Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether yard sales make sense for your reselling business and tips for having a successful yard sale.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Rob & Melissa On Yard Sales
Rob: All right guys, on today's episode, we are talking about if yard sales make sense for your reselling business.
Melissa: We're going to dive into some of the pros and the cons of having a regular yard sale.
Rob: Alright, guys. So on today's episode, we are in the middle of preparing for a yard sale.
So we're having a yard sale tomorrow, Friday and Saturday are the days that we typically do yard sales. They perform the best where we're at.
Melissa: We've tested it out a couple of days.
Rob: We've tried to do Sundays as well and hardly get anybody showing up in our area on a Sunday. It might be different in your area.
But this is fresh on our minds because we're getting ready to do it. So we wanted to talk to you guys, pose you a couple of questions, give you some pros and cons and see if this makes sense for your business. Maybe you've never had a yard sale, or maybe you have five or 10 of them a year. So that's kind of what we're talking about in today's episode.
Melissa: We typically do one to two yard sales a year. So when we say regular yard sale, we're not saying like every month, but, we do one to two and you have to think about kind of the reasons why you'd want to do it. Our biggest reason for this yard sale was to liquidate. And so for two reasons, that one.
The kids accumulate a lot of stuff. They get their clothes, their toys, they accumulate so much stuff. And it's a way that we can help them declutter their rooms. If they only have so much room like, okay, you can't get anything else unless you sell something of that you have. So that's the first one. And the second one is because we're in this business of reselling, we are always looking for deals.
Right?
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So the deals are always plentiful. So sometimes we will still get stuff that's a good deal and then you won't list it or you don't take the time to fix it. And so then it ends up sitting for a while. So we get, we declutter that those kinds of inventory.
Rob: For example, I was going through my garage last night and my garage is packed full of stuff.
I use it for storage. I can't even really get into it to work right now because I have so much stuff in there for storage. I'm going through the garage last night to pull stuff out for this yard sale to try and get it to where I can get working in the garage again. And I come across a couple of different things that I'm like, man, I got some good, good stuff in here that I can sell on eBay, make some great money. And I got some stuff that I'm like, I'm going to push out to the yard sale. For example, one of the things that I, well, I should say, I think I have five or six of the coin machines, the dollar bill coin machines, you stick a dollar bill into it, and then it spits out quarters, dimes, whatever you want it to, you can set it for a, however you want to do that. Whatever you want to do it, you can set it up in the machine. I have, I think it's five or six of those units that I bought a while back. There's nothing wrong with them, but what happens for me, I'll buy stuff sometimes and I'll make, I don't remember exactly to be honest with you guys.
I don't remember what I paid for these roughly. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on these. It's probably be $10 to $20 per unit is what I would have spent. But I found those. I got them in the garage and then I got sidetracked with a bigger profit and it got put on the back burner and then it just got brought backward and that happens in our business.
It happens to me and I'm sure it happens to other people as well. Exactly. So that is one of the things that's one of the pluses about a yard sale is actually going through some of this stuff, bringing it back to the front of your memory, and actually getting that stuff ready to list on eBay. And then also
throwing the stuff out, like one I'm not throwing out, but getting it pushed out for the yard sale. Like another one of the units that I got was a carpet cleaner commercial carpet, cleaner machine. You can rent them at your local hardware stores or a Lowe's, Home Depot, ACE hardware, that kind of stuff.
You can rent these machines to clean your carpets. I bought one at the flea market, $25, and it wouldn't, the handles are supposed to fold down and make them more compact. This one, that was the only problem with it. And I started trying to work on it to get it fixed in and just went on the back burner, sitting in storage in the garage.
And this stuff has been in there for two years guys, over two years. And I haven't done anything with it. So that one I'm like, okay, I'm going to push this out. We'll sell it for like $40. $40 or $50, retail on them is like $600. And somebody else can messed with it and fix it. The other part of that is we wanted that actually to be able to use in our own house.
Not necessarily to resell, but we bought another one that I got a really good deal on it's over at the storage. Nad that one, there was no problems with it. So we'll use that one, push this one out, make double our money on it, and let somebody else fix it and get a good deal. So that's one of those things that you just have to kind of think about, you know, where you're at in your reselling business.
