A garage sale is one of the best ways to pick up some extra cash but also to organize your life by cleaning out a lot of clutter and junk. A garage sale can be quite profitable if you know how to host one correctly. There are several different factors that can bring in various people to look over the items that you have for sale and people that may even result in bidding for a particular item that they deem valuable.
Take Inventory
In order to make money off the items you have, you need to know what you have! Take an inventory of the items and set a price for each item. Write down the item, clean it up so it looks nice, and attach a price tag to it. You can use eBay.com for reference in helping you to find out what the value of the item may be if you aren’t sure how much to charge for it.
Advertising
To bring in people that want to buy the items you want to get rid of you need to start advertising. Take pictures of a few of the items and post them online in Craigslist.org and even your local newspaper. There are several free online advertising methods you can use in order to gain plenty of exposure for your garage sale. Always advertise the Friday before the sale so people can plan for it and will actually show up. You also need to make some signs and post them in your neighborhood and around your city in order to make people aware of the garage sale. On the day of the sale, add some balloons to the signs to help guide people to your home. Just remember to go around and take down all of the signs so you do not have people randomly showing up at your house a month later!
Weather
Always host a garage sale in nice weather. Check the forecast for the week ahead in order to make sure you will have plenty of sunlight. People do not come out in rain and you won’t get nearly as many people to come and get rid of junk for you.
Organized
To run a successful garage sale you must have an organized system. Each item for sale needs to have a clear price tag on it and you need to have a “cash register” area for people to come and check out. Be sure to go to the bank ahead of time to get plenty of cash to make change for people that come to the garage sale. Have a strict CASH ONLY policy or you may run the risk of bounced checks and losing money and the item. Try to have your family members help you out so your customers have several people to help them out as they browse around. Having other people checking on the customers can also prevent theft.
Neighborhood Sale
A great way to bring out a lot of customers is by enlisting your neighbors to join in the garage sale fun. When you have several homes involved, it will bring out tons of customers.
When it comes to a garage sale, be prepared to start early! Most of the people that go to garage sales will hit up 3-4 sales in a day so you need to be ready to go by 6-7am. Once the garage sale is over add up the money that you were able to make and consider investing it into a money market account where it will be able to earn interest! This is a great way to start a rainy day savings account that you can turn to when you need it.
