Ebay can teach about math, money & sales

Brady is quite the entrepreneur. He's always coming up with ways to earn money. At the office, he once picked up more than 400 cigarette butts to earn $10. Another time he devised a box with a hole at the top that he placed outside our front door and required a 10 cent deposit to enter the house.

This really only worked with my mom, but he made a couple bucks that way. He sold crystals for a buck a piece and got four or five of us to buy one. He sold toys in a yard sale in Florida.

So I try to foster this budding foray into commerce. The other day he picked out 29 of his 100 or so books (sheesh!) to sell on Ebay. It brought $10 plus $5 shipping. I showed him on a piece of paper how we started with $15, minus Ebay and Paypal's fee, and minus shipping. We arrived at a figure of $6.72 profit.

He got 80 percent which was $5.38 and I got 20 percent as my fee for $1.34. We're now going to sell four of his DVDs and we'll do the same.

If you have the time, it's a fun way to teach your kids about buying and selling.