I made Big Bleeping Money with my garage sale!

Morning!

My gosh, to call myself virtually burned out more than an extinct volcano would be to consider myself energetic past all human sanity!

Yes indeed, my delightful opportunities of getting up at 2am every day and pulling 18 hour, ahem, joyful moments of entrepreneuring, coupled with getting our garage sale ready, has finally caught up with me.

But hey, it’s character-building!!

Actually, things worked out better than I could ever imagine.  As always, when I need to produce super-quality work, my drive for perfection kicked in and I accomplished a months’ creativity in 4 days.  But not only that…I was able to parallel process other happenings as well and stay awake and alert until the evening too!  True, I did miss all my karate this week…but these things happen.

But in other exciting adventures, let me regale you with Tales From Beyond Mortal Sanity…ie, my garage sale.

You see, my husband and I love garage sales…we generally relax on the weekends by indulging in seeing "What kinds of goodies can we find today!"  And 15+ years of that…can result in lots of stuff, ahem…accumulating. 

So! We had cleared out the garage 2 months ago, and last night, I dashed up 20-odd signs that I methodically posted all about our town.  And this morning, I hit the roads again while it was still dark, thus ensuring our sale would be seen far and wide.

And then I remembered something from my tradeshow days.

Visual flashes RULE!

I sent my husband to pick me 5 shiny Mylar ballons, and tied one to our street sign, and the other 4 to a 50ft kite string that rose over the main road.  Success! (at least, until our tree ate said kite).   Lots of people showed up and lots of our stuff happily discovered new homes!

End result?  Lots of sales, lots of thrilled customers (I really turned on the humor and graciousness for which I’m known) and I am utterly zonked.  Totally exhausted!  Tomorrow is the second day of the sale, so I really do need to catch up on some sleep some year. 

Here’s some tips I devised for selling more as opposed to less:

• Exude savings!.   I told everyone that this is our Make Us An Offer We Cannot Refuse! sale…and we were open to any offer imaginable.   Certainly, I had to turn some down…but I accepted a lot more!
• Generate laughter!  People love humor, and if you greet them and make them giggle, they feel far more comfortable at your sale.  I told folks we had things for sale on the outside, things for sale on the inside, and things for sale on the rooftop but I couldn’t take folks there – insurance and all that.  They looked at me for a moment and then just started laughing.
• Offer bargains!  Let’s be serious a moment here folks – you probably do NOT want to bring the stuff back into your home!  So offer bargains one cannot resist…and then knock off $2 after calculating the final price.  It’s human nature to think, oooo, even more savings!  (I was able to generate several $50+ sales that way…)

And now?  Now I’m about to pass out….but I certainly did want to share some of the above tips. For tomorrow it shall start all over again.  And I’ll be ready!

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

ps – speaking about Garage sales, want even more great tips?

GARAGE SALE 1000 ORIGINAL POPCORN NORTHERN SOUL RECORDS PRIVATE STOCK

2005 THIRTEENTH ED GARAGE SALE FLEA MARKET ANNUAL BOOK

Garage Sale & Flea Market Annual (2003, Hardcover)

GARAGE SALE KIT SIGNS, LABELS CHECKLIST INVENTORY SHEET YELLOW NWT

1972 Chevy Impala Malibu & Kingswood Garage Sale Ad

GARAGE SALE JUNKIE! Clay Plaque by Way Kool Kids Bev Graham GIFTCRAFT

Garage Sale Signs – 1 DOZEN – 24″ x 16″

Garage Sale & Flea Market Annual 11th Edition Published 2003

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-- Barbara Ling