One of the biggest mistakes people make when holding a garage sale is not advertising enough. Most people think that it is enough to put a single ad in the local paper one week before the sale. Usually these people are too worried that they will lose money on their sale because the ad costs too much. That is nonsense.
When you don't advertise much, you don't get many customers. When you don't get many customers, you have to sell at their price, because if you don't, there is no other customer looking to buy that item. However, if you have a lot of customers looking at the same items, you can set the price and not need to haggle because you know that there is already another person wanting to pay for it. The more you advertise, the more customers you get, and the more you are in charge.
Most people don't bother to use flyers very much anymore. Perhaps they think they are too busy to put them out, or that they won't work. However flyers are not that difficult to use effectively. When done right they can bring tons of people into your sales. You just need to keep in mind that while places with bulletin boards set up for flyers and such get a lot of traffic they also get a lot of 'flyer competition'.
This means that your garage sale flyer MUST STAND OUT and CATCH PEOPLE’S ATTENTION or it will simply be lost in a sea of paper! So, use bright paper, and a LARGE BOLD HEADLINE that gets attention by being different. Then let the rest of the flyer give the details of your sale. Let me say that a little differently: you need to use a headline that causes people to stop and read your flyer.
This does not mean you need to be wildly promotional or crazy with your headlines. But if there are 19 flyers on the board that say "Garage Sale on Saturday", and your's is the same, it just won't be read. However if your flyer says something different it will attract more attention. So try something like the following instead:
- We’ve Got What You Need for your garden at 90% off new prices
- Huge Discounts On all Home Products this Saturday
Then all you need to do is print them up and put them in your car and ask if you can post one at every store you visit during your weeks chores. No extra work is involved at all. Take these ideas and run with them and your next garage sale will be on its way to a resounding success.
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