…I come from a long line of roadside antiquers on my mother’s side of the family. Truth be told, I used to be mortified as a kid when we would be driving along and my Mom would suddenly pull over to inspect something interesting at the curb on bulk pick-up day. Now I understand why she always insisted on driving a station wagon! She’s found big wheels, strollers and other items that she cleaned up and gave away. And her recipients were happy to receive these “gently used” items. There was one time when I was a teenager that she made me help to carry a dresser from the neighbor’s curb down the street into her house. That dresser is still being used today, over 20 years later. Seeing that dresser when I visited my Mom recently got me thinking… maybe there’s something to curbside antiquing after all.

My Uncle is a curbside antiquer, too

His favorite finds are oak furniture and various metals. The furniture he disassembles to make into new items like planters and magazine racks. Then he sells them at craft fairs. He saves the aluminum and other metals until he gets close to Christmas and then sells it all at once to fund his holiday shopping. So with a little vision and some elbow grease, this is a way to boost your income with curbside treasures.

In fact, there’s a pick-up truck who makes the rounds in my neighborhood every Thursday morning…

When we first moved in I thought this was a neighbor’s truck. But we live on a dead-end street and they never parked here. The driver makes a slow drive-by to inspect what’s in everyone’s garbage piles on bulk pick-up day. This truck actually looks like the Beverly Hillbillies are moving in for all of the lamps, bikes, fencing and other items tied onto the truck. But this gal is onto something, (yes, it’s a woman who drives!) She must be a weekly visitor at the local scrap metal place, judging by what garbage she stops to pick up. At first thought you might say, how awful it is to pick the garbage. But it is another income stream to those who are willing and who have a truck or a lot of trunk space!

Take a look at your local garbage trucks too…

When our neighbors were getting ready to move they put out a lot of garbage for several weeks. I noticed that our garbage men were stopping every Thursday and looking through the bulk items. (Before you label me a Mrs Kravitz, I’ve made these observations while waiting at the bus stop with my sons!) What I also noticed is that the garbage truck has a wire bin attached to the belly of the truck. The garbage men place interesting items in the bin. I am guessing that they sell the items at the end of the day.

No overhead = 100% profit (minus time and gas, of course.)

So what do you say? I challenge you to look differently at garbage when it’s bulk pick-up day in your neighborhood. That old whatchamacallit may bring you some extra spending money. Trash or treasure… you decide!

So now that Mother Nature has given us a hint that warmer weather is coming soon, it’s time to go through that closet you’ve been ignoring all winter and clean it out. Find the clothes and items that you didn’t wear or use last season. Dust them off and sell them! C’mon, be honest and ruthless in your assessments and just let them go. You know that you are not going to wear them, so give somebody else a chance. It will free up your storage space and help increase your positive cash flow too.

As a proponent of online selling platforms, I encourage you to set up a free account with e-bay. They have listing sales going on all of the time to encourage sellers to put up listings at no cost. The only time you will pay fees is when your item sells. Just take a picture or two of your items, enter your description and selling details and your sale begins! Make sure your shipping is fair and accurate, it will encourage more bids. And don’t be greedy, your items are bringing in nothing while hiding out in your closet, so take what you can get! IPHONE alert- check out the free app for selling on ebay. Simply snap a pic with your smart-phone and you are well on your way to your first listing!

What’s that-  you don’t want to sell online? That’s ok!

Just look in your local papers for consignment shops. They are popping up all over around my area and it’s a great way to unload extra clothing or household items for a profit. Simply bring in your items in pristine condition, (ahem, would you buy dirty clothes? Yuk!). The shop will give you a receipt and then will put your items on their racks. Each shop is a little different, but most have a “going rate” for like-items such as jeans, shorts, blouses, shoes, etc. They will tell you how and when to check in with them to see how much you made. And you can tell them to donate what doesn’t sell, or you can pick it up again.

Speaking of donations, if all of this is too much work, then consider packing up your unwanted items in green bags and take them to your local charitable storefronts such as St Vincent De Paul, Salvation Army or Goodwill. You get a tax deduction and they get to make some money by reselling your items. Still too much work? Then call your local chapter of  Big Brothers, Big Sisters or Veteran’s Association- they will come to your house!

