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So, you’re thinking about having a yard sale? It’s a great way to make a little extra money, and free up a some extra space in your house. Plus, if you do it right, it can be lots of fun! We’ve made lots of extra spending money selling our unwanted stuff at yard sales and flea markets, and when we’re not selling, I’m attending sales myself. I’d estimate I attend a thousand sales in the course of a year (very easy to do if you hit neighborhood sales, where you can visit 10 sales in 30 minutes!), and over the years have figured out what works and what doesn’t. The success of a yard sale depends on many factors, including the location, weather, merchandise and setup. In this article I will outline some ways to increase your profit and keep your sale running smoothly.
How to start:
First things first, make sure it’s OK to have a yard sale at your home. Some homeowners associations and towns have rules about when and where sales can be held, some even require a yard sale license be purchased.
Pick a date. Holiday weekends are usually not good, as so many people are traveling. The weekends following the 1st, 15th, or 30th of the month are good, as many people have just gotten paid and have more available money to spend. Decide what days you want to have your sale. Traditionally, the vast majority of sales here are just on Saturdays, but some run Friday and Sunday as well. This may differ according to your area. Ideally (and in nice weather), I’d probably run a sale Friday to Sunday and put a tarp over my tables at night. This way you get three days of selling, but only have to set up once.
It’s a great idea to attend some sales yourself if you are not a regular yard saler. This will give you many good ideas for what to do (and what NOT to do!), and give you a better idea of pricing in your area.
Decide how you plan to advertise. Classified ads in the paper work well, but can be expensive. Think about posting your ad to free sites such as craigslist. If you choose to place a classified ad, put your street name, but not the street number or your phone number. This avoids people (antique dealers mostly) who will do a reverse lookup on your phone number to call you and see what you have for sale (at one yard sale, we had 20+ calls in the days prior from dealers looking to get things cheap) and will keep people from stopping by before the sale to try to get a “preview” If you place an ad, if you have a lot of one type of thing, you might want to mention it. (IE. Big multi-family yard sale, Sat 8 AM, Cherry St. No early birds please, lots of toddler girls clothing and camping gear)
Gather change. I’d try to have at least $20 in small bills and quarters to start, ideally more. Invariably, the first sale of the day is a .50 widget to someone who only has a $20 bill. Keep track of how much change you started with so you can calculate your profit accurately at the end of the sale. Also figure out what sort of “cash register” you will use. Fanny packs are my hands down favorite. If you go to any big flea market, you will see that many of the professional sellers use them for their ease, portability and safety.
Don’ts:
- Don’t let people into your house if the sale is outside. If you are having a sale at your home, someone may ask to use the bathroom, or the telephone, or something similar. I’d probably let a pregnant woman or small child use the restroom, but that’s about it, and only if I could go inside with them and leave someone else to watch the sale. Most people are honest, but the few that aren’t might take advantage. I’ve also had people try to walk into the house to see “what else is for sale”, so a sign on the door saying “Sale items are outside only, please do not enter. Thank you” can be very helpful. Have an extension cord running outside so that buyers can test electrical items without entering your home.
Don’t leave your money unattended. Fanny packs aren’t the most stylish of items, but they really do the job for collecting money at yard sales. I’ve also seen people use aprons and cash boxes, but I really like the fact that a fanny pack is attached to you at all times, and it zips to keep the money from falling out if you bend over.
Save your plastic grocery bags for a few weeks (they store very well stuffed into empty tissue boxes) to have bags to give people at your sales who purchase a lot of smaller items.
Don’t forget to secure your pets. Yard sales can be VERY stressful for animals, who aren’t used to having hundreds of people in their yard in a day. Please make sure they are safe inside, or in a fenced area where the increased traffic won’t be a danger.
If you don’t really need the money from a sale, you might want to consider donating the proceeds to charity. Make sure to have a big sign stating your charity, something like: “All profits benefit the Humane Society- thank you for your donations and for your business” I know personally I will often spend a lot more money at a charity yard sale than I will a regular one. Even if there isn’t anything I really need, I will usually try to buy something (or just give an outright donation).
Don’t follow people around! Be available to answer questions, make suggestions on other items they like as they are paying you, but let them shop in peace!
