Cleaning out the garage or shed of junk you don’t need? Looking to make a few bucks off of an old couch or some older electronics? Just want to redecorate your home and are done with your old style? Before tossing your old stuff in the trash or donating it to charity, try selling it! A few dollars is better than nothing, and you might even have a few treasures on your hands you thought were trash. Here are the best ways to sell your old stuff.
Clean it up and Make it Look Nice
Before trying to sell anything, either online or in-person, clean it up and make it look nice. Clean off the dust, wipe it down with some cleaner, and make it presentable. You might not be able to get it to look “like new,” but try your best. Clearly, something that looks nice and clean will be easier to sell than something that looks like junk.
Depending on the item and if you feel comfortable doing so, do some light touchups or fixes. Got a table with black marks all over the table? Repaint or restain it to make it look new. Trying to sell a broken table chair? Use some screws and wood glue to repair it.
Take Well Lit Pictures
After the item looks clean and nice, take pictures of it to post online. This might seem like an easy two-second job, but it’s actually one of the most important steps. A single blurry photo of your old coffee table in poor lighting isn’t enough to sell it.
The first step is having good lighting. Avoid taking pictures without natural light, especially at night. If possible, take the item outside in the middle of the day for a little photo shoot.
Once outside with good lighting, take several photos of your item from different angles. Highlight different important features and even provide other common items in the shot so people can have a general idea of its size. Take more photos than you think is necessary, you can weed them out later.
Doing Your Research and Picking Your Price
Your item has value, but it’s your job to figure out what that value is to potential buyers. Price the item too high and nobody will be interested. Price it too low and you risk losing out on money. Do research, find similar or even the same items for sale and see what they are priced at.
Then, look how long these items have been up for sale. If something is priced higher and has been up to sale for longer than a week, the price is too high. If something is priced low and is already sold or becomes sold in a day or two, the price was either too low or just right.
Haggling does happen, but don’t severally overprice your item just with the intention to be haggled down to a price you like. Overpricing can potentially turn away interested buyers who don’t want to haggle. If you are willing to haggle, set the price a little bit high and come down from there.
Putting Your Items Up For Sale
Whether it’s a single day yard sale or posting your items on Facebook Marketplace, at a certain point, you have to commit to selling your stuff. Once they are available for purchase, it’s your job to get the word out.
When putting items up for sale online, feel free to put them up on multiple places like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Nextdoor, and anywhere else you can. Just because you put it up somewhere doesn’t mean you have to sell it through them. This can bring in a variety of people, and offers, to buying your items.
If you’re doing a yard sale, there are some things to consider. See if your neighborhood or community has a special “yard sale” day or weekend. These events bring in a lot of traffic to help sell your stuff. Make sure to post about your yard sale on social media to let more people know. You could even list individual items on Facebook Marketplace and let people know they can buy them now online and then pick them up later in the day.
What to Do If Items Aren’t Selling
Not everything you try to sell is going to get purchased the next day, or even the next week. Some items are going to be incredibly difficult to sell. But don’t just give up, there are a few things you can do.
First off, have you had any interest in the item? If yes, you’re on the right track, you’re just missing the right thing to close the deal. Try lowering the price, listing the item somewhere new, or add an extra perk to the sale. If nobody has shown interest, then you might need to re-evaluate everything. Take new pictures, re-write your description, drop your price, and make a new post.
If you’re finding no success with an item, you might need to throw in the towel. There are some items that nobody is interested in buying. Rather than continuing to push to sell it, this is when you should look at donating it or throwing it out.
What to Do with the Money After the Sale
If you do really well selling off your old stuff, you might find yourself with a serious amount of cash you weren’t expecting. You can spend this on trivial items or use it to pay normal bills, but there are two options you should really consider.
First, use this extra money to put towards any debts you currently have. Making an extra payment on a credit card, car loan, mortgage, or any other debt can make a huge difference in the long run. This cuts down on the amount of interest you’ll need to pay and save you a lot of money in the end.
The second option is to save or invest the money for the future. If this isn’t money you need to use right away, let it grow into something even greater. You can put it towards something expensive you want to buy, like a house, an RV, a family vacation, or just let it earn money for you.
Pioneer has a variety of saving and investing options, Term Certificates, and IRAs. Investing your money in any of these tools is a great way to grow your money and keep it safe. Especially if you don’t need access to the money any time soon, a Term Certificate can grow your money over time significantly.
Learn More about Term Certificates!