This couple made over Rs 16 lakh reselling items returned to Amazon, Walmart and Target

Jamie and Sarah McCauley (Screengrab from their YouTube channel).

Two years ago when a couple from the US saw a distributor selling boxed collections in a Facebook group, they stumbled upon a side hustle opportunity that would end up earning them $1,950 (about Rs 16 lakh).

The boxes contained unopened packages that were returned to online sellers by customers and Jamie and Sarah McCauley found the process to buy it simple. Interested parties would have to visit a local warehouse and paid $550, on average, for one of the boxes but there's a catch -- t won't know what items are in the boxes, or what condition they’re in.

In the end, the couple ended up selling 25 and making a profit of $1,880 in July, they told CNBC Make It. So far, they’ve made about $19,500 by reselling the items returned to Amazon, Walmart and Target on eBay and Facebook Marketplace, they added.

“It really started off as an experiment to see if you could make real money from it if you treated it like a job,” Sarah told the publication. “So, we kind of did it for fun, then realised it was a really great way to make money.”

This side hustle, however, includes a gamble. Even the lucrative Amazon pallet contained 19 items that have not been sold yet and some among them are too damaged to be listed for sale, the couple told CNBC Make It.

After receiving the boxes, Jamie and Sarah McCauley film themselves unboxing the products and upload the videos on their YouTube channel containing details of the product, its price, and condition. Returned items mostly include lightly-used goods so the couple would list them at 60 per cent of their original price. The channel has 109,000 subscribers.

Jamie McCauley said usually it takes one to two weeks for them to break even and four to eight weeks to sell 90 per cent of the products, but they have never faced a loss. “We’ve had some really bad pallets, but we always at least break even," he told the publication.

Watch: Women clean 11th-floor windows without safety harnesses. Internet is shocked