Saving money can be quite hard to do if you are on a tight budget, but all of us can do it very simply by selling the things that are cluttering up our homes and which we no longer need. I am fairly sure that most of us, if asked, would like some extra cash to help pay off a loan or other debt, or to put towards something nice like a holiday or something else that you would like to save up for.
What Can I Sell to Save?
The answer to this question is almost anything. You would be surprised what people are willing to buy if they like one particular thing you own or if they are interested in collecting certain things. Below is a list of things that you might find in your home and could sell, but this is by no means a complete list. Use your imagination and have a good look around the cupboard under the stairs and the garage! You can also have a look on the Internet at sites specialising in collectables and memorabilia - these will give you an idea of what people are interested in buying and most importantly for you, how much you can charge.
Advertising and packaging - This can be much sought after by collectors if they are in good condition. Certain types are more popular than other for example cigarettes, food and cosmetics products. They do not always necessarily have to be old - I recently sold a tin that contained candies, which I bought about a month ago. I sold it to a woman who paid 10 dollars for it because she was collecting tins from this particular brand of candy and my one had a famous cartoon character on the side of it.
Autographs - Do have an old autograph hanging around from someone you admired when you were a child? These could bring in anything from around 10 dollars to 7000 dollars if it is from someone really famous and there are few others around.
Baby care accessories - these can be incredibly expensive to buy new these days and many first-time parents look for second-hand items that they can pick up at a reduced price.
Books - Rare books and first editions can bring in significant sums of money. We’ve all checked our kid’s Harry Potter books to see if they are a first edition haven’t we!
Bottles - Yes bottles! Old and rare bottles are extremely collectable and can earn you anything from 5 dollars to 5000 dollars. These could include stoneware beer bottles or 19th Century poison bottles.
Records - Old and rare records in good condition can earn you a few dollars, if you are old enough to remember what records are!
Toys and games - Old and rare toys and games are a particular collector’s favorite, as are newer ones that are connected with popular films and TV series. The latter need to be in really good condition. 20 years ago, as a kid in his mid-teens, my cousin was buying Star Wars figures and keeping them sealed in their packets. They are now worth up to 250 dollars each! You can still get around 20 dollars for figures that are no longer boxed but are in good condition.
As you can see, the phrase “in good condition” keeps coming up and this is the key to making money from your unwanted belongings. A damaged item will sell for far less than one that is in good condition and may not even make you any money at all.
How and where can I sell?
Once you have something that you want to sell, there are many ways of doing it. The following are just a few ideas. To start with you could ask your friends, neighbours and work colleagues if they are interested in what you have. Many companies have an internal newsletter or Intranet where “items for sale” can be advertised for free. You could use classified ads in local newspapers and on the Internet - many of these are also free. Garage sales and car boot sales are other options if you have quite a few things to sell. You may also wish to consider using Internet auction web sites such as Ebay. These are now hugely popular with millions of items being bought and sold at any one time, all over the world. You are certain to find that items similar to that which you intend to sell are already being sold by someone else on the Internet, so you can see what sort of purchase values they attract. This will help you decide on a suitable starting price for your own items. Sites like Ebay make their money by charging you a small listing fee and by taking a small percentage of the final selling price.
Emmanuel Mendonca is the webmaster and publisher of Debt Genius at http://www.debtgenius.com - a free source of information and advice on debt consolidation, getting out of debt and on saving money. Submit articles free.
There are many ways you can make money on ebay, from selling stuff you no longer need, all the way up to selling merchandise from a wholesaler. This is not the limit however, of the wonderful methods of generating cash off of the world of ebay. You can sell property, cars, boats, and even businesses. There have been transactions as low as a dollar, all the way up to business transfers that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ebay is clearly here to stay, now it is time for you to get your feet wet on this great money making opportunity.
Here we will focus on selling for a wholesaler, this is where you will promote other peoples products and sell them for a cut of the profit. Lets say for example you find a product you are interested in such as say, stereo speakers. You will then search for a wholesaler that will accept a contract with someone that deals in affiliates and ebay, with the proof that you are an ebay seller and can verify the account on ebay this should not be hard. Once you have landed this contract with the wholesaler, it is time to set up market strategies, and make sure they conform to what the wholesaler finds acceptable. Make a plan, check it twice and get to work selling.
Once you have the site available for the public to view, you need to weigh out some of the business expenses that will ensure you are not spending more than you are making. By having multiple payment options you can be sure you have all your sales basis covered. One of the biggest expenses you will encounter will be shipping and storage costs. It is not likely that you will have the space in your home to store a couple thousand pairs of home speakers, and this notion would require some sort of insurance that will be required in order for the wholesaler to relinquish the product to you. Any notion that you can rent space for cheap is improbable, and again will still require insurance as a measure of protection for you and the wholesaler. So what do you do? Well the answer is simple; you have the wholesaler keep the product, and ship when necessary to the customer when purchased.
This will keep the entire product in one place, alleviate the need to worry about shipping, and still ensure that you are able to make the sale. Once the product is sold to a customer, you simply place the order to the wholesaler, they will in turn send the product, charge you for the wholesale cost and the holding and shipping cost and the rest is yours to keep. This is not a difficult task and you do not even need to leave your seat. What you really need to do is research the product, and its competitors and finds a price that is reasonable, and will generate the best profit for what you are doing. What you are really doing is selling the goods like a salesman on a store floor. All the while not even leaving your home, you do not even really need to monitor this whole process, as the customer’s invoice will come in to you via e-mail.
http://www.payitforward4profits.com/rodl13
Rod Larrivee is a successful Internet Marketer located in Vancouver, Canada
www.rodlarrivee.ws
