Craigslist

I've posted about garage sales in the past, and to me, the logical online extension of that is Craigslist. I love to wheel and deal, and CL is an awesome way to do it.

One of the keys I've learned about selling is it's all about connecting to a person with a need. That old saying about being able to sell refrigerators to Eskimos is stupid. All that you have to do to sell something is fill that persons need or want. What CL does is allow you to connect to that person.

I've sold maybe around $12,000 worth of items on CL so far, with most of that being sold in 2007, and what I've noticed has been similar in most of the cases. I have something that someone wants, and when the price is right, I have them lined up to get them. It's easy to sell someone something they want, because instead of selling, you are just helping them buy.

You need to know your product. You need to know your target audience, or at least have a way to get to them. You need to take a picture, write a description and then post it on CL and see what happens. Selling on CL is just that simple.

I want to bring up one thing here though, pricing. I've learned invaluable lessons regarding pricing my items for sale on CL or in a garage sale from doing business on CL. It's about worth or value. How much is something worth? Only what someone is willing to pay for it. That's a beautiful thing. If the most I can get for an item is $5, guess what, I'm going to sell it for $5. It doesn't matter how much money I paid to get that item, even if I only bought it to resell it, the fact of the matter is I can only get what people are willing to pay. This has led me into another truth about business.

You make your money when you buy. Occasionally I buy out garage sales and add them to my own, taking some of the greater objects to sell on CL in the mean time. Normally what ends up happening is that I sell the couple large items right away for the price I paid for the whole garage sale or more. By the time my next garage sale comes along, I'm already selling stuff I didn't pay anything for. Then it doesn't matter to me what I sell the stuff for, I will still be operating at 100% profit, and that's good for any business.

You make your money when you buy. If I buy an item for $80 hoping to sell it for $100, that might be a good idea. However, I'm more likely to pass that up or try to ask for less. I'd rather buy something for $20 and sell it for $40. That's the same profit, but the margin is 300% higher and the money I've tied up in it is 25% of the other item. For the same $80 dollars, I could buy 4 $20 items and hopefully sell them for $40 each, netting me $80. If you thought the $20 dollar profit in both examples was the same, it's not. That $20 was 75% cheaper to produce. This should be business 101, not the junk they teach in school.

Oh well, guess I'm off to discover what else I can sell on CL.