May your spring cleaning projects bring you extra room in your closet and extra dollars in your wallet!

Here are five starting points for you:

1-      Open your kitchen cabinets to survey exactly how many of your “good” dishes, glasses, pots and pans you actually use on a regular basis. Most of us gravitate toward using the same things over and over because they are up front after emptying the dishwasher. So clean out those cabinets! There is a terrific online market for utensils, plates and other kitchen items. And if you have antique glasses or serve ware from Aunt Sally or Grandma Mary, you could be sitting on a nice chunk of change! (Note to the gentleman of the house: make sure to get your woman’s buy-in on this one, or you may be getting coal in the stocking this year!)

2-      Anyone with kids old enough to hold a spoon has electronic games lying around the house. Take a good look at what your kids are ignoring and sell it online or go to the local Game Stop-type store to sell them. We buy pre-owned DS games all of the time because our little guys are in elementary school and still rough on toys and games. There is a huge market in selling pre-owned games to parents like us who want our kids to have the experience without losing an arm or a leg to purchase games.

3-      Speaking of huge pre-owned markets, you can also sell your old Gameboys, DS, PS, Wii, Leapfrog, etc. The manufacturers are shrewd with making improvements and upgrades every year so that our kids are now programmed to want the latest and greatest version. Instead of having an electronics graveyard in your home, sell the old to help pay for the new!

4-      Did you ever attend an auction at sea? You know, the one where they fill your glass with “free” champagne so many times that you wave your sign around and suddenly you own artwork from a “new, exciting” artist? Well, it’s time to sell that art! We saw a beautiful Thomas Kinkade cottage scene on a cruise but did not want to cough up over $500 to purchase it. So instead of buying the print at the auction we did an online search when we got home. We bought it on ebay for a quarter of what it was auctioned off for at sea. It came with the same authentication papers that are provided at the cruise auctions. So take a look at your pictures. Maybe there’s something worth selling.

5-      Do you own any pets? We have several, including a golden retriever, a cockerpoo and a tabby cat. Our family goes a little overboard at Christmas and sends us gifts for our pets. We are so lucky to receive such generous gifts, but our dogs literally chew through plastic chew toys and de-stuff soft toys in a matter of minutes. So rather than insult our family who so thoughtfully shopped for, wrapped and gave our pets such nice gifts, we sell the brand new, unused toys online. We’ve received several grooming kits, electronic nail files, and laser mouse toys over the years and have sold all of them successfully on ebay. Never underestimate the pet market! (Note to pet lovers: we give our pets other toys and bones that last; they are not sitting around with nothing to chew- lol!)

So there you have it: five potentially lucrative spots in your home to find extra cash for the holidays. May today’s clutter bring you tomorrow’s ka-ching!

So what is this funny sounding Mechanical Turk website? The actual site is http://www.mturk.com and it is run by Amazon. Mechanical turk allows you to sign up as a worker and perform HITS – “Human Intelligence Tasks.” These tasks range from answering surveys to classifying job descriptions to writing short product reviews. I would recommend signing up for a free email account at yahoo or google to avoid being spammed. Many of the surveys want you email address and I always prefer to use one other than my primary email address.

So you basically sign up for a Mechanical Turk account and then look for “HITS” to perform. You must first Accept a HIT then you can complete it. The HIT owner will then review your work and either accept or reject it. If it is accepted your will receive payment in your Amazon payments account. (You can setup an Amazon payments account as part of the sign up process to Mechanical Turk and then link it to your personal checking account to transfer monies.)

I like to hook up my ipod and just zone and perform some HITS at night for relaxation. So try out Amazon’s http://www.mturk.com and let me know what you think!

I recommend setting up a separate email account for eBay. You can get a free email account through google, yahoo or msn. There are bad people that target eBay users with spam sending messages as if they have come from eBay – never click into these emails to access your account. Always go through www.ebay.com.

