So, do you want to have the best garage sale and actually make some money off of the items that have been sitting in the garage for way too long? In order to do this, you must take the time to plan out your garage sale so that you have enough items to make a decent profit as well as getting considerable traffic to your yard. The following steps will help you plan the best garage sale that will guarantee some cash in your pocket by the end of the day. How to Start PlanningThe first thing you want to do before having a garage sale is to make sure you have enough items to sell. If your yard looks empty from the street, potential buyers may not stop to check out what you have. Make sure that you have plenty of items close to the road. This may mean you need to have a "driveway sale" or "yard sale" instead of having it in the garage. If you do not have enough items to sell, consider inviting your neighbors and friends to sell their items with you. To be fair, you should label each contributor's item with a different colored tag so that you can keep track of each seller's earnings.
You can also ask friends and neighbors for donations. They may have things in their home that they would like to get rid of without having to make a profit off of it. Compile the items you want to sell and sort them out in an empty space in or by your home. While sorting, think of ways in which you will display your items so that they are organized appealing to potential buyers. You may want to have some tape or stickers with you so that you can also price your items while sorting. Pricing Your ItemsWhen people go to garage sales, they expect everything to be labeled with the price. People may not bother to buy an item if they have to ask how much you are selling it for. Usually, you will want to price your items lower than a common thrift store would price them. Usually, you will sell things for 20% of the original buying price depending on the condition of the item. You may also be holding a garage sale for charity in which case you can price your items a little higher than usual.
Make sure to pass out materials that explain where the benefits go and how they will be used. Below is a table of the general prices garage sale buyers would pay for specific items. You will want to price your items within the range listed below. You may price them higher if you don't mind participating in negotiations, but the high prices may turn away some prospective buyers. How Much Should I Sell My Item for? Getting People to Come to Your SaleBefore you plan your garage sale, you will need to check with your local government to see if there are any restrictions to posting signs or selling items. You may need to get a permit for your garage sale depending on where you live. Make plenty of signs and put them around your area. Make these signs simple and easy to read. Do not put too much information about the sale on signs that you expect drivers to see. For these signs, I suggest simply writing "Big Garage Sale This Way" with an arrow pointing in the direction of your home.
You will need to place others along the way so people can find you while driving. Use a dark, thick marker on light-colored paper in order to assure that people can see it from the road. A week before your garage sale, go to your local coffee shops and ask to put a flyer on their bulletin board. You can put a flyer with pull tabs on the bottom that list your address and the date of the garage sale. This way, people will be able to plan for the sale and have your address at hand. You will also want to post an ad on Craigslist. This generates a ton of customers. Other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are also a great way to get friends to come and see what you're selling. Put a big sign in front of your house on the day of the sale. You may also want to list the items that you will be selling (i.e. "Furniture, Clothes, Electronics!"); Having a "FREE" box or $1 Table for all of your miscellaneous items will also bring traffic to your yard. You Need HelpYou will want to have a cashbox, calculator and bags to keep your sale clean and organized.
Use old grocery bags to put smaller items in when selling and possibly get newspaper to wrap more delicate things. You will also need some help from your friends or family to make sales easy. One person should be in charge of the cashbox and sales while another negotiates with buyers. You may also want someone strong to help customers carry large items like furniture. Hopefully these tips will come in handy when you are planning the perfect garage sale. Good luck in your sales and comment below with any other helpful suggestions for holding a profitable garage sale!One of the hardest decisions you will have to make is what garage sale prices to put on your items. These garage sale pricing tips will make it easy. Forget about how much you paid originally or how valuable it has been to you or any sentimental attachment you have. If it's of no value to you anymore then that is its true value - anything more will be a bonus. If you can't bring yourself to price an item at 'garage sale' prices described below, don't include it in your garage sale but try selling it through one of these garage sale alternatives like a classified ad in your local paper, online auction sites or consignment outlets.
Don't forget that to make as much money as you can from your garage sale, you have to sell your stuff so price to sell but not to give away. Generally garage sale prices are 10% to 20% of the current retail price depending on the item's condition and the demand. Don't forget, you're selling used items with no guarantee or warranty! For example, if something retails for $50 and your item is in near new condition you would price it at $10 or $5 if it's in a worn condition. An item with tags or in its original box can bring a slightly higher price. Other factors that will affect your prices include: Most people expect prices at garage sales to be just the starting price and are about 25% to 50% above the seller's (ie your) bottom-line price to allow for negotiating. The amount depends on the condition of the item and how much you are prepared to haggle. As most haggling is usually just a split-the-difference exercise, to end at the highest possible finishing price your initial asking price should start as high as you can without scaring away shoppers.
