How To Make Money 100% Of The Time Buying Return Pallets And Flipping Them: 'Anyone Can Do It'

Jamie and Sarah McCauley experimented with several side hustles before discovering pallet flipping in late 2020. It feels like a gamble, but they say they never lose money on a pallet. 

What To Know: The McCauleys run a YouTube channel that features videos of them reselling furniture, performing home renovations, investing in real estate and flipping pallets. 

Pallet flipping is pretty popular on YouTube as there are dozens of channels centered around the side hustle, and it can be pretty lucrative too. Jamie and Sarah have profited close to $20,000 flipping return pallets from Amazon.com Inc AMZN, Walmart Inc WMT and Target Corp TGT.

According to a CNBC report, the couple buys the pallets for around $550 on average and is able to make up to $2,000 reselling the return items on EBay Inc EBAY and Meta Platforms Inc's META Facebook Marketplace.

"We kind of did it for fun, then realized it was a really great way to make money," Sarah said. 

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Making A Return From Returns: The McCauleys visit local warehouses and pick out a pallet. After paying around $550 on average, they load it up and transport it home, before unwrapping the goods.

As they look through the items on the pallet, they look up the listing prices and estimate the current value based on condition. Most of the time, they list the products for resale at about 60% of the current listing price. 

The couple is able to make their money back in about one or two weeks, and they are usually able to sell about 90% of the products in one to two months. They haven't lost money on a single pallet, Jamie said.

"We’ve had some really bad pallets, but we always at least break even," he said. 

The opportunity to buy someone else's returns and make a profit by reselling the items is only growing larger alongside the boom in online shopping. As more and more people opt to shop online, return frequency is growing.

The report indicates that close to 17% of all purchases are returned. Most of them get sent to liquidation warehouses because the retailers usually don't have space to house the extra inventory. 

With a potential recession on the horizon, people are also increasingly seeking discounted goods, which only adds to the pallet flipping opportunity. Even if you don't have a lot of time to flip multiple pallets, it can still be a good way to pad your income. 

"This is a great way for people to make extra money if they have bills, or they just aren’t able to pay their rent, or they want to go on a nice vacation with their family. Anyone can do it," Sarah said. 

Read Next: Side Hustles You Can Do Without Getting Dressed, 24/7, Including One Generating Thousands Per Month

Photo: Francesco Romeo from Pixabay.

This story is part of a new series of features on the subject of success, Benzinga Inspire.