Selling Sand In The Desert

It's been almost 2 years (I think), since I decided to make order around me. Not that my surrounding was a mess, but I have accumulated a lot of things that have been just siting where they are and whenever I decided to do something with those, I ended up putting them back as could not throw them away and didn't know what to do with them. Then Vinted was born.

Selling Sand In The Desert.jpg

Yes, this is another episode of my Vinted story, as there are new things happening and I can't stop laughing as I am writing this.

Back a lifetime ago, figuratively speaking of course, when multilevel marketing started to spread in my country and everyone was eager to make some money, no matter who they had to fool or guilt trip into buying a starter package of very expensive garbage they didn't even need.

There was a very popular saying when recruiting others, that they thought it sounded very cool. They said if you can sell sand in the desert, you can become a millionaire. Selling sand in the desert is obviously impossible, or at least who in their right mind would buy sand when you're standing on a sea of sand, but sometimes it's possible to sell something that there's plenty of around and that's what I have been doing, but please don't laugh! 🤣

As I stated previously, I'm addicted to paper. I love it, I love to write by hand because it helps me memorize what I write better, I love hard copy books and everything that is paper. This is why I use every piece of paper the best way I can and don't throw away notebooks just because I don't use them anymore.

This is how I still have notebooks from my school years 😂🤣 Yeah, I don't blame you for considering me idiot, stupid or whatever word you use for someone doing crazy things like this. And here comes the joke of the day.

Browsing through the listed items on Vinted, as you know, the algo is shaping your feed based on your searches, or what you click on and now, instead of clothes (I listed all my clothes I don't need) I get office supplies and paper related items. This is how four days ago I came across a really surprising listing. Someone listed 75 sheets of old, notebook papers 😳 at 7€ euro or so. Now it's one thing to list it, and a totally different one to sell it, so my first thought was, who the hell is going to pay 7€ for some old, yellow paper? I added the listing to favorites, so I get notified, when it gets sold. And I got the notification after a day, that the paper pack has been sold.

I think you can guess what the first thing I did was. Yes, you are right. I opened my drawer, took out all the old notebooks and individual papers I have been saving for ages and started to sort them out.

So far everything seems so easy, you may think, you just list the papers and it's sold, but this is where the subtle tricks come in, if you know what those are.

First of all, I was happy to see I have like 5k of old notebooks 🤣 (yeah, I know) and that their age shows significantly, which is key. You need yellow, or goldenish, I like to call it ecru paper, to look vintage, so I made a collection of as many types I could and organized them in a way to look good. Getting a visually pleasant photo is key here, trust me and to show the papers are vintage enough I used the whitest paper I had at home, as background. I needed good light as well, because the flash could alter colors. Thank God, yesterday it was quite sunny, so I could take good photos.

I took 8 or 10 photos from different angles, put together a detailed and very honest description and listed my vintage paper package at 5€. I thought let's not be greedy as the buyer has to pay a protection fee and shipping too, so let's be reasonable. What happened next? Someone bought it after 30 minutes 🤣 I couldn't believe my eyes when I got the notification to ship it to Poland. Then I uploaded the second batch and sold those too in a couple of hours.

Now you may wonder why people would pay as much for used paper. These yellowish papers are used for scrapbooking, junk journaling and other craft products. You can see videos about how to get an aged looking paper, mostly by dipping it in coffee, but it's not the same thing as once the paper gets wet, it's not going to be so smooth anymore, so naturally aged paper is valuable.

Honestly, I value old paper a lot, but don't like to use it as the quality is not what I need for my notes. It is absorbing up ink and marker ink and it's not as resistant as the paper you buy today, but for craft projects it's excellent.

This is a lot of fun, it's like a game, the game of creating supply, where there's demand. It's more than just money, as I'm not going to get rich, but I'm glad my well kept paper is going to end up in the hands of those who appreciate and use it to create something.

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: