The Most Epic of Moving Sales - Part 1 {Day 6}

Yesterday I talked about how we sold most of our high value items. Today, I'll talk about our huge moving sale, and what we did in order to make upwards of $1500 in three days.

First of all, in order to make a lot of money at your moving sale, you need to follow three absolute rules: 1)Price your items to move! 2)Advertise and get the word out! 3)Be very, very willing to negotiate. Let's chat about each one.



1)Price your items to move! The goal of having this sale was to get.rid.of.stuff. The goal was not to get what each individual item was worth, but rather to lure people in with great deals, hoping that they would end up with several things instead of just that little 50 cent sale. I'd say, on average, each customer spent between $10 and $20, which is so awesome for a yard sale! here's a sampling of what we priced items at.

• Kids' clothes 50¢, kids shoes sizes 0-3 $1.00/pr, 4 and up $2.00/pr. If clothes were a matched set or brand name or adorable, I sold them for $2.00/set. On the last day of the sale we did "fill a grocery bag with clothes for $5 and sold at least 5 or 6 bags this way.


• Glassware (glasses, vases, small bowls, etc) and mugs were 50¢ each or 3/$1.00 I sold all of my kitchen utensils (spatulas, whisks, tongs, etc) in a big bin $1.00 each or 3/$2.


• Women's shirts $2.00, pants $2.50 and dresses $3.00 (Remember, I had already set aside the best stuff and sent it to Thredup)


• Men's shirts and pants $2.00


• Boots (adult or children's) $5.00/pr


• I grouped a lot of stuff in ziploc bags - so 5 bottles all together for $5, two hooded towels for $2, etc. This makes people buy a little more, and it kept me from having to price every.single.thing. If someone asked to just buy one item from the bag I said yes, then adjusted the price of the bag accordingly.


• DvDs $1.00 each, CDs 25¢ each. I sold ALL of our DVDs and CDs at these prices.


• Techie cables were $1.00 ea or 3/$2.00 A surprising amount of these sold.


• My higher value toys were priced individually (Melissa & Doug toys, wooden puzzles, Tinkertoys, etc) All other toys were 50¢ each, stuffed animals were 25¢ each.


• Picture frames were $1.00 each, $2.00 for very large ones. These all sold. I guess I have good taste in frames!


• Board games were between $2 and $5 depending on their condition. If I had purchased them at a yard sale, I tried to list them for the price I bought them for.


• If items were brand new, in their original packaging, I sold them for 50% of their purchase value.


• For everything else, I tried to price things at a price I would be happy to pay if I were the one at the sale. Pretending I was my own customer helped me to not be sentimental about the "value" of any said item.

2)Advertise and get the word out!

• I always list my sales on Craigslist, and this time was no different. This time, however, I listed the sale each day so that the posting would be at the top of the page each day, instead of people having to scroll down to find my listing. In the listing, I uploaded pictures of the things I had for sale, as well as a picture of my moving sale sign. I told people to look for the hot pink signs!

• I paid $50 to list my sale on estatesales.net In order to do this, I had to let people into my house - so I cordoned off the upstairs, kept the garage closed, and allowed people in the first floor, basement and of course the front yard and driveway. I was nervous about letting people into the house, but everyone was very nice and respectful of our home, and it worked out great since the weather didn't cooperate with us! We got a lot of traffic from this site, and I would have gotten even more if I had listed the sale earlier. They do email blasts in advance, and you can list up to seven days ahead of time. I listed mine Wednesday night, so I didn't really get traffic from this site until Friday afternoon and Saturday.

• I also posted the sale on my personal Facebook page (and several friends were kind enough to share my post!) as well as our local Mom's Resale Page on FB. I got quite a few friends and other traffic from Facebook, which surprised me!

• Great signage. I put up about 17 signs in our neighborhood. I put them at every large intersection surrounding our house, on the sides of the street that you would make the turn from. I used hot pink posterboard and a black sharpie, and taped the posterboard to foam board to make it stronger. I put them all up on Wednesday, but drove around each evening to check on them. Some had blown away or gone limp from the rain, so I replaced them as needed. I made my signs as simple as possible: MOVING SALE in big letters, the days of the sale, the address and an arrow. I've found that people never pay attention to the times of a sale, and any additional info (what you have for sale, etc) just makes the sign harder to read. One additional note: when the sale is over, please take down your signs! It's the polite thing to do!

3) Be very willing to negotiate. People love to haggle at yard sales. It's just what people do. They're looking for a deal, and you're looking for the items to no longer be in your possession. So - make a deal! People often asked me what was the best price I could do on their selection of items. I would add up the value of their items and round down to the nearest whole amount. So - if they were buying $17.50 worth of stuff, I would say $15. There will always be the people who try to point out all the defects of an item in order to get a lower price. I knew that I was selling nice stuff, at very fair prices. So if they started to point out problems, I would simply state my price and say "I'm not willing to go lower than that." You have to be firm but friendly. Most of them time people were very willing to meet in the middle, at a price both of us were happy with.

So those are my absolute rules for a successful yard sale! Tomorrow I'll talk some more about my particular sale and some general tips for a great sale.