The $40 Challenge - Money Making Idea:
Hold a Garage Sale
(For background on this money making idea challenge, please visit:
The $40 Challenge)
The Idea
Collect all the old and unused items that you own and sell them in a garage sale. If you don't have much to sell, go round the
neighbourhood and offer to sell people's things for them for a slice of commission. People often have things lying around which they are too
lazy to get rid of and by offering to sell it for them, you are offering them a service and they only pay you a slice of the things you sold
(and they make money off it too).
Poster: Leonvdwalt
Initial cost: $10 for A4 posters
Initial time: 3 hours going round to peoples' apartments to find more stuff to sell. 1 hour for organizing tables to display the
goods and another hour fetching and setting everything up.
Results:
Income: $15 in commissions, and $100 from own older stuff that was sold.
Costs: $30 paid to a friend to assist on the day. Time cost: 8 hours on the day ensuring a presence at the goods. And 2 hours afterwards
to clean-up.
Modifications:
A better idea would have been to split the profit with the friend instead of offering a flat fee, especially since I didn't know the
income potential when I offered to pay him the flat fee. Also, flyers dropped in the neighbourhood would have been of huge help as we were
mostly dependent on foot traffic, which didn't turn out to be much. A different area might also have worked - setting up across the road from
a salvation army billboard notifying the community of the monthly garage sale that happened yesterday, wasn't such a good idea.
Total amount made: -$25
(I don't include earnings from stuff I already owned)
Residual potential:
Could be done on monthly basis and if you organize friends to run the pick up the goods (splitting profits with them) and returning the
unsold goods afterwards, it could become mostly passive for yourself.
A good idea, whose flaw was in the execution of it. It will worked better if advertised more widely and to the right audience, and also
ensuring that the buyers and sellers are closely situated to where you'll be holding the garage sale. Overall, it could work if you are
diligent and have a eye for details.
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