys. I can’t even tell you how many hours I wasted getting scammed.
But Swagbucks was and still is legit. Survey Junkie wasn’t even a thing back then (though I’d use it if I were starting over today) and Mechanical Turk, while painfully boring, can pay you $5 dollars per hour once you get the hang of the system.
So what would I do if I was starting this path today?
If I had $0…
Swagbucks and Survey Junkie my way to at least $50. Keep on the Swagbucks and surveys for a while.
Remember, you need to adopt an attitude of reinvestment. You want to reinvest 100% of your earnings back into your business at this point.
Once I have $50…
Go to ZenBusiness.com and get incorporated. Form a single-member LLC.
The legal protection this affords you is worth so much more than $50.
Failing to do this was our number one mistake. We just had no idea this was a thing (and no one ever talks about it) but you need to go through some legal hoops before you can start selling stuff.
Basically, if you don’t do this, someone can sue you and take everything, your home included.
But if you incorporate, you create a separate entity. Someone might still sue you, but they can only take what is held in your LLC, not your home.
When we did this ourselves, it was a nightmare. But thankfully ZenBusiness makes it so easy now.
Keep using Swagbucks and Survey Junkie.
Once I have $350…
I would go to FulltimeFBA and make my first major reinvestment. Their jumpstart course will get you up and running faster than anything else.
It is by far the best value course available (and I believe it is the cheapest of the ‘big players’ in this field.) It has everything you need to get up and running with retail arbitrage.
Now, you might have noticed I’m taking a different order here than I did the first time around.
Looking back, I think the road would have been smoother, and I would have made more money faster, by learning retail arbitrage first.
Then I would have gone to Flea Market Flipping.
Why?
The Jumpstart Course is cheaper and more accessible. You can put it into action within a week or two.
The Flea Market Flipper is still worth every penny and will pay for itself with no problem, but you’ll want to learn to use eBay and other selling platforms to go with it. You’ll have plenty of time for that as you wait for your FBA paychecks (they come every two weeks).
By the way, I would still be using Swagbucks and Survey Junkie at this point. Really I’m just using them to pay for my education and to expand the money I have invested in buying inventory.
Once I have $500…
Flipper University.
One of the other big mistakes I made here was assuming that I needed to go to flea markets to flip things.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but you can flip your pick to Amazon FBA as well as sell on eBay. That only clicked for us after we had started retail arbitrage.
What does that mean for your flipping? It means that the lesson from Flea Market Flippers can be applied to surplus stores as well as flea markets and thrift shops.
It means that you aren’t just looking for antiques, you are looking for markets. You want to buy anything that will sell for a higher price. I once made over a thousand dollars because I negotiated with the owner of a surplus store to sell me BBQ Racks for an 85% discount.
I bought them for $1 each and sold them on Amazon for $23. Thank you Flea Market Flippers!
By the way, that one transaction paid for the course. Twice.
By now, I’d have my circuit established. I’d go out once a week or so and buy up whatever I can find.
I’d still be using Swagbucks and Survey Junkie, but by now the money they are sending me is becoming inconsequential. I mostly use this cash to pay for supplies. My inventory growth is probably self-sustaining by this point.
I’m also getting pretty close to the point where I can’t rationally reinvest my profits into new inventory (meaning, I’m buying all the good deals in my area).
Now is when I wish I had started investing. Nothing complicated. I would just buy a set amount of the ETF VOO each month. You want to start early because the money you have invested in the market will compound (in a very tax-efficient way) and the longer it can compound the greater your future income.
(We estimated that at an average rate of return, buying $600 worth of VOO each month would make us millionaires before retirement. We were 30 at the time.)
I would continue investing and saving until I have a few thousand dollars in the bank.
Once I Have $3,000…
This is when I would buy The Wholesale Formula course and start building a legitimate online store.
This is the point when you can 95% retire. Once that store is up and chugging, you can cut way back on the hours worked.
Even then, most of our active time working is on finding new products. We have a long-term goal of increasing our earnings by 15% per year. You might not want that. You could easily get to the point where your profits are making your house payment/rent and then you just coast.
Once you have your store in place and the right suppliers locked down, you can choose to rest on your laurels. Or you can keep hustling, up to you.
We still do RA and flea market flips, but only when we’re already out. It’s more of a lets-see-if-I-can-pay-for-this-trip-with-flips sorta thing.
I still also use Swagbucks from time to time. I use it to pay for gifts and to feed my book habit. We don’t need many supplies anymore either. Mostly just packing tape and labels (Boxes and packing material come from our suppliers now).
We fit the whole operation into a corner of our basement. The whole business takes up 12ft by 12ft.
When we are old and ready to pack it all in, we will sell off the last of our inventory and just live on the investment income.
One last piece of advice
Start today.
We get it. It’s terrifying. We were terrified, too.
But the only thing we regret is not starting sooner.
And you don’t have to follow this path. There is an unlimited number of possibilities out there. This site is all about finding the right fit for your situation.
Closing Thoughts
Our goal here at Three Month Millionaire is to help you achieve freedom, both financially and in your working life. The dream is to build a million-dollar business that can be run in three months or less per year.
We believe that the key to freedom is small business ownership.
And we believe that you can start a business from your home that will change your life.
We believe it because it happened to us.
We have amassed over half-a-million dollars in assets since we bought those phones in 2013 and it all started with gift cards from Swagbucks.
To see the whole story, check out our Income Reports.
To learn more about what we do here and how to achieve the 3MM dream, check out:
- Our Ultimate Guide to Building a Business
- Our Ultimate Productivity Guide
- Our Ultimate Guide to Investing
We also publish unbiased reviews of business tools and software. To see some of our top review posts, Check out:
- Our reviews of the Best Online Course Creation Software
- Our reviews of the Best Books For Following the Three-Month Millionaire Journey
- Our reviews of the Best Business Tools No One Ever Told Us About
- Our reviews of the Best Social Media Management Tools
