THE Work At Home Guide

Have you been wanting to start your own flea market business but not sure what you should sell or just didn’t think you had enough money to get started? Don’t let that stop you. I’m going to tell you how to get tons of stuff for free which you can resell for a profit.

The only real caveats here are that you will need a way to pick up all of this free stuff and a place to store it. Of course, you can start on a much smaller scale and only pick up what you can carry and store in your cars or sheds until your flea market business starts to grow.

I bought and sold at flea markets for quite a while and one thing I found is that even when you find a great source to buy product, the next week there would be a dozen other vendors selling the same product for less.

The free source of product I’m going to show you makes it hard for anyone to undercut your prices because the products are not new, retail items with a fixed cost and value.

Ok, let’s cut to the chase.

An excellent source of free product you can sell at the flea markets comes from garage sales. You see, every weekend there are probably hundreds of garage sales depending on where you live and most people really just want to get rid of the stuff they’ve cleaned out of their closets, garages, attics and sheds so when they are finished with their garage sale, they want the rest of it gone.

There’s your free product!

If you check your local craigslist.org ads under “For Sale” in the sub-categories of “Free” and “Garage Sales”, you will find postings wanting people to come pick up the stuff they don’t want anymore. Some of it will be junk, some of it is in great condition and some of it will be resellable if you are handy and don’t mind doing a little cleanup/repair work.

If you want to get the jump on others who may be doing the same thing then don’t wait for the ads to appear asking for someone to pick up the items they want gone. Go through the “Garage Sale” listings and contact each one and let them know you will haul off their unsold items free of charge.

Even better than that, print out some business cards and make the garage sale rounds and leave your card with them in person. A lot of garage sales won’t even be listed on Craigslist and even if they are, there’s a chance the people having the garage sale won’t even check or respond to messages sent regarding their ads.

Anything you pick up that you don’t want to resell, just drop it off at your local Salvation Army or Thrift Store and be done with it.

Remember, you pay nothing for this product so your whole purpose at the flea market is to move it. Don’t get greedy, keep your prices low and sell, sell, sell.

Two natural business growth paths for this business model are…

1. Sell just enough at the flea markets to cover your gas and storage expense and possible save up for a box truck while you stockpile merchandise until you have enough to open your own thrift store. I’m sure plenty of thrift stores have been opened using this method.

2. As you start making money, reinvest the profits by going through the actual furniture/household items for sale section at Craigslist and start buying appliances, living room, dining room, bedroom and other resellable items until you have enough to open your own second hand furniture store. Always, always, always negotiate a lower price than what they’re asking. Every dollar you talk them down is a dollar more you can make when you resell. Don’t be afraid to say “Thanks anyway” and leave. There will always be another deal down the road.

If you decide you like selling at flea markets and don’t want to move towards opening a thrift store or second hand furniture store but would like to upgrade the merchandise you are selling you can go one of these other directions for your product purchasing.

1. Buy product in bulk from oversea companies through sources such as Alibaba.com. The downsides of this are:

• You have to buy in bulk
• There may be language barriers
• Beware of knock off product brands
• Lack of legal recourse for bad transactions
• Other vendors can use source and undercut your prices

2. Bid on storage unit auctions. Most storage units auction off the contents of their unpaid storage facilities to recoup some of their lost rental fees. Some of the upsides of this are…

• You can get high quality merchandise at a low cost.
• Occassionally a “real treasure” is hidden in the contents.
• Some items like digital cameras & collectibles can be sold on Ebay to maximize profits.
• Unique items with little to zero direct competition at flea markets.

There are a few things you should know if pursuing this avenue like how to work with your bidding competitors instead of against them. How to cherry pick the high value items and get the units cleaned out for free by giving away the low hanging fruit which is especially useful if buying 10-20 units at a time.

And most importantly, knowing what to look for to make an immediate determination how much you should be willing to pay for a storage unit. (you have to stand at the open door and can not enter the unit to scrounge around before the bidding starts).

I hope this gives you an idea of how to do something to start making some extra money if that’s what you’re wanting to do. It doesn’t have to be that hard, just take action and get started today.

If you want to find out more about Storage Unit Auctions you can get more free tips and tricks at Boxes of Cash.