Everyone who has a home has these two problems: 1) need more space or 2) need more money. Most homeowners don't have the time or motivation to clean their garages and attics. I'm sure if you showed up offering them more room in their home at no cost to them they would jump at it. You could even offer them some money for the privaledge of cleaning their garage, basement, or attic.
As a Garage Sale Host you can help homeowners get rid of their clutter and free up space while making some money at the same time.
Your Duties
Pass out fliers in your neighborhood. If you live in an apartment, go to a nearby single-family residential area and pass out flyers. Explain who you are. Put your picture on the flier. Let them know you are their neighbor and you live down the street from them (or around the corner).
Let them know that you will clean out their garages for free and haul away all the garbage and unwanted items. You can then take the garbage to your home and have a yard sale or garage sale and sell the stuff keeping all the profits for yourself.
If you don't have a home to host garage sales, ask your client if you can use their driveway on the weekend to have a garage sale. Offer to split the money you get from the sale of their stuff. WIN WIN. Not only does the homeowner get a clean garage, but you will even give them money to do so? Good deal. If you are good at prices you can just pay him a fair price for his half of the stuff. Then when you do the garage sale, you keep all money generated since the homeowner was already paid.
If you are not good with prices and what old stuff will sell for, then just offer the homeowner 1/2 of all proceeds of the sale. You clean the garage, you post signs, you handle the sell, homeowner gets paid and gets more space with no effort on their part.
There are many ways you can run with this. Maybe they dont have a garage to be cleaned but have some items they want to get rid of. You can offer to pick up and haul away and even pay them after you sell them. You take the stuff on consignment. The next garage sale you do, just add the items and sell them there. Now you are making income from two homes at one sale.
You could also go to storage auctions and bid on unpaid storage bins. Take the stuff home and sell it at a garage sell. To find storage auctions in your area, google "storage auctions". You can also visit sites like Online Storage Auctions where you can bid online. We went to one storage auction to see if money can be made, we were able to win a bin for $200 that had a very nice drum set. We were later able to sell the drum set at a garage sale for $500.
How Much Can You Make Hosting Garage Sales?
This will depend on the quality of your merchandise. If you are targeting upscale homes you coud be handling expensive items. More than likely you will be targeting middle-income homes who have junk that's not worth a lot. In one garage sale you could easily bring in $100 to $600 a day. If you are splitting with a homeowner, or get your stuff through auctions, your will have expenses so actual income would be less.
In our test garage sale, we put two guys against each other. Both brought their own stuff. The garage sale lasted from 7 am to 2pm. Both sellers had items priced .25 cents to $5. One brought in $150, the other brought in $225. $20 to $30 an hour. Imagine if there was higher ticket items.
How To Get Started
Just make some fliers and pass them out to homes in your neighborhood. That's pretty much it. If you get calls, go to work. If no calls, either pass out more fliers or maybe change the flyer. Once you find the flier or ad that works for your neighbors, you can then move into other neighborhoods with the same flyer.