Keys to a good sale:
Signs: Have easy to read, simple signs. Many die hard yard salers will stop at just about any sale, so the words “Yard Sale” (in big, easy to read letters) and a big directional arrow are all that are really needed. I like using a permanent marker, so that if the sign gets damp, the ink won’t run. Remember, most people will be viewing your signs from a moving car. Making them as simple to follow as possible will get more customers to your sale. Using the same color (neon works great!) Of poster board for all of your signs is a good trick, as it makes them very easy to follow. It also sets your signs apart from other yard sale signs. During the busy summer months, there can very easily be more than one sale on a street, and having a specific color sign makes sure you are leading your customers to your door, not to the sale down the street. Don’t put the signs too far away, about 1 mile radius is good.
Merchandise: Your merchandise should be clean. Nothing turns me off faster than going to a sale with lots of dirty, unwashed stuff. In general, if something is in bad enough condition that you’d be ashamed to give it to charity, don’t try to sell it. Presentation really is everything. A dusty, dirty widget that is thrown in a box of other junk is much less likely to sell than if you wipe that same widget off and put it on a table where it can be seen. You should also try to have as much merchandise as possible. Many people do a “drive-by” on sales that they think are too small to have much treasure.
Merchandise placement:
Group like merchandise together (baby stuff, clothing, household, tools, etc.) Put some of your larger items out front to draw in customers. We’ve also found that putting a few “mens” items, such as tools, lawn stuff, or fishing gear out front helps to draw in the men. There are lots of couples who yard sale together, but the men only get out of the car if they see something they are interested in. Putting “macho” stuff out front gives you more of a shot of getting them shopping too. One of the main advantages of this is that if the husbands are happy, they aren’t rushing the wife to hurry up and finish shopping.
Tables and racks. The way you display things can really have an impact on your sales. You should have as many tables as possible. You can be creative, and make tables out of many things. Sawhorses and plywood work well, as does getting large “refrigerator” type boxes and turning them on their side (for light items). Anything that gets things off the ground is good. A shower curtain rod stuck through a step ladder can make a good clothes rack. A clothesline strung between two trees works well too. Clothes do much better when they are hung up than when they are on the ground. I usually put my best merchandise on the tables, hang the clothing, and then whatever is left over goes onto sheets on the ground. If you have a front porch, you can display items there. If you have a fence, items can be displayed on that as well. Front porches with railings are great places to hang clothing and display items. If you are using tables from inside your home and don’t plan on selling them, stick a big sign on the table that says “table not for sale”. In fact, remove anything from the sale area that isn’t for sale, or mark it “not for sale”. I’ve had people at sales try to buy the plants off of my front porch, the chair I was sitting in, etc.
Make sure your displays are safe and will not fall as people are shopping. Tablecloths can go a long way to making your tables look more professional. You can use sheets draped over tables instead of regular tablecloths. Don’t use good bed sheets or blankets on the ground, as they will likely get stepped on a lot, and might never be the same..
Keep very valuable items close to you, so that there is a smaller chance of them “walking off”.
Help:
Running a large sale by yourself is hard. There will be times when customers are three deep in line waiting to pay, while another three customers are asking you questions and someone else wants help loading the chair she just bought into her van. Having friends and family to help is a great thing. Have a multi-family sale and pool your items with friends, or even hire a neighborhood kid to help you.
If you choose to pool your merchandise and have a sale with others, please make things easy on your buyers. Either set up on opposite sides of the yard, and make it clear via signs that customers are to pay for purchases at each sale separately- or have an easy marked code (initals work well) on each item to identify who it belongs to/
Don’t leave someone else in charge of the sale unless they know how much things cost. Give them the ability to bargain a little. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to go to a sale, gather up some cool items, and then have the seller say “well, actually this is my wife’s stuff. I don’t know how much she wants for it, but she’ll be back from the grocery store in 15 minutes” Let the person you are selling with know your bottom line on pricing items, so that they know what point not to negotiate past. This is another reason price tags really help, if someone is helping you, they don’t have to remember all of your pricing in their head.
Pricing:
Items sell much better with price tags on them. A lot of people won’t make the effort to ask you how much something is, especially if they’re interested in multiple items or if you are busy with other customers. Many people spend their whole Saturday morning yard saleing. Since yard sales here only run between about 8-12 noon usually, one day a week, there are almost always more sales in my area than I am able to visit in that time period. Therefore, If a sale has a line 10 people deep to check out, or if I have to wait 5 minutes to ask a seller for prices, I probably will just move on to the next sale.
