How Turn Your Spring Cleaning Trash Into Cash
Hosting a Profitable Garage Sale – Promotion and Cleanup
May 10, 2009
The article "How to Hold a Profitable Garage Sale" focused on planning, offering seven steps to making it fun and easy, and how to find a location for your sale. Here are some ways to find ways to promote your event, or help find others to join in, or find a location.
Hosting a street sale is a worthwhile exercise in community building; Offer to donate half of the proceeds towards a cause your community centre (or charity of choice) supports, or sign up for the Yard Sale For The Cure. You might be able to have a street sale, if you can get most of the residents on your street to join.
How To Promote Your Yard Sale
Back in the day, posters printed on 8½” by 11” paper were posted on lampposts, tucked under windscreens of local cars and tacked onto community message boards – usually found in libraries, recreation centres and some grocery stores.
While this method still works, there are equally effective ways that doesn’t involve as much paper waste. Once you’ve secured a garage sale location, try an electronic message board. These days, Kijiji, Craigslist and other local forms of free, online community message boards get the word out on the cheap, with little to no paper waste.
Standard messages included the day, time range and a short list of your best items. Have a rain-day (if applicable.) Be sure to say, ‘no early birds, please’ unless you want your doorbell rung hours before you’re ready to set up. If you’re donating a portion of your profits to a charity mention that too; people like to feel they’ve contributed to a good cause, even if indirectly.
How to Sell Those "Hard-to-Sell" Used Goods
If towards the end of the day you’re still stuck with that motley collection of shot glasses, try the following techniques to boost sales.
- “Two for one” – offer lumping all similar items in pairs, or lumping them all together as one set, even if they don’t necessarily match.
- “Buy one Get One Free” – almost everyone loves a BOGO.
- “Best Offer” – this shows you are willing to bargain. Perhaps the reason people aren’t buying was your overestimation of its perceived cost. Posting a sign that shows you are willing to haggle, may win over reluctant shoppers.
What To Do With Your Garage Sale Leftovers
If the end of your garage sale has come and gone, and you are still left with the items you have purged from storage, try getting rid of them in the following ways. Call a few consignment stores ahead of time, and ask if they pick up large items. Some may have a charge for pick up, so have a back up option, just in case.
- OASIS – a charity that provides green bins that collects clothes, toys, and even larger items, like furniture. Proceeds go to drug recovery and education programs.
- Used discount stores, like Value Village, Goodwill or your local charity of your choice. If you happen to have clean toys in good shape, consider donating them to a children’s hospital.
- Freecycle: This online tool helps you not only post the items you want to give away, but also provides hourly and daily updates on postings. Sign up, and post a brief but detailed message of what you are offering. Freecycle is available almost everywhere: if not, start a community of your own. Once you’re rid of something, you can continue to be a member – you may just be looking for something to pick up, later on.
- Craigslist: This computer-based “classifieds” is free and fairly easy to use. Cheaper by far than posting free items in your newspaper, and less work intensive than posting paper notices on your bulletin boards in your community.
At the end of the day, you should have more bills in your pocket, and less junk in your home. A satisfying end to a successful garage sale.
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