Age: 17 School: a commerce student at Caritas Bianchi College of Careers Young Post: Where does your money come from? Wan: My parents give me HK$2,500 to 3,000 a month for pocket money. When I was in Form Four, I sold mobile phones on eBay and earned an extra HK$4,000 a month. YP: How did you sell mobile phones online? W: I have a friend who sells handsets wholesale. The cost of each one was about HK$2,000 and the market price HK$3,000. I bought in bulk (about 20 mobile phones for each batch) and paid about HK$2,400 for each one. I then sold them online for HK$2,800 each. I opened an account with eBay and my target customers were foreigners since most local people won't be interested in buying mobile phones online. Many people in foreign countries live far away from shopping arcades. They are willing to pay a little extra and get their products mailed to their house to save all the trouble. YP: What extra charges were involved in a transaction? W: I had to pay mailing costs to Hongkong Post. eBay charged 3 per cent of the sale price for each product sold through them. And I needed to open an online account at Paypal. My customers would deposit money in the account and I needed to pay Paypal a 3.5 per cent surcharge for each transaction made. I would try to shift all the extra expenses to the customers, and after deducting all the extra charges, I earned about HK$400 for every phone I sold. YP: Where did you get the idea to sell mobile phones online? W: I lived in California for three years. Some people there needed to travel for an hour to buy things. I visited a friend one day and saw her mum buying things online. Her mum told me that online shopping was very popular in America. When I returned to Hong Kong, I thought that selling things to foreigners online was a good way to make some extra money. YP: How would you spend the extra money you earned? W: I would buy good food to eat. But I would put most of the money in the bank to help me in my future business endeavours. YP: Why don't you sell mobile phones online now? W: There is intense competition now. Also, eBay has increased the surcharge. It's very difficult to find customers now.