Does it make sense for you to actually do this kind of push some stuff out of the yard sale, get rid of it and then really go through and take inventory of what you do have so you can get back on track with that stuff that's in the back, you would call your death pile, I guess, for some resellers, that's what I'm getting into with my garage.
And I'm going to take care of it through this yard. yard sale.
Melissa: And there's something to say about decluttering and organizing yourself. So you can be more productive if you have a nice clean area to work in. So you're working in the garage trying to get that nice and organized.
Rob: Wasn't that our word of the year is organization?
Melissa: It is.
Rob: That's what's in right now, guys.
That's what we're living into. So we're trying to get that done.
Melissa: Get it organized and then you can be more productive. And so if you have stuff sitting around that you just haven't gotten to, and if you haven't gotten to it in a year, are you really going to get to it? Are you really going to do that project?
Are you really going, like, maybe it just makes sense to put everything out for yard sale. And another reason that we do it is because our kids really love it. So they love doing yard sale. So we kind of make it a little mini event. We have, you know, we sell waters and sodas and cookies. Like we let them handle that.
We bake cookies and let them sell them. And, so they have fun with it. Sometimes we set up a bounce house for the kids to play in, make it like, you know, just for fun. And they love it. And, they might not love selling their toys, but then they love that they get paid for it. So we're teaching them about money too.
So we do a lot for them. We've actually even given them the option before, cause we do them on Fridays and Saturdays, if they want to go to school or they don't have to go to school on our yard, sale day. So, some of them choose school. And some of them choose yard sale, which is pretty interesting.
They actually have off of school tomorrow, so they don't have to choose.
Rob: Everybody will be here for the yard sale and we are excited about it. But yeah, that one of the biggest things is the decluttering, getting your mind back into a space where you can work. I'm very excited about my garage. I've already told Melissa, we'll have some room where I can bring in, she really wants to start furniture flips and repurposes, and I need a space. I don't have a space and we don't have a great space for them. My storage, my warehouse has a lot of stuff in storage right there, and it's hard to get a lot of space inside to work on that stuff. So we'll get this cleared out, let her start doing that as well.
So yeah, for a peace of mind, sometimes I really believe a yard sale once or twice a year, to refocus, to, you know, clean out the closets, clean out underneath the bed and do all that. And one thing that we did not talk about is all this stuff that you are willing to throw to the yard sale. What are you going to do with it after the yard sale?
If it does not sell, for me, the, the items that have the potential to be a high profit more towards, like, I really went through my garage and anything that had the potential of going $350, well, I would say $250 to $300. Anything that I could sell on eBay and get that money for it. Excuse me. I wasn't going to throw it in a yard sale.
I was going to.
Melissa: Unless you had to work on it. Unless it was a project.
Rob: Exactly. That's, that's exactly right. So I wasn't going to do that. I was going to keep it and I put it in my top priority to actually get them listed and get them out there so we can get them sold. But that stuff that is, underneath that price, maybe it's $100-$250.
If it does not sell at the yard, I might bring that back in and try to list it for parts, for cheaper to get rid of it that way versus donating it. Cause a lot of like our knickknacks, our little stuff, the toys, when we get to the point of we're ready to get rid of them.
Melissa: Everything else gets donated.
Rob: Yes. We send it all to a Goodwill, salvation army, the thrift stores.
Melissa: We do the one that comes and picks it up, the veteran. They come and pick it up.
Rob: We've done that as well
Put it on the front porch, all stacked on the front porch and let them come and pick that up. So, there's just a couple of different ways you can do it.
But that's what you have to think about beforehand. Hey, if I'm ready to get rid of all this stuff, am I going to bring it back in? If it doesn't sell or what am I going to do?
Melissa: So it does not come back.
Rob: So having that idea in your head. Okay. If I'm putting some stuff out there that has the potential to be high profits, that might be stuff that you might not donate.
If it does not sell and you might really put it at the front burner on your mind, okay, I'm going to get this stuff done. I'm going to get it listed. Like I got a fire under my pants right now to get this stuff listed. That I got, I mean, I'm telling you guys, I have thousands upon thousands and this is just in my garage.