Sometimes people set up tables, where each item on a table is a set price, 50 cents, $1 table, etc. I don’t like this setup, because its so hard (for both the buyer and seller) to keep track of what came of which table. If you do choose to do this, colored stickers on each item that correspond to a price can really help (I.e. yellow stickers are $1, red stickers $2)
If you have a bunch of the same type of item (I.e. 50 snow globes) and you’re going to sell them all for the same price, it’s OK to put one large sign in front of the items instead of pricing each one individually. I like giving discounts for multiple purchases. For clothing, I might have a sign that says all clothing $1 each or 6 for $5.
Difficult people:
One of my favorite things about having a yard sale is the people you meet. The vast majority of our customers are always great. It can be a nice way to meet neighbors you haven’t met. However, at every sale, there are 2 or 3 people who are problematic. A couple of “types’ that we have encountered more than once. Please don’t let me scare you, you likely won’t encounter any of these, much less all of them. I just want you to be aware of some of the scams and annoying tactics that the very few “bad apples” use.
“Distract and shoplift” A group of shoppers will come. One will make a scene or keep you busy elsewhere while the others shoplift. This is pretty easy to stop if you have more than one person running the sale. Just have one person keep an eye on the group, while the other person deals with the person trying to distract you.
“The insistent ones” Some people are just nutty. They will repeatedly offer you $2 for an item you have marked at $20, and then get mad when you won’t take it. One of the ones that made me the most angry was at a sale where I had walked inside for a few minutes. A lady tried to tell my husband that I had told her it was OK to take $5 for an item (marked $20) when I had done no such thing. Sometimes people will shove cash into your hand at the same time they make a low ball offer, hoping that you will accept. As soon as you have the cash in your hand (even if you haven’t agreed to their price), they try to walk away with your item before you have a chance to realize how little money they just handed you. Others will try to guilt you into selling an item for cheaper, saying “It’s not really worth that” etc.
If someone is being insistent in bargaining, be polite and firm. If they continue, you can ask them to leave your property.
Every once in a blue moon, people will also try to tell you they paid with a $20 bill when they actually paid with a $5. For this reason, I leave the bill that they handed me in one hand, while I make change with the other. I also say the denomination of the bill out loud.. “$5? Thank you. So I owe you $3…as I’m counting out their change. This way, there can be no confusion about what bill they handed me.
As the sale winds down:
Think about having “fill a bag” sales. As a shopper, these are some of my favorite deals. As a seller, they’re any easy way to get rid of items quickly. Make sure to remove any high value items you don’t want to include, then let buyers “fill a bag” of the remaining items for $5. (You choose the size of the bag and the price per bag according to your items. I’ve found $1 to $5 is the norm, and the bags are usually plastic grocery bags or paper grocery bags)
If you know in advance that you plan to do the “fill a bag” thing, have a sign out early that says “come back after 2PM to fill a bag for $5!!” You might be surprised at the amount of customers who return to take advantage of the deal.
Yard sales and kids:
One of my favorite ideas is to let a kid put some of their old toys and such in a yard sale to earn themselves spending money for a trip. A child might be much more motivated to get rid of her outgrown toys if she knows that’s gonna be her spending money for Disney World! Kids can also sell crafts, donuts, lemonade, etc at sales to earn their own money. In addition, you might want to consider paying older children a small wage to be your helper for the day. If children are making drinks or food to sell, please, please keep an eye on the preparation. I’ve seen some icky things kids do in preparing lemonade (one kid stirred with his had, another was re-using cups from other customers, etc.). I’m a sucker for an entrepreneurial kid, and will almost always buy the junk they’re selling (as long as they are polite and actually make an effort to sell), but unfortunately, usually any lemonade I buy gets poured down the drain at the next sale.
Just like your pets, kids can be in danger because of the increased traffic a yard sale can bring. Please keep them close.
Yard sales are a great way to teach kids the value of a dollar, to teach them some basic selling skills, etc. It can also be a fun bonding experience.
Give children shoppers at sales a price break. I like to ask kids if they’ve learned how to bargain yet. If they say no, I tell them to ask me if I’ll take any less for the item they want. Of course, when they ask, I give them a big discount. It is a great confidence booster for kids, and teaches them a polite way to bargain.
Decide if your object is more to make money, or to get rid of stuff. I know, it’s likely both, but which is more important to you? If its the money, hold firm to the prices you think you should get for items. If you just want to clean out your house a little, start lowering prices as the day goes on, give stuff away if you have to. Start early, so you don’t have to spend the couple of days before the sale frantically preparing.
I hope you find holding yard sales as fun and profitable as we have. You’ll likely be worn out at the end of the day, but hopefully your house will be lighter and your pockets heavier as well!
