Thrifty Thursday - sell, sell, sell!

Thursday already?! Four day weeks are the devil/best thing ever. I hope everyone’s savings jars are going well so far! We would love to hear how you are doing!

As I said last week…saving money is always a good idea. But let’s not forget making money.  We lived on a golf course when I was a young child, and my brother and I would collect all of the stray balls that landed in our backyard and sell them back to the golfers through the chain link fence for a decent profit. When the course ranger put a stop to that, we disguised our little business as a lemonade stand. And I have always been a garage sale girl.  I have vivid memories of holding garage sales in almost all of my extended family members’ driveways growing up. My own one-year-old and three-year-old have probably already participated in more yard sales than the average American!

While I firmly believe that the most money can be “made” by simply saving and not spending, there is certainly something to be said for turning seemingly invaluable possessions into cash. You may not have a backyard full of golf balls, but I can almost assure you that you have a few thousand dollars of potential cash sitting around your house.

Around the summertime of last year, I really started to adopt the less-is-more mentality and lifestyle. I combed through closets and cupboards over and over to find out what I truly needed and/or valued. We turned our dining room into an “eBay room,” and I went to town. In just two weeks, I had made over $400! A car payment.. month’s worth of groceries…a plane ticket…a credit card bill…a full month of Mother’s Day Out tuition…..$400 was just SITTING around in the form of…extra stuff. I had always heard the eBay advertisements and testimonials of friends and family but never thought that I had anything of value to sell.

WRONG.

Newsflash: People will buy anything. People will buy everything. An old stuffed animal sitting in your child’s closet may be the EXACT one some poor kid has lost somewhere across the country (true story…we sold a random Target bear for $40). Once-worn Halloween costumes in the attic? List them in September/October and make a killing.  The random graphic t-shirt you bought at Old Navy five years ago might be someone’s favorite. LIST IT. I hoarded my favorite Bath & Body Works 2014 Fall candle (bought at $8/each), and it turns out that a lot of other people loved the scent also. I ended up selling those bad boys (that had been sitting around in a cabinet for over a year) for $39 EACH.  THIRTY-NINE EFFING DOLLARS. EACH.

You never, ever know what people will buy.  It takes one iPhone pic and two minutes (or less) of your time to list these items. There is nothing to lose, and I can ALMOST guarantee you will sell MOST everything you list.  Besides the extra income, the greatest benefit is the extra space, weight off your shoulders and freedom you will feel from unloading possessions. Live simply, friends. It is the greatest happiness there is.

Here is a list of some of my best-selling, most unexpected best-selling and most profitable items from the last year on eBay.

-          Brand name baby clothes: We all splurged (or received) a few Baby Gap/Peek/Hanna items when we were pregnant or celebrating our little one’s arrival. Some of them might even still have tags attached.

-          Misc. Baby Gear: We had about five Skip Hop Zoo bags/diaper bags/rolling backpacks, etc. Breast pump tubes that had never been opened. Nursing covers. Baby Bjorns. Etc. The markup on these items is incredible, and they are used so rarely and for such a short period of time that they are usually in excellent condition.

-          Craft Supplies: Cricut cartridges and paper punches are hugely popular on the secondary market.

-          Stuffed Animals: I have to say, I would NEVER have considered buying my child a stuffed animal on eBay. But when your kid becomes attached to a discontinued Pillow Pet or random 2012 department store stuffed animal that is no longer available, you will get desperate for a backup/replacement and turn to eBay in hopes that someone has that exact one to sell. Promise.

-          Costumes: Any seasonal item, especially Halloween costumes, sell wildly if you have the patience to wait and list it at the appropriate time. Again, because the retail markup is so crazy and because “used” items in this category are SO gently used, selling them on eBay is a breeze.

Those are just a FEW of the categories. Really and truly, no exaggeration, EVERY item I have listed in the past year has sold within 18 days. I was a skeptic, but I finally tried it and now my only regret is not having done so sooner.

Finally, a few tips:

-          Take decent photos: You don’t have to be a professional photographer. iPhone photos are fine. But invest in a $2 white foam board to lay your items on, and try to take advantage of natural light. Use PicTapGo (especially the “Lights On” feature to brighten things up. And if you’d like.. include a few stock photos of the item in its original state, but beware that some companies police this and will petition to have your listing removed.

-          Don’t lose money on shipping: In the very beginning, I underestimated the weight of an item and lost money on the fixed cost or free shipping I offered to customers. From then on, I always selected the “charge actual cost” option which I highly recommend. This lets you invoice the customer for the actual cost of shipping their item to their actual zip code once they have agreed to the purchase and completed it.  If you want to charge a fixed cost or offer free shipping wrapped into the cost of your item, make sure to weigh your item (with packaging) first and calculate the potential shipping cost based on a zip code furthest from you. I like to use Seattle, for example. And I just weigh things on a regular food scale...a great (and inexpensive) investment if you are going to be shipping lots of things.

-          Finally, time your listings and research similar items for sale if at all possible. BUT, at the end of the day…just LIST IT. I sold a Halloween costume twenty minutes ago (in mid-January). And I sold a pair of road bike shoes for $20 more than an identical pair in the same size was listed for. Those may be flukes…so please research….but again, you just never know. It costs nothing to list an item, so do it.

Happy selling and saving to you, foxes! Until next Thursday!