The
money-making technique covered
in this chapter
requires
nothing, no special training, and no investment.
Well, not exactly nothing. Do you have a dollar? Let's
start
by tripling it into three dollars. What you are
about
to
read works as well with one dollar as with $500+. We used
to do it every week. We spent over $500 per week
and turned
it
into over $1500 per week! (We recommend
that you start
small,
however, with $1 to $100, until you gain experience.)
As the weekend approaches, your newspaper
will list
yard sales in the classified section. These sales occur on
Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday from early in the morning until
the
middle of the day. Even if you work on the weekend, you
can probably
go to many of the early sales. Do so.
Buy
anything
that looks like it can be sold for at
least three
times
more than you have to pay.
You
can buy rocking chairs for $5-10 which are worth
$35;
you can get blue jeans for 25 cents that are worth $5,
you
can get books for 5 cents each. You get the idea.
Of
course not every sale you go to
will be great, but
at
least 1/3 of all yard sales have incredible
deals. The
reason:
Lets say a homeowner just bought a new 32" color TV.
This new
toy is very exciting, but the old one, the 25" TV
they
bought last year now lives in the
garage. It is no
longer exciting
at all. They realize how much is is worth,
but
they just want it out of the garage. They don't want to
hassle
with selling it properly. (If only they knew how easy
it
is!) The first person with $35 gets it!
I
have purchased a sewing machine for $5, a reclining
chair
for $5, a great big wooden desk for $30, a blender for
$2,
a computer printer for $15, table lamps for $1 each, an
oxy-acetylene welding
set with full tanks for $125, an air
conditioner
for $35, even a Mercedes-Benz for
$500! And
these are
just a few things, just the things that cross my
mind
right now.
As tempting as it may be, do not keep
these things for
yourself.
If this only showed you that you can
have three times
more toys
with the same amount of money
when you buy used
things
at yard sales instead of new things at
K-Mart, if
would be
well worth what you paid. But we'll go a big step
past
that!
How do you sell the things? I have
some systems. The
first
ones are great for those of you who do not like retail
selling:
* Second-hand stores always need merchandise
but don't want
to risk
much money. They
love consignments. The
consignment arrangement
works like this: You bring things
into
the store, but you get no money
until one of
your
things
sells. Then you get all but a certain percentage. For
example:
You buy a TV set for $10. It sells for $40, but the
store charges
25% commission. You
get $30. That's $20
profit,
or 200% in one week! You can do this
with hundreds
of items,
and at several stores. If you
invested the same
$10
in a money market account, you would get $2,
(20%) and
it would
take a whole year! Do not
hesitate to ask stores
about
consignment. They want to make money
with your stuff
as
much as you do.
* Consignment
to specialty stores
works even better. I
bought
a Canon AE-1 35mm camera for $40. If I had sold it in
a
second-hand store, it might have taken
two weeks for a
customer to
come in who
needed a camera. This customer
might
have paid $120. Instead, I took it to a
camera store
who sold
it in less than a week for $250. They exposed the
camera
to many people who needed cameras,
and they were
capable
of explaining the specific details of this camera to
close the
sale. After the store's 25% commission, I made
$187.50;
a profit of $147.50.
*
You can hold your own yard sales. It
does not matter
where you live, as long as you put an ad in the
paper. You
can
make over $1000/day, but you can only have a
couple of
sales
per month. If you have too many sales, you may have to
deal
with upset neighbors.
* Selling
at a flea
market works well. It helps if
you
display
your stuff well and make sure prices are
marked on
everything. As with most types of selling, state your
price
right up
front, even if it
seems too high. People will
rationalize
and arrange their mental budgeting to make
room
to buy
your item. But if the price is not stated, they may
automatically
assume it is too high and walk away.
*
Starting your own second-hand store is a possibility. We
recommend that
you get a lot of experience with
the other
selling
techniques first. You need to know
that you can
cover the
large overheads of having a store before you try
it. One tip: do as much yourself as
you can. The
huge
expense
that breaks many new retailers is employees.
SHOP CAREFULLY
Knowing what to buy and what to turn down
is 90% of the
reason
you will succeed well.
* Check
items for proper repair: Toaster ovens, cameras,
typewriters,
bicycles and TV's
are especially prone
to
malfunction. Clothing
that is stained or torn will never
sell.
Don't buy broken things unless you
know that you
can
fix them.
If parts are required, consider
that the parts
may
cost more than your profit.
You can't sell broken
things. A portable
cassette
player ("ghetto-blaster") that you could normally sell for
$35,
with a knob missing will not sell for even $3.
*
Consider style: 8-track stereo and Super-8 movie equipment
are
dead in the marketplace. Nobody will
buy these things
because they have been replaced with videotape and
cassette
technology. For the same
reason, an electric
typewriter
that was $300 is now worth $25, because new electronic
ones
cost
less, yet have far more options.
*
You must know what a thing is worth before you buy it. I
don't buy clothing because I know little about
clothes. If
you
are a photography buff, or if you
like gardening, you
read the
magazines in your field, you know what's popular,
and
what prices things go for. In other
words, if you are a
computer
expert, you would recognize a modem, know
what it
is
worth, and how to sell it best.
Get
a Sears catalog to use as your guide.
Never buy a
thing
for more than 1/6 of its new price.
*
When in doubt about a specific item, let it go, there will
be
other deals.
*
Never quietly pay the full price for an item.
Always ask
the seller
if they will take less than the stated price.
There
is considerable art to this
"wheeling and dealing."
Generally, open
the bargaining at 2/3 of the asking price.
Let
the seller know that you can afford to pass up the offer
if
the price doesn't meet your limit. Take
a little time to
wheel
and deal on high-ticket items, but not
on the small
stuff. It is
worth ten minutes of your time to reduce the
price
of a piece of furniture by $100, but how much time is
it worth
to reduce the price of a paperback book from 15
cents
down to 10 cents?
For those of you considering this
great opportunity,
quit considering and start doing it! You may like to learn
even
more (and increase you profit
even more). ANOTHER
COMPANY
presents our new IBM-compatible tutorial disk:
GARAGE SALES FOR FUN AND PROFIT
This
disk is easy
to use and
works with any
IBM-compatible
computer. It teaches all about
buying and
selling second-hand merchandise. It has guideline
charts of
cost
and markup. It tells you all about
the pitfalls to
avoid. And it tells about detailing and repair for
those of
you
who would like to spruce up merchandise
for even more
profit.
Price:
$19.95 (No extra charge for postage, handling or tax!)
Send
to:
ANOTHER COMPANY
P. O. Box 298
Applegate, OR 97530 USA
Or
call:
503-846-7884
Please specify 5.25" or
3.5" disk size.
(Outside USA: Send US funds drawn on a US
bank)
____________________________________________________________
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