Christmas is slowly creeping up and as expected there are going to be some hot items in people’s most wanted gift list. One thing I was thinking about for example is that there is a new video game system called the Nintendo Wii-U coming out which no doubt is going to sell out on the day of its release as even per-orders are filling up quickly. This got me thinking a little as while many people will pre-order one for themselves, many people also try to pre-order more than one as the strategy is to essentially sell the second one.

What’s interesting too is that I often hear this turn into an ethics issue where people say it is wrong to buy more than one in this case as people are essentially depriving someone else the chance to get an item that is in short supply. On the flip side some say that is smart as you can essentially get enough money back if you resell it, assuming it is a hot item,which makes it as if you are saving say 50% off your purchase.

I personally don’t see it as right or wrong in this case as it’s not exactly a life essential and it is no different than anyone else trying to make money trough means such as buying cheap from a wholesaler and reselling it to make a profit. As well, if someone is willing to pay so much more is it wrong for the person to say no? I remember one funny example I saw at a mall as a person lined up to buy this new system as he pre-ordered it. Then out of the blue this lady walks up to the guy and said that she will pay him $1000 right on the spot for that system. As expected, he took the offer as the item itself was about $300 only.

In some ways I would say maybe it is good practice for anyone that is trying to be entrepreneurial. For some company’s too they don’t even expect a down payment or that it is fully refundable. So in terms of risk there isn’t really any. Like in those cases it’s one of those it doesn’t hurt to try.

Today I was looking at some numbers to see how this project was preforming as I decided to test out some sponsorship options to see if it would work well in the future for when I have something that I would seriously want to generate revenue with. For the most parts the numbers really look promising. Although I must say that just sitting and seeing how it does to really evaluate it sure takes a lot of discipline as you can’t help but to want to prematurely go all out if things look like it is going well initially.

For myself whenever I am exploring different ways to generate an income for example the thing that crosses my mind is how do I not cannibalize what I know already works as if you start taking your time and resources away from that and the new avenue doesn’t work out as well then it can be a double loss. I suppose a good way that works is that when I am exploring different options I am not doing it with a mindset of desperation that would potentially push me to do irrational things.

I guess it is kind of like a restaurant where some people would literally scrap their entire menu which they know is working for them as they are gambling that the new menu would be better. However, like in that case I think it is better if you try to slip in new items to test the waters if you already have something that works.

You’d think that once you buy the latest electronic items that the previous models would be obsolete as nobody would want to use or need them anymore. Recently I saw an advertisement for a person who was looking for a camcorder that was able to take mini-dv tapes as they needed to transfer all of these old footages to a digital format and did not have one available. They were willing to pay about $20 just to use the camcorder quickly too. Strange as it is, I still have my old camcorder that accepts mini-dv tapes even though you’d think I would have sold it a long time ago.

Out of curiosity I just did some random searches to see how many people there were out there that were in a similar situation and mindset like the above. Sure enough, there seems to be a lot and in most cases these people’s old items have ceased to work and they don’t want to pay high professional fees to digitize the video. That made me think if someone could literally just spend a few minutes per week to find people to rent out their old equipment to where they can make a very decent side income with.

So today myself and another person decided it might be interesting to try out the would of stock photography and videos to see if we could generate some simple side income out of it. We thought it would be fun too as we live in different parts of the world so this would give us the ability to take a different variety of pictures from different cultures.

I suppose a big attraction to the idea too is that this seems like something that could generate residual results for a one time effort. That is always appealing as things like that usually end up being better in the long-run. Be interesting to see how this goes.

I was looking at some electronic stores today that seemed to be offering recycling program incentives where you can trade in your old products for a gift card to be used at its stores. I have yet to get rid of my old digital camera and so out of curiosity I looked up at how much credit I could get for it. Apparently, they were offering about $50 for it. That made me think as I know I could probably sell it for at least $100 minimum.

I guess it’s best to trade things in if you know the item that you have is so outdated that no one would really buy it at this age such as CRT monitors. Funny enough, sometimes you can actually buy outdated items like video games for clearance prices and then trade them in to places that will actually offer you more credit than what you paid for the item. Like in that example trading in would definitely make sense if you were looking for an instant profit with old items that may be hard to sell otherwise.