You found out really fast. Give you some hints on placing machines. Vendstar sucks because all they know is to sell aggresively. You need to make judgment calls about locations. Talk to your friends, relatives, and coworkers.

That is the way to go. Develop scripts.

To anyone else locating, go for the collision places, hair places, manicurist places. Talk to your friends, neighbors, relatives, people you work with.

They might know places. It makes it easier that way. Make sure you can supplement your income. You never know what is ou there.

Keep your eyes open for new places.

Know your charity if you have one.

Keep an eye on the prices of candy and other things.

If you buy off of ebay ask questions. It doesn’t hurt. You’re buying and hoping to invest a business that keeps going.

The next hurdle is locating those machines in businesses. Yes, you can do it! Once you overcome these first two hurdles, the rest of it become easier to build your cash flow.

On the other hand, you might use a hard money loan which could allow you to get the house with no money out of pocket. In that case, you could potentially buy as many houses as you could handle, each one capturing say $20,000 in equity and kicking off $200 a month in cashflow.

If you want to make $2,000 a month passively, that would mean 10 houses. It’s possible to get 10 with your $10,000 if you find good enough deals. I shot a video of Robert Hammond who bought 74 houses in a year and a half with an average of $3,000 out of pocket per deal.

In addition, real estate has the advantage of offering equity. Bulk candy provides massive cashflow (around 100% return), but there is almost no equity.

I’m part of an investor group in Central Texas where I literally see people on a weekly basis buy houses with 5-$10,000 out of pocket which kick out 10-20% cashflow and 100-400% return on equity within 2 years.

My mentors taught me that this is how to get wealthy quickly.

To learn more about investor groups, go to http://nationalreia.com or to visit the group I am a part of, go to http://lifestylesunlimited.com.

Great info., I’m really glad I stumbled upon this site! I’ve just begun to research this industry and am considering starting out small, 2-3 machines. I am trying to decide to buy new or used. I agree with your recommendation to go with steel vs. plastic. I’ve been told by some existing owners that it’s worth paying a little extra for new machines in case you need service or parts. If I can find good quality, used steel machines, how likely is it that they will need service?

1. it costs about $250 per location to do it yourself, even using a locating service. At $50k, you are buying it at cost. Yes, you will have saved yourself the hassle of doing it yourself, but you don’t get a chance to ease into it.

2. It is natural to lose about 1-2% of your locations per month. that means you might lose 2 or 4 locations and have to find new homes for them.

3. At $4,000 a month cashflow, that’s about $48,000 a year. BUT, to service 200 machines, you are looking at a 20-40 hours of work a week. Figure out what it would cost to pay someone to run the business and subtract that from the $48k to see what you would be making passively.

4. If I were you and had an extra $50k to blow, I’d go buy a piece of real estate. Real estate is infinitely more profitable and passive. Gumballs are a good passive way to make money up to the point that you can buy real estate. 50 locations is pretty passive, but 200 is starting to be a job.