Below is a guide showing your bottom-line price and how much you could put on the price tag: People make a living from buying things cheaply at garage sales and reselling them for a much higher price on eBay or other online auction sites. If you have any small unique items, check eBay to see if any have been sold before and set your asking price at 50% - 75% of the price they were sold for (not the initial asking price). This way, you are maximizing your sales price and the buyer thinks they're getting a bargain. Shoppers won't be interested in buying something from your garage sale if they can get the same at a cheaper price at the local Salvation Army or Goodwill store. Visit your local stores and note the prices of the items similar to yours and price yours at least half. This list of the average prices at Salvation Army stores might also help. If you're having a group garage sale and similar items are being sold and they are in the same condition, agree on a similar price.
If one item is in a better condition, agree on what the higher price should be. You don't want to be competing against each other in the same garage sale. If you have a high-priced or valuable item, like furniture that appears in catalogues, cut out the ad and attach it to your item too or include a copy of the original paperwork. This way people can see that they're still getting a good deal. If you don't have an ad, then a simple index card with the original retail price will still help. Refer to Signs for the garage that sell for more tips when making signs for high-priced items. Buyers expect and are prepared to buy at this price range. It is easier to sell a lot of $1 - $2 items than trying to sell a few higher priced items. It is amazing how quickly $1 - $2 sales add up. Instead of selling individual paperback books for 25c each, sell them as a group of 4 for $1. If someone only wants 3 then it's still $1 so they might as well pick another book. If your initial price is $10 then mark it as $20, cross this out and write $10 beside it.
People will think they are already getting a bargain. Retail stores do it so why not in your garage sale too. Works for all items of any price but more so for higher-priced items.Putting all similarly priced items on the same table with one sign above the table saying "All items on this table $1" might be easier initially for you but when a customer comes up holding an item to buy – which tables did it come from? The buyer may say "Oh, I am sure it was on the $1 table." Are they lying, did another shopper pick it up from the $5 dollar table and put it back down on the $1 dollar table by mistake, did you put it on the $1 table? What do you do if a customer comes up with a number of items from different tables? It just doesn't work and you won't be able to maximize your sales. It's reported that garage sale shoppers perceive the item with a higher value with a tag rather than a sticker. Also stickers can be hard to get off later and people will use this fact to argue a price reduction.
If you have to use stick-on labels, use painter's masking tape or easy peel-off low-stick labels and don't stick them on until just before the garage sale. The longer a sticker is on, the harder it is to get off. Include a short description of the item (one or two words) on the price tag too. This will enable you to check that the correct tag is still on the correct item. Get some bright neon colored poster paper and with a shaped stencil (eg. stars, hearts, triangles, star bursts, etc) cut out your own tags then use a hole puncher to make a hole to thread through some string or a rubber band. Get the kids to add a swirl of glue and sprinkle with glitter. Don't forget to leave some room to write the price. Your Inventory Record can be used to check that the price of the item being bought is the correct price and the tag or sticker hasn't been swapped with a low cost item. Using color-coded tags or stickers on items and having a big sign on the wall describing what each color represents (eg yellow=50c, blue=$1, etc) is sometimes used.
This method enables easy price reductions during the day because you just need to change one sign rather than on every item. Unfortunately, you WILL still get a lot of customers who don't notice (or deliberately ignore) the sign and ask you how much items are. In a group garage sale, color-coded tags or stickers is a good way to identify which family or neighbor the item is from. When a sale is made, you can easily record the sale on the Inventory/Sales Record. An alternative to using color-coding to identify items from different groups is to include the first letter of the family name along with the price on all tags. When having a garage sale you don’t want to just give away your unwanted stuff. You want to make some money otherwise it would be much easier to just donate it all. And most people having a garage sale leave pricing to the last minute. But it’s not too late to have a successful money-making garage sale. That's when these extra pricing tips can help,
All these pricing tips for only (USD) That's why you will also need these bonus tips: "Thanks so much ~ it looks fabulous and more complete than any other guide I have seen!!" "I had a very successful garage sale this past Saturday using a lot of the tips. Thank you so much for all your great advice!" 1-2-3 easy steps to download your own printable copy: Click this Buy Now button... Enter your PayPal or credit card payment details at the secure PayPal website. Then, , to come back here where you can then download your copy of the ebook immediately, at PayPal's "Thank you for your payment" screen: If you used your PayPal account, click . All these tips now for only (USD) Do you want to have your most successful MONEY-MAKING garage sale ever? and you can get it right now." to come back hereso you can download your copy of the ebook. The Best Garage Sale Tips ebook is DIGITAL and you can download it INSTANTLY in a PDF format.