A few months back I posted about my plans to prepare for a yard sale called “Just Put a Sticker on It!” In this post I ran through a timeline and tasks to get myself and our house ready, and while I didn’t follow the timeline to a T, I did do everything I said I was going to on the list. Completing these tasks brought a sense of calm to me, even though I was physically exhausted. I’ve said many times before that it feels great to re-organize the things in my life which feel hectic, especially in my living space.
Here’s what we did to make over $300 at our yard sale.
1. Invite your friends and family to join you and bring their stuff over. Just make sure they have their own petty cash. We did our yard sale at my friend, Meagan’s, house, and had the neighbor join in as well as another friend. A shared yard sale means shared responsibilities for set up and tear down as well as a wider variety of stuff to sell. Our friend had lots of antique games to sell which brought forth a lot of unique buyers.
2. Market your yard sale online! Three weeks before the event, we started posting about our yard sale on yardsale.net, craigslist, and facebook. As people started to arrive I asked them where they heard about it, and most of the early birds found out about it on a website and ours was the first of many yard sales they were going to that day. We included details like the types of items we were selling as well as the place, start time, end time, and address of the yard sale.
3. Market your yard sale the old-fashioned way! Most people who came to our yard sale saw signs for it on the street as they were driving by. I hung signs in the little downtown area near my friend’s house as well as on her street and in her yard. The signs were big and neon yellow with her address, the date, and time of the yard sale. This was a $7 investment that was well-worth it.
4. Prices at your yard sale. I went back and forth about putting a sticker on the items and ended up doing it in the end. You can put stickers on, but know that it’s really just for your own sanity. People will still ask you how much you want for it, and you can look at the sticker and decide to say what’s on it, or come down a dollar or two depending on what you think is best. I would say I sold 70% of my items at a discounted rate because I knew what I didn’t sell was going to goodwill. The things I sold at full-price were mostly because the person didn’t ask. In the end, I don’t know if it was worth all that stickering time!
5. Let people know you’re willing to negotiate! The last few hours of our yard sale we started slashing prices. I had a brand new juicer that my husband and I had bought 2 years ago for $180 and had only used one time. There wasn’t one person who was interested in buying it for $75, so I took the sticker off of it. The person who was interested asked what I wanted for it and I told her $30 because it was the end of the day. She ended up taking it off my hands after years of it sitting in my cupboard and I made a little money back in the end. Also, I made over $40 on my clothing because I was willing to discount it to $.50.
6. Bundle your sales. If someone is willing to buy an expensive item or a number of things, throw in something else they were interested in at a dirt cheap rate, or for free. It makes them feel good!
7. Talk to your customers. Every person who came to our yard sale was greeted and we asked if they were looking for anything in particular. This helped us find them what they needed or at least started a conversation with them so they wanted to buy from us. We didn’t bother them if they were perusing, but we didn’t make them feel awkward by being silent and starring either.
8. Have plenty of petty cash! I got a role of quarters ($10), $30 in 10’s, $30 in 5’s, and $30 in 1’s. $100 did the trick!
9. Provide Bags and offer to walk things to people’s cars. We used recycled grocery bages and people were so grateful and they could keep shopping for longer. Some heavier items we offered to take to people’s cars for them.
10. Take your leftovers straight to goodwill or put them on the curb. We put the leftovber large items like furniture on the curb with free signs, and took a car load of stuff to goodwill. It felt great to drop the last of the items off for a good cause.
5andwhine.wordpress.com 