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One of the big dangers of hanging around business school students is the ideas they get, and with the internships some of them definitely have too much time to think. And so I find myself a part-owner of an online Amazon store, courtesy of Amir's employment and the free seller account he gets as part of the deal.

"You go to charity shops anyway. Why don't you buy things cheap there and sell them online?" he asked me when we were staying in Seattle a few weeks ago. One of the projects Amazon has him slaving on involves their marketplace sellers, people who use the website as third-party traders giving Amazon a cut of anything they make. He'd met several people who had grown hobbies into $3 million turnover businesses and reckoned he could leverage Dana and my "free" time to score some greenbacks.

The first two days of trading went very well, with some wireless routers I'd bought flying off our virtual shelves at a healthy 150% mark up. Since then things have been a little slower. While there's no end of dusty clothes, jewelry, and broken porcelain in Goodwill and The Salvation Army, a quick search of Amazon shows little in terms of an online market. High-end consumer electronics are few and far between in the secondhand boutiques I frequent.

That said, if you're interested in Trivial Pursuit for the PS2, Guitar Hero for the Xbox, or maybe a cheap TiVo, you know where to come (ignore the books - long story).

In summary: Amir has Dana and me trawling charity shops, I'm buying the items to sell, and he currently has all the profits from the sales.

Now that's good business.

Store number one.

Looking promising...

Unfortunately a bit too costly to post.

Store number two. Not so good.

And because of the recent law that each one of my blog posts has to contain some food, here's me at Yogurtland - self-service all-you-can-eat frozen yogurt and toppings. Sagy wants to start a national franchise in Israel. I warned you about these MBA students...