This has nothing to do with some of the larger items that I have sitting that I have not have listed. So, I mean, we probably have hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory that's not even listed yet.
This podcast, most likely you have an inkling for finding good deals. So that's the funnest part of reselling.
Melissa: Understand why that death pile gets large.
So doing this every so often is not a bad idea. And I'm even to the point, like you talked about price points of where you're going to sell it on eBay and where not. I have a whole, I have two big trunks of stuff I wanted to do with the kids. And they're just kind of smaller items. If they're not really worth $50, I think they're just going to go cause I've been staring at them and I haven't listed them.
And so I think they're just going to go the yard sale, anything over $50 then we'll talk about, those.
Rob: Really our thresholds. Melissa is at $50 I'm at $250 to $300, if it's over that or not at that, I'm going to push it out to the yard show. What is your threshold, maybe think about that while you're listening to this episode and you might be thinking, hey, I want to have a yard sale.
Well think about some of these things. Think about some of these things that, what is it worth it, and it might not be $50. It might be $20. Hey, if I can't get $20 bucks for this, I'm not going to throw it, or I'm not going to mess with it. I'm going to throw it out at a yard sale. So whatever that is, throw it out to the yard sale.
Not really throwing it away. We don't really throw stuff away. We more donate it we get it back to where somebody can use it. So/
Melissa: So I would say the best or one of the biggest reasons you wouldn't do a yard sale. Really, the only con is your time, like it's work to do the yard sale. So your time and the physical work of putting a yard sale together would be the biggest con, but the decluttering part, if it's worth it to you, and the money, of course you make some money, like we're not.
We won't lose money on the items you bought cause you bought them for so low, we will make a little bit of money, not what you wanted to make on him, but we'll still make money. And usually our yard sale bring bringing at least like $500 to $1,000. So that's worth it for us for two days of de-cluttering.
Rob: But we always do the same thing after the yard sale and we're like, oh, we are never doing this again, but we do it again. We do it again because it's fun for the kids. The kids really encourage us to, it's work for us. It is a lot of work to get stuff together, but I was also thinking that is one con that you said another one is you guys, you might not be in an area where you can do yard sales.
We don't have a homeowners association where we live. You might be limited to when you can have yard sales, you might have to go pull permits and that kind of stuff, which is definitely check with your local, authorities to find out if you can, or if you can't.
Melissa: Some developments do them. Like one time you can have it, like once or twice a year, you can put out.
Rob: That's also something to look into.
If you're willing to do yard sale maybe check into your HOA and find out, hey, when are, when are we allowed to do this? Or are we doing a group one and so-and-so, and then plan for it? That's the biggest thing is being planned and being prepared for it. For sure.
Melissa: Yeah. I just also wanted to add in a couple of tips to help have a successful yard sale.
So one of the big things that we do is good signage. So like six or eight signs around the biggest streets and get people. And we get, and now, like the kids are a little older, so it was a lot of fun. They they'll help me make the signs. We make them on big neon cardboards, cardboard and put them on one of those stakes like that.
Rob: You know, like corrugated signs.
Melissa: But then I taped the poster board to them. So they stick a stake in the ground and then I'll tie balloons on them or pinwheels we'll put in the ground just to get people's attention so that they're going that direction. So, good signage helps a lot. And, I think the balloons or pinwheels work a lot too, so just getting people's attention to go there.
Cause we live on a really little street. Like we don't get much traffic, so to get people to there, that's what we have to do. But we have some big streets near us, so.
Rob: Get some change. Guys, don't have your yard sale and don't have any type of change for people who are coming up with $20 bills, a hundred dollar bills, whatever it is, make sure that you have fives.
You have ones, you have tens you have some quarters. I mean, I typically wouldn't price anything lower than that. But if you do need to have that, make sure you have maybe a hundred or $200 in change that you can give out to people if they do need change.
Melissa: We usually go to the bank and get like $10 or $20 in quarters and then some singles too.
So we have it. Cause lot of people like to pay you and want change. So like pay you in bigger bills and then you need to be able to get them change.
