You’re at a garage sale. What happens differently when you make an offer of $30 on an item the seller would have otherwise sold to you for $20? Well, nothing, except you’ve given up $10 you would have otherwise had. The money went into the seller’s pocket instead of yours. Haggling is making sure that money ends up in your pocket instead of someone else’s. Simply put, people have beliefs and perceptions that affect their offers in a haggling situation. When they are known to you, you can adjust your haggling strategy such that you to capture a bigger share of the trade surplus, and in turn make greater profits off of your items.
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If you’ve hunted across the internet for ways to make money, you probably already know that it is not easy to simply start making money. And when you do start making money, you almost never make more than a tiny amount. I myself have tried every legitimate avenue: Amazon Mechanical Turk, paid surveys & online focus groups, freelance writing services, this blog, online poker… the list goes on. I’d sold on eBay
before, but my main problem was product sourcing. One day, the thought occurred to me that garage sales might be an excellent product source, and unsurprisingly I encountered a lot of people wanting to get rid of some fairly valuable stuff at a low cost.
As a way of making money, I would rate garage sales reselling as FAR from “make good money quick.” It’s definitely got a “start making money quick” aspect to it, which is good, but to make it pay you enough to put food on the table takes a lot of work and experience. Comparatively, I would rate it as one of the best ways of making money I have found (outside of a steady, high-skill job), so if you’re looking to make an extra buck, I suggest you give it a chance (even if only to make an extra $100-$200 per week). It’s got low capital requirements, and best of all, it’s fun and addictive!
This article gives an overview of the process, all the way up to the point where the money lands in your pocket.
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Now that admissions season is over, I’ve decided to start blogging again, but this time with less frivolous HEHE LOL content and more valuable content for the world to see. For one thing, I need some cash, and HEHE LOL just isn’t SEO-friendly. After getting accepted with funding to my favorite school, I’m now on a mad dash to save as much money as possible before the big move to buy the things that will enhance my day-to-day living in grad school: nice furniture, a comfy bed, a Roomba, nice kitchen stuff, good beer every week, etc.
I have to be out of here by the end of August, so the timeline is very short. My consulting job pays well but doesn’t give me enough work. I could play poker, but I don’t think I can handle the lifestyle anymore. Last January, I came up with a new way of hustling: eBay reselling. My product source: garage sales. Yep, that’s right, those things where people haul out their junk and throw it on the lawn for strangers to come and pick at it. So, time and passion permitting, my blog will be dedicated to the fine art of navigating garage sales, picking out the good items, haggling down the prices, listing them on eBay, managing your inventory and dealing with your few invariably pissed off customers. I’ve made about $4000 in 3-month period, the first half of that characterized by a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning.
While I want to make as much money as possible, I find that it helps to set a concrete target. From garage sales, I would like to make $12,000 by the end of August. If I attain this, I believe I will be the wealthiest graduate student in the universe at the start of my first year.
