Monday, February 1, 2010

MONEYMAKING IDEA

I purchased several Bayer Monitors at Walgreens yesterday and decided to rip open the packages and try and sell the test strips and lancets on EBAY. I put together an auction for 100 test strips and 100 lancets (taken from 10 Bayer Monitor kits). I also included a BONUS of 10 extra test strips and lancets (just to pull in a customer). I sold them for $39.95 (not bad for less than 10 minutes of my time). Just thought I'd pass the idea on to you guys. Here is the auction if you want to see how I listed it:

100 Bayer Contour Test Strips & Lancets with FREE Meter

Since we routinely get these kits for free I thought I would see how we could continue to make money off of this deal (especially since we have to pay $1.36 in tax for each of these kits). I bought eight kits which produced $80 in RR that I can use at Publix and I made $39.95 on the contents of the kit.

Grand total of $120 profit.

PS - Feel free to steal/modify the wording from my auction if it makes it easier to post (just make sure you change the expiration dates if your strips have a different date). I started the auction at $.99 cents but I also included a "buy it now" feature for $39.95 and the item sold in about 12 hours).

8 comments:

Melissa said...

What a great idea. I never think about stuff like this.
I just recently gave away like 20 boxes of Bayer meters for lack of knowing what else to do with them (I tried to donate, no one could/would take them for various reasons).
I still have several Accu-Check Aviva meters, any ideas?

Tara said...

Wow! What a timely post. A friend and I were just discussing today what we would do with these things.

starbucksgirl said...

Melissa/Tara, hey there ladies. How are you guys?

I hope you are able to score some cash on the contents of your monitors.

Melissa, you can sell the Accu-Check test strips and lancets on ebay too. They sell pretty well. Just go to the advanced search section and check the completed listings to view the auctions that have ended. This will give you a good idea re: how much to sell them for.

Have a great day ladies!

Kathy said...

Kel -- after reading your post this morning, I jumped on the idea. And I've already sold my Bayer stuff. I can't believe how easy it was. Do you think 120 bottles of Bayer aspirin will sell? :)

starbucksgirl said...

Hey Kathy. :)

I'm not sure the Bayer will sell as well. I did some marketing research on EBAY and it wasn't moving as quickly (possibly because folks are afraid that it has been tampered with). You may need to have a high enough feedback rating in order to be successful at marketing the aspirin.

Jason didn't want me selling it on ebay as he thinks that it may be a liability issue (he was always nervous when people would buy over the counter medicine and vitamins at our garage sale).

I think it's a good idea to try and sell it on EBAY or maybe craigslist but have not posted any yet.

See you Friday!

TanyaW said...

Brilliant! As Melissa said, how come I can never think of stuff like this?!?

Once I did look at selling the meter as a whole box, but when looking at shipping costs, it wasnt feasible compared to what other ones were going for. Thanks for the new idea!

starbucksgirl said...

Hey TanyaW, so nice to hear from you. Let us know if you end up selling your stuff on ebay. My friend Kathy just sold her Bayer stuff and she made a nice profit too! I think she sold her stuff within a few hours also.

Earthy Mama said...

Well lookie, I see you're posting again. (I'm a little behind) :)
I like to donate my meters rather than opening them and taking things out, but if you're doing that, you might want to take out the watch battery from the monitor itself. It's worth a pretty penny.