Countless homes toss out their old goods every single day. Garbage to them. Nicked end tables, slightly worn couches and chairs. Scratched Glass Tops. I find these items that you don’t want, fix what I can — and I resell them, for BIG money.
Three Things You Must Exercise Before Being Profitable:
Haste — When opportunities arise, make haste or someone else may already be working on the same idea as you. When it comes to sales, you’re personal time is not your personal time. Every chance you have to respond quickly to an inquiry should be acted upon.
Rubric — I don’t accept every piece of free furniture. Tons don’t have a high enough profit margin for me to spend 2 hours acquiring, why should you make $20 an hour just because a piece was free? Make sure you know your costs including time it takes to acquire a product and factor the realistic resale potential to decide if it warrants the effort.
Greed — Price all items to move. Yes, that hutch sold at an auction for $1750, however that item was sold at a specialty sale location. You can make far much more money constantly revolving products at a cheaper price, unless you have a storage area to leave product while waiting a month for a sale.
I made $1,000 in 5 sales.
…and I think you could do this too.
Originally starting an upcycling project a month prior to writing this, I aggressively formed a hypothesis that one could create $1000 in 13 buy and sell cycles. My plan was to only buy and sell one item at a time as to not clutter my apartment. At $600 profits I was only 3 complete buying and selling cycles into this project, and I realized the severity of the ability to drastically create an income.
Here I am selling peoples perceived garbage they were giving away for free — and generating $100 per hour of work. I’m a genius.
After reaching $1,000 in my trial project in which I donated all those proceeds to an Organization that matters to me, I decided this could be more than just a part time job and I’d have to create more merchandise (forward referred to as SKUs) to increase the rate of sales to produce a mortgage paying living.
People only pay an items second hand worth on a second hand market:
That beautiful full sized wall to wall mirror my girlfriend bought in an actual store for $800, will never see an $800 dollar sale again unless it comes out of a “reputable store”. A wall to wall framed mirror of size may sell for $300 on a second hand market…value instantly decreases the moment you drive it off the lot. Sound familiar?
However — as with anything when you become immersed in an hobby you soak all information in. The more you learn you’ll get better assessing price points, pieces of furniture’s value and resell ability, and brand names that hold their value. You’ll also learn what items to stay away from, especially as a newly devirginized upcycler.
High profit items tend to be larger in size.
Get some help from a friend picking an item up, when you sell it — you can help the buyer get it to their car or truck once again creating a larger opportunity chance that the item will sell faster. Dressers without any nicks or real wear, kitchen tables that can fit in an SUV, chairs that can fit in a car, all contribute to a higher percentage chance of a sale. If someone needs to rent a truck to get a larger piece — you may sit and wait longer before a potential sale happens.
Start checking your local craigslist, facebook marketplace, or even goodwill for great items that could have a hell of a profit margin!