This post is a part of a series. Click all the way back to the beginning (Day 1) to see what you’ve missed!
Day 23: Sell, Sell, Sell!
If you haven’t realized it yet (you’re either brand new or not paying attention to anything but the posts that say FREE Sample!), we’re pretty big Dave Ramsey fans around these parts. I find that usually I’m greeted with warm hugs when I say that or a stoic cold shoulder. No one is lukewarm about Mr. Ramsey – either they love him or hate him. Kind of interesting really because when it comes down to it, what did the guy ever do to you personally? Usually the folks that hate Dave (or any celebrity/person they’ve never truly met before) have deeper issues going on, but I digress. Bottom line, if it weren’t for Dave Ramsey, we wouldn’t have paid off close to $86K since April of 08. And so we’re darn right thankful. End random side rant.
Dave’s constantly encouraging people to sell things in order to reduce their debt (everything that’s not nailed down until you make the kids and the dog nervous). Start with the big items – boats, campers, cars, etc. and work your way down. We didn’t have bigger “toys” and we really didn’t owe enough on our car to make it worthwhile to sell it. We were able to pay that bad boy off in July of 2009. Yay.
We’ve never had much luck with holding a yard sale (it always seems to rain) and honestly don’t have that great of junk. We don’t collect anything and we don’t purchase much.
But we did have a lot of books. Seriously, college+grad school+law school+a passion for reading = a small personal library. So I started by listing and selling as many of them as I could on half.com. I’ve used half for many years to both purchase and sell books (CDs, DVDs, and even VHS tapes) and have had great success. I’m not making a 2nd income but a small stream of extra cash for sure. Here are a few things to consider if you’re going to sell books on half (or a similar site).
- Decide what you can part with by asking the question “Will I ever read this again?” Once I began to sort through things with that lens I was able to sell quite a few books. I kept those with special meaning and gave away ones I thought others would enjoy. And I realized that if there was a book I missed greatly, I could check it out of the library.
- Price them to sell. I usually like to price books that I’m selling on half at just under other sellers have priced it in the same or similar category. My theory is that this places them in the path of consumers more frequently.
- Be descriptive and honest about the condition of the book. I like to share that our home is smoke free. I also share when there are markings or yellowing of pages. And I even share that we’re selling off our books to pay off debt. 🙂
- Categorize books. I have a shelf just for the books we’re currently selling. It’s alphabetized so I can quickly find something.
- Ask others if you can sell books that they don’t want. Thanks to the Queen Mum, we have quite the inventory (with plenty of others I haven’t listed yet!).
- When shipping, use brown paper to wrap hard backed books and some soft back books. You can also save on packing costs by reusing envelopes. The King of Free brings home large used envelopes he’s received mail in at the office for me to mark out and re-tool to sell books. I also keep envelopes, boxes, and packing from our personal mail to reuse. I’ve even been known to ship a book in a cereal box. Don’t buy anything except for maybe a good roll of tape!
- Ship Media Mail (or 1st Class when it’s cheaper). I don’t put insurance or confirmation on a book unless the buyer requests it. I think that’s happened a grand total of once and it was for an expensive book. You get reimbursed for your Media Mail postage rate.
- Keep tabs on your inventory. I think that when you list a new book or two, it must do something to your other stuff. Because after I list something new, I tend to make more sales than if things lie stagnant.
- I often list books at $0.75 which seems like a very meager amount. However, at a yard sale the same book is going to go for a top number of $0.25 (probably less). And places like Half-Priced books rarely give you that much for an average book (and especially not VHS tapes). We’ve paid off debt literally one penny at a time, with this being one of the very ways we’ve done it. $0.75 is still $0.75.
- Once you get paid (every 2 weeks that you sell with half), be sure to put some of the money aside for postage in the future and put everything else on your debt snowball.
- Try not to overuse you Facebook Page as an online auction. It’s great for larger items that you have to sell and an occasional small item. But constantly barraging your friends with “Will you buy my toaster $15” (which is overpriced because they could buy a new one for that) might result in you losing a friend or two. Or at least being hidden from everyone’s feed because you’ve annoyed the crap out of them.
- I haven’t personally used Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or even eBay to sell anything but I know others do with great success. I think they’re all safe places to sell off things you don’t want or need.
- Be realistic in pricing items. If someone could get the same or similar items for the same price new, no matter how much they love you, they’re not going to buy your used junk. 🙂