Rob: And another thing you can think about is if you are not set up with, what is the paying processors like Venmo. Yeah. Some of these other payment processors that some people are using now for their babysitters and stuff like that, they might come up with no money at all, but they want to afford it to you this way.
Make sure you are set up with, I mean, what can you give them Venmo and Zelle. So if you're set up to do that, so if somebody does ask you for something like that, and this is more towards probably a higher, like some of our items are going to be $100, $150, stuff like that. And I just say, can I exactly, can I Venmo you versus getting the cash?
And they can do that. Yes. You want to be set up to be able to take that, that type of payment if they want to.
Melissa: Yeah, we do Venmo and PayPal. We do all of them, so, yeah. And we'll totally, and you can verify before they take the item that it's in your account. It's not like somebody.
Rob: They can't get it back.
Melissa: So it's, it's there.
So you can verify that before they take the item. You don't, don't let it go and say, hey, I'll Venmo you later. No, make sure you have the money in here.
Rob: The payment was sent, but it's gonna take this long to clear. No, don't do that. Make sure that it is physically in your, in your accounts, it's available in your account.
Melissa: Not that you got an email about it. That it says it's in your account, it has to be actually into your account. So another fun thing though, that having this yard sale. So we see stuff on the side of the road when we're walking a lot and we actually picked something up today that we wouldn't normally pick up.
I would love to redo it as a furniture, like flip, but I don't have the time right now or the space, hopefully that will happen soon. But we saw this hutch, China cabinet on the side of the road. So we're like, well, we could just pull it out of the trash and put it in the yard sale tomorrow. So we pulled it out the trash today and we're gonna throw it in the yard sale tomorrow.
So probably make about $50. So it, I mean, it's a nice hutch and she even had, they wanted it, somebody to get it because she had like paper towels in between all the glass pieces. So they wouldn't break. She saw us loading it in the truck and she gave us the light for it. So.
Rob: She definitely wanted that and there's a sticker on the back.
There's a price tag on the back of this hutch for $799. So somebody spent $800 on this hutch originally. It's nice wood. It's not cheap wood. It's a nice hutch, that somebody bought. Now it's dated. It's like a cherry wood, but somebody who does repurposes or redos, they could totally paint this thing white and make it gorgeous.
And then really probably sell it, I would say for $400, $500. Yeah. Some of the people in our Flipping For Profit they do that. They repurpose these things or redo these things. And they do it. I mean, the guy comes to my attention.
Melissa: David?
Rob: David. Yeah. David Funk. Exactly. He's comes to my attention.
He's in our group and he showed us some of the stuff that he's done is amazing. It is awesome. And when you see a brand new piece of furniture that he just totally redid. And a lot of stuff, he does the same way he gets it out of the trash. He brings it home has he's a painter. So he's got spare paint and stuff from his business that he's got colors and he just redoes it and then turned around and he's picking, I mean, some of these pieces, he's selling $500, a thousand dollars.
He makes some great money on these. So that's just another aspect.
Melissa: We'll have to link to that one in the show notes, because, and if you'd take a chance, if you click it, you can listen to the podcast. But also if you go to the blog posts, you can see some of his pieces.
Rob: Yeah, but that is a great thing. If maybe you're saying, hey, we don't have a lot of stuff sitting around my house, that I can actually get rid of, or, you know, I don't have a lot of clutter or anything like that.
But I would like to do a yard sale and see how it is. That's good. Take a drive around your neighborhood, do it for probably like two weeks and then have a yard sale. Go find some cool stuff. Find some cool furniture, cool baby toys and stuff like that. And you probably make a couple hundred bucks just by getting stuff that people are throwing away in your area within your little town area, storing it up for a week or two, and then having a yard sale. You guys, this is a great way to make a little bit extra money.
Melissa: Another way to make some money. So there's so many aspects of this business, different ways, different niches, different, models to make money.
So this is what we're doing this weekend. We'll have to do a recap after the yard sale, the aftermath to see how things went and see if we sell that hutch.
Rob: Stay tuned. We'll keep you guys posted.
Melissa: Well, when this goes live, we already had it. So, but we'll do another episode after and see how the whole thing went.
Rob: So you guys rock! Have a great day.