How To Sell All Of Your Stuff – Part 3

In Part 1 of How To Sell All Of Your Stuff we gave our top tips for getting started, and in Part 2 we shared two of our favourite methods for selling – setting up a blog and ebay. In this third and final post here are some more ways we used to sell our possessions, and how much we earned from each of them.

Amazon Marketplace

Ebay isn’t a great place to sell books and I had much more luck on Amazon Marketplace.  It is also much quicker to list items on Amazon than on Ebay as you don’t need to upload photos or descriptions.

Just type in the ISBN or name, select your product and click ‘Sell Yours Here’. You select the item condition, make a note about the condition (optional), choose a price and that’s it. It’s easy to list multiple items very quickly. Your items are then listed on the Amazon website for two months and could sell at any time.

You can’t make a profit from all books – the latest paperbacks are often sold ridiculously cheaply by other sellers. The best books to sell are lightweight, specialised subjects and textbooks. The more expensive it is to buy new the better. Amazon is also great for selling CDs and DVDs. In fact you can sell anything that Amazon sells.

If it’s been a while and your items aren’t selling then ‘View your current inventory’ in your seller account and check that you are offering the lowest price in the Marketplace. If not you can reduce ‘Your price’ and make it the lowest price – this works well even if you only undercut the competition by 1p, but it can trigger a race to the bottom with other sellers.

Fees: The fees are high (17.35% + 86p) but the postage allowance is quite generous for lighter books, so you can make some of the fee back here.

Best for: Selling books and for quick listings.

Car Boot/ Garage Sale

We did one car boot sale the summer before we left. We didn’t make very much money and it was a very early morning start, but it was a good way to get rid of cheap items that are hard to sell online such as clothes and books. If you have a front garden then a garage sale would be a better option – and you wouldn’t have to pay the car boot fees.

I considered holding a House Sale Party for friends and selling off the final bits and pieces. We didn’t have time to organise this in the end, but when we did have friends round many of them bought some books.

Fees: £8-10 at car boot sales, free for your own garage/house sale.

Best for: Low value items that you can’t sell online.

Music Magpie

Music Magpie is a UK website that will buy your old CDs, DVDs and games (Second Spin in the US looks similar). You will make more by listing CDs individually on Ebay but as we had over 500 CDs to sell I couldn’t face listing them all individually. The beauty of Music Magpie is that you can quickly sell hundreds of CDs. All you have to do is type in the barcode and they’ll tell you how much they’ll pay. It isn’t much – from 30p to £3 per CD (you’ll get more for unusual albums), but it’s great if you want to get rid of your entire CD collection in one big swoop.

Fees: Free but you don’t earn much per CD.

Best for: Selling CDs quickly.

Mobile Phone Recycling

We found a broken mobile phone in a drawer and managed to get some money for it from a mobile phone recycling company. We used Money Saving Expert’s Mobile Valuer tool to find out which recycling company would pay the most. You can sell working or broken mobiles and it’s very easy to do. You could also sell mobiles on Ebay, and may earn more.

Fees: Free

Best for: Selling mobile phones easily.

Gumtree/ Craigslist

Gumtree and Craigslist are free community listing sites for specific cities. They are particularly good for listing large items like furniture, as you are selling to people in your area. You can attract time wasters though, and you need to keep prices low. We tried listing two items on Gumtree but they didn’t sell. We were happy to leave them in the house for our tenants so we didn’t price them low enough.

Fees: Free.

Best for: Furniture and heavy items you can’t post.

Second Hand Book Shops/ Stalls

Books can be very difficult to sell. After selling what you can on Amazon, Ebay and to friends, you could try selling the rest to a local second hand book shop or stall. We couldn’t find anyone to take them, so ended up giving them to the charity shop.

Fees: Free

Best for: Getting rid of books at the end.

HOW MUCH WE EARNED

The primary focus of selling all our stuff was to lighten our load as we set off travelling with two small backpacks, but the earnings were a happy side effect. We made a decent amount towards our travel fund (well, after we’d paid for the car and boiler breaking down just before we left). Here’s a breakdown of how much we earned by each selling method.

You can see that selling to our networks was more profitable than any other method and took far less time than ebay.

Detailed Guide to Selling Everything You Own

Blogger Adam Baker from Man Vs Debt has written an incredibly detailed guide to selling everything you own called Sell Your Crap.

It’s based on his family’s experience of doing just that and features four separate eBooks: the main guide covers the whys and hows of selling your stuff, and there are three extra books with step by step instructions and special selling techniques for eBay, Craigslist and Amazon.

If that’s not enough there are 10 video interviews with other bloggers and authors who have got rid of their clutter.

I wish we’d had this guide when we were selling our possessions! Our posts are a great introduction but if you are really serious about selling everything you own check out the Sell Your Crap guide here.

What methods do you use for selling things? Leave a comment and let us know!