How to Get Your Cut of Craigslist Riches

At some point during our hectic and busy lives we often run into the problem of cash flow. Or lack there of. A solution to the negative cash flow problems we may be facing is often times said to be remedied by getting a job. But what if you already have a job? Then people would often tell you to get another job. But in an economy like the one we currently live in getting a job has become one of the most difficult tasks we can undertake. It seems like no one is hiring these days and if they are there are easily 50-100 candidates applying for that same job. I remember a few years back when I could walk into a job interview at just about any decent company and position and easily stand out amongst the best applicant. But now with unemployment so high the talent pool of unemployed job seekers has about tripled in size. So getting a job is not always in the cards.

There is, because of the economy and lack of jobs, an alternative source of extra income that many people are starting to realize is out there. Many people are flocking to online businesses and home businesses that they can start with little or no capital and quickly become profitable. Some people are even making as much if not more online than on the job they go to everyday. The internet can be a great resource for not only earning some extra cash, but also a great place to learn how to make some extra cash. There are a few ways to make money online that almost anyone can do. Although there are money making options available to everyone online, there are hundreds of ways to earn income with the internet. Some crafty individuals have been able to manipulate the power of the world wide web to their financial advantage. But here we will discuss a few methods that almost anyone or you can do to get your share of online riches.

Realize that at any given moment there are people with money burning a hole in their pockets. We are a community of consumers and to supply the consumer's demands there are suppliers who take it upon themselves to supply the demand and those reap the financial rewards of that. Taking that into account there are a few ways we can make some cash here and there.

The first way would be Craigslist.org. Craigslist is an online community of people that buy sell and trade good locally without the hassles of having to package and ship an item. You can just make arrangements by phone or email to meet with the interested parties and BOOM, you done. To use Craigslist to make money you can do something as simple as go to the "for sale" section for your city or surrounding area and click the link where it says "free." This is the FREE section where people are giving away something they no longer need. Look through this section for something that interests you and contact them first and the item is yours. You can them pick up the free item, go home and take pictures of it, then post it immediately for sale back on Craigslist. Heck for a quick sale price an item like a free sofa or washer/dryer for $20-30 bucks. Who cares it was free. Then offer to deliver to them for another $20-30 bucks and you just made $40-60 bucks on a free item for one day. Now wash & rinse, and repeat this cycle daily for a nice part-time income. Another way is to look thru the "for sale" section and find items that you can buy cheap and sell for a profit. I found that electronics are the best seller such as cellphones, pc's, and tv's. Remember that when using Craigslist many times people are listing items for sale because they desperately need the money. This gives you bargaining power. NEVER contact a seller and offer them the price they are asking. If you notice the ads I would say about 75% of ads for items for sale on Craigslist will have OBO next to the asking price. OBO means "or best offer." Read(the price is negotiable and anything reasonable I will take!) Offer the seller an amount that's lower than what they want without low balling and upsetting them. To find out the value of an item before you start bargaining you can get the model number or note the make of the item and go to Ebay and do an advanced search and the check mark the box for only ended auctions. The prices in green are the ones that actually sold. Now go down the page and add up the sold items and then divide that amount by the number of sold items. This will give you the average amount of how much the item is worth. Most sellers don't know the true value of what they are selling they just either want some fast cash and will sell it for next to nothing or they have sentimental value or monetary investments in the item and they want a ridiculous amount of money for the item that way higher than the value when you included age and wear and tear. If you face the latter then leave it be. There are hundreds of items listed on Craigslist in any individual category on any given day of the week so the deal possibilities are countless.

