How to Have a Successful Yard Sale

Having a yard sale can be a fun way to cull out things in your house that you're not using anymore. It can also be a great to way to earn some extra cash! As a certified yard sale addict, I've been to my share of them. There seem to be a few commonalities, however, between people who organize very successful yard sales. By careful observation, I've theorized a few simple guidelines about how to host a successful yard sale:

Notify the public ahead of time.

Advertise your yard sale in the classified section of a free newsletter. Oftentimes, a person can place a free ad simply by calling a toll-free phone number and reading it into the phone. Your financial outlay for this preparatory step would be "zero". Make sure that you place the ad early enough so that it gets published about a week before the yard sale takes place. Include a valid phone number in the ad in case prospective buyers want to call you to ask questions. Keep a small notepad by the phone to take notes on what callers ask. They might ask if you will have a particular item for sale. If you DON'T have that item, the suggestion may jog your memory and help you remember about similar items that you COULD include in the yard sale. Write these ideas down on the notepad so that you can prepare to sell the items.

You might also consider announcing your yard sale on flyers that you post in high-traffic areas such as your local post office, grocery store, library, and service stations. If you decide to use flyers, be sure to post the date and time of the sale, your address, and your phone number. Consider buying neon-colored paper for this purpose, since it has a tendency to be eye-catching. Flyers printed on a computer would be preferable to ads written by hand. They would add an air of professionalism to your proposed event.

Plan ahead of time for bad weather. If you have access to a covered carport or a garage, set the yard sale up in there in case inclement weather arrives on the day of the sale.

Give yourself plenty of time to set everything up. Allow about two hours of setup time before the yard sale is scheduled to begin. (Of course, if you plan to have your yard sale in a garage that's normally closed to the public, this will give you the advantage of setting everything up the day before.

Try to have your yard sale on a Saturday between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Some people enjoy "sleeping in" on Saturdays, so you wouldn't want to begin your yard sale too early. Give your prospective customers time to wake up and shake the cobwebs out of their ears. Monday through Friday, most people are at work, so they're not free to look at your bargains. On Sundays, many people are involved in church activities, so that wouldn't be a good day to have a yard sale, either. Saturday is a good day to have one because many people have a tendency to relax on that day.

Have a wide variety of merchandise available for the shoppers. A yard sale is a good catharsis to cull out items in your home that you don't seem to use anymore or that have simply gone out of style. If you don't need an item anymore and it's in decent shape, put it in the yard sale. It might be just the item that one of your neighbors has been needing! Be relentless in culling out your house. You can sell kitchen items, books, clothing, tools, linens, cassette tapes, compact disks, or other items. They might look like unwanted items, but they're REALLY unconverted cash! Ask your husband to cull out some of the ugly old tools that have been sitting in the garage since disco was all the rage. Ask him to consider selling the "duplicate" tools that he owns. If he has five wrenches that are all the same size, ask him to sell three of them. Just ask him to make sure that the tools he donates are in good working condition. Some of his neighbors just might find a few wrenches to complete the set that THEY have.

Make sure that your items are clearly marked. Use neon-colored price tags to catch the eye of the customers. Write your numbers in black permanent ink marker. Large, clear numbers work best. They give customers the impression that they're getting a bargain. Do not use dollar signs in front of your numbers. Instead, if an item is more than a dollar, write ONLY the numbers and the appropriate decimal point. If an item is less than a dollar, make the "cents" sign the same size as the numbers. It would be advisable to end your prices in odd numbers. Consumer psychology indicates, for example, that a "9 cent" item would be sold faster than a "10 cent" item. Advertisers know this and use it to their advantage. (Have you ever seen a commercial which advertised a product for an even "$20"? If you have, it's unusual. Most items that are worth approximately "$20" are actually sold for "19.95".

Offer a small premium to your customers. A "premium" is a bonus that has the potential to make customers more comfortable, and possibly relaxed enough to spend their money on your merchandise. On a hot day, an example of a "premium" might be a disposable cup full of ice and lemonade with any purchase. To your customers, an ice-cold drink might relax them and make them more receptive to what you have to offer.

Try to display your items at waist-level. Yard sale items that are haphazardly arranged on an old blanket on the ground might be ignored. Older potential customers may have issues with their backs. It would be best to display your items on a table that's been covered with a pretty tablecloth or even a pretty bed sheet.

Don't put your items too close together. Leave some space between them so that people can see the sides of an item rather than just the top.

Arrange items loosely by category. Put kitchen items together, linens together, books together, etc. There must be a method to your display, as presentation is extremely important.

Speaking of "presentation", it would be a good idea to put clothes on hangers instead of folding them and placing them on a table. Clothes can get messy-looking very quickly if they're displayed on a table, especially if many people are picking them up to look at them. (I say this from experience. I used to manage a secondhand store.) Some potential buyers will have a tendency not to refold them. No matter how pretty they are, clothes can quickly lose their appeal if they're not displayed in a neat, orderly fashion.

Be sure that you have change on hand when you begin your yard sale. A good rule of thumb would be to start with a ten dollar bill, a five dollar bill, five one-dollar bills, eight quarters, and a handful of dimes, nickels, and pennies, all separated so that you can get to a particular piece of money without digging through all the others. If you have change available, customers won't have to be concerned about having bills that are too large.

Be a good salesman. Be well-groomed. Brush your hair and teeth. Wear clean, casual clothes. Maintain eye contact when you talk to potential customers. Speak with a cheerful voice. Wear comfortable tennis shoes in case you have to lead a customer to a specific item.

Have several plastic grocery bags available so that customers won't have to carry their items to their cars by hand. This added convenience would be a nice touch to add to your yard sale.

I hope that these tips have inspired you to host your own yard sale. Hosting a yard sale can be a lot of fun. It's certainly an outlet for meeting new friends, and you can earn a few dollars in the process! Put a few of my suggestions to good use and you might be surprised at the number of customers that buy your merchandise.

Happy selling!