Here's a recap of what we've learned so far.
Step 1: Find an already good deal using the techniques above. Remember: check your Weekend paper or the major Web sites mentioned above on Sunday.
Step 2: Make the deal better by finding coupon codes using the Web sites above. They’re an indispensable resource.
Step 3: Be creative. If you don’t have enough in your shopping cart to use the coupon code then figure something out. Buy something that’s free after rebate and add it to your cart. Or buy something you want that you’re willing to pay for. Either way, you’ll be getting great free goods, and then you can turn around and sell them on eBay!
Step 4: If your deal involves rebates don’t forget to send them out! As previously mentioned, make copies of everything and write down the date you sent out the rebate form. After getting ripped off with the whole CyberRebate.com fiasco, I don’t take any chances.
Step 5: List your items on eBay and start making some money!
This is how I got, among other things, my constant stream of music merchandise. Wherever you live you probably have mom and pop CD stores, am I right? A mom and pop CD store is an independently owned store, as opposed to a place like Tower Records.Well, around my neck of the woods, they are small little gold mines.
See, the major music labels need a way to promote their new releases. How do they do it? By hiring music lovers to hand out free CDs, stickers, and other promo merchandise. These teenagers form what are called Street Teams. Sites such as StreetWise.com and Fanscape.com are devoted to just this purpose. I’m a member of Streetwise myself. The job for these music lovers is to give away as many promos as they can. Usually, they'll just lay a stack of them on the counters at my local music stores. Every mom and pop store in my area actually has an area of the store devoted to this stuff. And it’s ALL FREE! The catch here is that you can't sell Promo CDs on eBay. But you CAN give them as bonus gifts with the stickers or maybe a T-Shirt, picture, poster...anything. The way I determined that you can only give them as free gifts as opposed to selling them outright is that I listed them both ways. The auctions that were straight out selling the CDs got cancelled, and the others did not.
Here's an example of a title I'd use in my eBay auction for these types of items:
* RARE Linkin Park sticker plus FREE bonus CD!
When a band is hot, this stuff sells like crazy!
I've probably made $1,000 in the past 2 years selling this free stuff, and it only takes me a short trip the CD store. Usually I'm there buying a CD anyway. Yes, that's right, I buy my CDs instead of using any of those file sharing systems. I also use BMG to buy CDs…..can't beat 12 CDs for the price of 1, can ya? By the way, if you have a teenage son/daughter/neighbour/friend who would like to give away music merchandise, just have them head on over to StreetWise.com or Fanscape.com. It's a great little thing for them to add to their resume and they get cool merchandise for themselves. A lot of times the stuff they get from the Street Team is even better than what they have to give away. I know somebody who got $20 Amazon.com gift certificates, a $100 Circuit City gift card, and $250 in cash once! And all they had to do was give away CDs and stickers!
So, there you have it, a constant stream of free stuff (most of which you can sell on eBay) with just a weekly trip to the music store. Other good places to find this free stuff is at Alternative stores. These are the stores that sell clothing and other wearables that you're not going to see the average person wearing to a 9 to 5 job. Remember this about music related merchandise: If it's a hot new artist you'll be making a nice amount of cash. I've sold stickers for upwards of $10-20 with Bonus CDs!
Check the Billboard.com Top 100 (or look on the back page of Rolling Stone magazine for the top 40) to find out who are the hottest artists of the moment. Also, be on the lookout when artists have autograph signings. You wouldn't believe how much money you could make selling autographs. And the signings are always free, so all it will take is a bit of time.
Hint on Autographed CD:
DO NOT get CDs signed. Usually you'll make more selling an autographed poster or other rare merchandise. Especially if its one of the FREE promos you got from your local CD store. My girlfriend and I actually get paid to go to concerts using this technique. All we do is take something that can be signed and a sharpie pen to the concert. If there’s more than one band there its especially awesome. So we get the autographed goods and then sell on eBay. The autographs almost always pay for the price of the concert tickets (more on getting free concert tickets in the next chapter!), but usually well even make a profit. Isn’t eBay just amazing? Getting the autographs may seem tough, but it's really not. If you're really lucky, the artist will have an autograph signing at the show. But if not, just hang out by the tour buses before or after the show. This works 75% of the time.
DO NOT get CDs signed. Usually you'll make more selling an autographed poster or other rare merchandise. Especially if its one of the FREE promos you got from your local CD store. My girlfriend and I actually get paid to go to concerts using this technique. All we do is take something that can be signed and a sharpie pen to the concert. If there’s more than one band there its especially awesome. So we get the autographed goods and then sell on eBay. The autographs almost always pay for the price of the concert tickets (more on getting free concert tickets in the next chapter!), but usually well even make a profit. Isn’t eBay just amazing? Getting the autographs may seem tough, but it's really not. If you're really lucky, the artist will have an autograph signing at the show. But if not, just hang out by the tour buses before or after the show. This works 75% of the time.
Now, music merchandise isn't the only type of stuff I find free in my own backyard.
For example, when Spiderman the movie was just coming out I got 2 free Spiderman posters. Yes, my FREE Spiderman poster sold for $26! The other one sold for $23.50! That’s $49.50 profit for almost no work. How'd I get these free posters? Well, one of them was given away when I went to a local store that was having a Spiderman promotion. They had a rock wall that everyone could climb for free. I went up about 6-10 feet and freaked out! It was weird, I've jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet, but being 10 feet up a rock wall was scarier!
In any case, there are always promotions such as this one going on. Check your newspaper. For example, the California Free Press has a section called Features which always lists stuff like this. But I found out about this particular Spiderman promotion through a TV commercial. That covers one Spiderman poster, so how did I get my other one? That’s in the next chapter. I’ve gotten free posters to many other movies using this technique. Many times these posters aren’t available for sale anywhere, so they bring in big bucks. Remember, ANYTHING that is popular at any given time will sell on eBay. The hype around a movie or a CD release basically sells the products for you!