Once you have the item in hand and you paid way less than you know you can resell it for and make a profit then now it's time to resell it for you cut of Craigslist riches or even Ebay riches for that matter. I find the Ebay reselling method better for a few reasons but lets start with reselling on Craigslist. Once the item is home then take pictures of the item that you acquired. Look at the description of the post that you saw the item on first and note what wording attracted you to the item. Now create your own Craigslist post with an even better description of the item and with fresh pictures of your own of the item in more detail. Doing this will peak the interest of many more people than the ones who viewed the ad of the item the first time. Now that you know what you paid and what you can sell the item for I would suggest you list the item $30-60 bucks higher than what you paid for the item. If it's a hot and in demand item such as a popular cellphone you may as much as $100 profit on the sale. I personally found a woman who bought a Blackberry under contract and couldn't afford her bill after a couple months and sold it to me on Craigslist for $50 bucks. I instantly resold it within 24 hours for $175 as a quick sale know full well that I could have easily gotten $250-300 bucks easily for it if I was more patient. A hot item is almost GUARANTEED to sell for above what you paid for. So take the first offer that sounds good to you. You never want to tell someone you will call them back after you have fielded other offers because the sale is lost. Know what the minimum amount is that you will accept and reject every offer you get until you get someone who will pay you at least the minimum if not more so you can make a profit.

The next way to get a cut of Craigslist riches and my personal favorite is to take the item you bought from Craigslist using the Ebay value research method about list the item for sale on Ebay. One good thing about this is that you already have an estimate of what you will be paid the item so it's easy to make profit by actions the item with a starting bid of what the average amount was. Once someone bids that amount you will have instantly made you minimum profit. It is almost a sure bet that they item will get many bids and thus raising your profit margin a lot. Another good thing about using Ebay is that you buyers will be from all over the US and not just locally so there will be more interest in your item. I once turned $300 and 2 Blackberry Curves into almost $1000 bucks in under 2 weeks. Here's how: I did my research and found that they were selling on average about $250 each. I went on Craigslist and found a listing for a guy selling Blackberry's and contacted him to buy one. He wanted $200 each and said he had 2 but could get more. I negotiated a deal to buy one for $175 and we made arrangements to meet at his flea market booth. I wanted to teach a friend how to make money this way so I took him along with me witness the fact that this works. When I met up with the guy I saw that he had other cellphones besides the Blackberry's but he made the mistake of telling me that he had had them for over 2 months and cant get anyone to buy them because. (This is where you find a weakness in the seller and use it to negotiate to both parties benefits.) I told him that I would made him a deal and buy all 4 Blackberry's from him if he allowed me to buy them for $150 each. He thought it over a minute and said OK. I knew he would bite because he had phones that he probably paid $100 for minimum that he still hadn't been able to get his money back or profit off of for 2 months so he had money tied up in them. So I bought the 2 phones he had with him for $300 and told him to call me in 3-4 once he had the other 2 and I will buy those. He got a minimum of $100 profit immediately and there was a potential of another minimum $100 in 3-4 days. The family member witnessed the deal and said "WOW! You will make at least $100 on each phone." He was amazed knowing what the average Ebay selling price was. I immediately took them home, took a few up close pics, and listed them for sale in a 3 day auction 6 hours apart so not to compete with each other with a starting bid at $99 each knowing that I could lose $100 on the deal but these were hot items and I did my research so I know I will profit. After the end of the auctions in 3 days one sold for $354 bucks and the other for $282.50 bucks. Profit on the first phone: $204 bucks and on the second phone $132.50 bucks = total of $336.50 bucks doubling my initial investment so now I am sitting with $636.50 bucks in my hands in 3 days no lie. WOW! So I called the guy back before he could call me to let him know that I still wanted the phones and I was not backing out on the deal on him. That way he would be eager to still do the deal for the low price of $150 and not back out the agreed price on me and jack the price up on me. The next day I bought the other 2 Curves from him and took my time listing those a couple days later since they were basically free because I was using money I didn't have a few days before to buy them and I had my original $300 investment in my pocket and not to mention the $36.50 buck left over, lol! On the last 2 since I was "playing with the houses money" I did 2 one day auction to get fast returns on my investment and sold one for $267 and the other for $348 grossing me $615 bucks and netting me a nice $315 bucks extra. So in total I now had $951.50 buck in my hands and a nice profit of $651.50 for about 5 hours of work and about 10 days of waiting.

Try your hand first at buying lower priced items or free items and bargaining down the prices to make a profit. Then use those profits to go after higher ticketed items. This process can even be reversed where you buy from Ebay at lower prices and sell the items on Craigslist for a quick sale and cash.