Spring is here and we all know that warmer weather brings yard sales! Soon, weekends will be filled with shoppers looking to find the best deals on the items that others no longer need or want. Having a yard sale can actually be a lot of work though if you don’t take the time to ensure that you’re planning a great yard sale. Keep reading to find out how you can have a great yard sale and how to actually profit from it!

I suggest investing in this yard sale kit. We have used the signs several times (make sure to draw arrows pointing toward your sale!) and the balloons are great to draw attention to your sale or even to higher priced items. Also the apron is great to keep your money on you!

How to Have a Great Yard Sale (and actually profit!)

1. Pick a Good Date – Having your yard sale on a holiday weekend or the weekend of the high school baseball playoffs are in another city is not the greatest idea. Ideally, you want a date when there isn’t a whole lot going on. If everyone is out doing something else (sports, holiday, etc), they won’t be interested in stopping at your yard sale. They’ll be too busy getting to where they’re going! Google “events in YOUR CITY HERE” and the date you’re looking at and see what’s happening. If there isn’t much, great! If there’s something big, consider changing your date. Also be sure to check the weather for your prospective dates as well. Most weather websites allow you to check at least 10 days into the future so use that to help with planning.

2. Advertise well – It used to be that the best way to advertise a yard sale was the newspaper, but these days that isn’t quite as true. While a newspaper advertisement won’t hurt your sale, it won’t necessarily make or break it. You do still need to advertise though. Print up a few flyers and staple them to telephone poles around your town the day before your sale (be sure to remove them after your sale so you aren’t littering). One the day of your sale, be sure to place signs on both ends of your street with an arrow facing toward your sale. I also like to put a sign on each side of the street so that traffic from either direction can see it. Consider putting a sign in front of your house too so that it isn’t too terribly hard to find your home; this is especially important if the house numbers are hard to read. You’ll want to advertise online as well. About a week or so before your sale, place ads on sites like Craigslist and in your local Facebook groups. Refresh your ads as the week goes on, but try not to be spammy about it. The better advertised your sale is, the more visitors that you’ll have coming to it and visitors to your sale equal money made for you. I also like to post pictures of the sale the day of, int eh facebook groups. Every time i get people who come for certain items they saw in the pictures!

3. Be Organized – No one wants to dig through countless boxes and bags to find the deals. Be sure that your items are well organized and easy accessible. Group clothing and shoes by sizes. Group toys and games by type. Keep your household items all in one place. If you absolutely must have an item in a box or bag, be sure that you clearly mark what the item is. Also, be sure that your prices are clearly marked. Not having a price on items can kill a sale because some people just aren’t comfortable asking. If you find that you have a lot of items that are the same price, consider creating a table that is just for that price. Clearly mark the table and be done with it. I have walked away from many a sale simply because the items were not organized well enough to tell what was really for sale.

4. Join Forces – If you haven’t got quite enough items to hold your own sale, join forces with a friend and have a 2 family sale. The more families that are involved in your sale, the bigger it will be. Big sales generally do better than smaller sales because there is more variety in the items being sold. I have completely avoided sales in the past because they were simply very small and appeared to have no items that would interest me, however I will almost always stop at a larger sale.

5. Toss the junk — If you wouldn’t use it in your own home because of its condition, if it’s missing pieces or if you can’t get it to work? Don’t try to sell it. Doing so will only cause two things to happen: One, you’ll likely have a lot of people walking away from your sale because they see that you’re selling junk and two? You will damage your reputation so any future yard sales that you hold will be doomed from the start. Selling high quality items that are completely there and work the way they are supposed to will have the money rolling in and the things you no longer want rolling out.

6. Negotiate with the best of them – Some of the best price hagglers that I have seen have been yard sale shoppers. They come prepared with a very specific price in mind (usually) and most of them are rock solid when you try to budge them from that price. Learn to negotiate right back with them and your sale will profit. Most yard sale shoppers are the type that will simply walk away from a sale instead of paying a price that they don’t believe is fair so refusing to haggle will only cause you to sell less. Also, don’t over-price your items in hopes that someone will haggle you down. They won’t. A yard sale aficionado is able to tell when you’re prices are gouged and instead of haggling, they’ll walk.

There you have it! The 6 tips above are basic, but if followed, you’ll have a great yard sale, you’ll actually profit and at the end of the weekend, you’ll have a nice chunk of change in your pocket! I have always used these tips when I have a yard sale myself and have never earned less than $1,000 over the weekend, for clearing out my garage! f course, I can’t guarantee you will, but follow this tips and I guarantee you will earn something!

Want even more advice on your yard sale? I highly recommend the book Yard Sale Pro: How to Have a Wildly Successful Yard Sale.