Starting an online business, both easy and hard

The time I'm investing in starting this business is definitely taking away from study time, but there are quite a few things that are important to engineering in general to be learned.

I am refreshing and learning new skills in managing password resets, configuration backups/installation, etc. as new-to-me equipment is coming in.

I'm learning about website management, DNS, MX mail direction, Cron Jobs, and a host of other skills you have to master to sell goods and services online.

I currently have enough equipment to sell an entire "CCNP/CCIE" rack, and three "CCNA/CCNP" racks.

I've scoured E-bay and found many people selling the same types of products. Since I'm starting small, I'm only building racks for Routing and Switching, and due to this, my racks are pretty focused.

A lot of the other online sellers are selling pretty old equipment, and racks that although usable, probably won't grow with the user. I've also focused a bit on keeping them compact, and in a form that uses as small an amount as possible of household electricity. I've kept the CCNP/CCIE rack to around 200 watts, and the CCNA/CCNP to about 160 watts, so not much more than a home computer.

My racks should transition well as people move from cert to cert. I'm using 1841's because they are probably one of the best routers made for this due to compactness, and energy usage.

I've found one local seller that liquidates entire companies, and since I can pick the equipment up from their location, I save shipping, which makes this endeavor even more viable.

I found two ADC UPS from them that are both 550 watt, for around $10.00 a piece. It's not going to work out that cheap though, as they both had QC dates on them from earlier than 2008. The newer one, surprisingly ended up being the dud, as I was able to pull the battery from them and attempt to charge them on a car battery charger that I have. The older batteries took a charge and the 1 year newer ones didn't.
Even so, one can pick up a new set of batteries for them for around $40.00, which is still a pretty good savings as these sell new for around $100.00

Finally got the PC rack mounted

We are in storms right now and the one UPS that I was able to get to work just did it's job.

lol, just did it again... Nasty storm.