Now for selling items, first do some research, after you have signed up for an account on ebay you can actually do a search for the item you want to sell – see what the ads look like and research what people are asking for the items. You can also click the show completed sales box and that will give you a history of auctions that have closed for the item over the last 30 days.

Take a good digital picture of your item. (Keep the resolution relatively low though, so it is not a huge file size. 640×480 pixels is fine for ebay.) Also write a true and accurate description – note any flaws.

Research what it will cost you to ship your item. I am based in NY, so I always use the 90210 Beverly Hills,CA ship to calculation to give me an idea of what is the most it would cost to ship it to the other side of the country. Do not skip this step – shipping can be costly – you want to make sure you charge enough for this! eBay does allow you to select to calculate by location and this may be the best choice to use.

I like to employ a pricing strategy of “start low and let it go” coupled with making sure I have the shipping costs covered. So I will usually start my auctions at .99 (Remember we want to make some extra cash, but we do also want to get rid of our clutter so we can focus!)

When you list you auction it will close typically 7 days later at the same time. (You can run shorter or longer auctions but 7 days seems to work well for most items. It gives you enough time to have people who are looking for a particular item search and see your item for sale.) Some of the busiest times on eBay tend to be Sunday night and Monday night – between 8pm and 9pm Eastern time. Ending at a busy time can increase the number of bids your item gets in the last few minutes of the auction. Now don’t be concerned if you put your item up on a Sunday night and you have only one or two (or no bids) by midweek – my experience has been that you get the most bids in usually the last day and typically last hours or even minutes of the auction.

After your item has sold, always wait until you have received payment, in the case of e-checks – cleared payment, before you ship out your item.

Happy Selling

One of the best online marketplaces is Craigslist.com. The site gets an impressive amount of visitor traffic, it is fairly well organized into categories and most important it is FREE to list items for sale! Craigslist allows you to target your local marketplace so it is really great for selling larger items that would be problematic to ship. (Example – This week I am putting a 30 gallon fish tank and an antique Singer Sewing machine up for sale.)

The product descriptions for items sold on Craigslist.com are usually very straight-forward and concise. You don’t want to write a novel. However, you do want to include useful information about the product. Any flaws in the product should be mentioned.

Pictures are worth a thousand words – so spend a little time sprucing up your item and then stage a few shots. (Please note on any items in the antique, coins, stamps or similar items – do NOT clean the item – this can actually reduce the value. In my sales example – the fish tank was cleaned spotless with hot water, the antique Singer sewing machine was just dusted off.) Make sure you show important details of your item and also any blemishes. This will save time when a potential buyer sees an item and then sees a flaw that was not obvious from the pictures.

I prefer not to list my phone number when I sell an item but to communicate with potential buyers over email to start. I also like to meet somewhere in public when the sales transaction takes place. I usually use a parking lot of a Home Depot or local grocery store to meet buyers.

I only accept cash as payment for items. You are not a bank – no need to take on the credit card processing fees on a payment source such as PayPal. You also do not want to be stuck with a strangers bad check.

I hope these tips help! Craigslist.com is a fast growing and exciting marketplace. It is an excellent place for us to start our journey into making money online.

In addition, a clean well-organized space to run your business will facilitate clear thinking, allow easy access to what you are looking for and it also just makes you feel good.   So clean out the space around your computer.  If you haven’t touched something in that area for over a year – THROW IT OUT, or donate it, or sell it on eBay or Craigslist.  Purchase some inexpensive organizers – example: stacking trays, accordion file folders.  Spend sometime at the beginning organizing yourself and you will then be able to start focusing on some of your extra income opportunities.

When cleaning up and organizing put aside anything you don’t use anymore. Remember a good rule of thumb is.. if you haven’t used something, worn something, etc . in one years time – you should get rid of it. We will explore some options for turning some of these items into money in the next post.

Below is a great video that I found on YouTube for organizing your home office:

The purpose of this blog is to explore how we can make money say Hello! (Hopefully hang out and stay awhile too!)  We will primarily explore ways to make extra money.  Most of us are still employed.  However, a lot of us are worried if that will still be the case tomorrow.  Wouldn’t it be great to generate another ADDITIONAL income?  You could use it to pay down debt, to take a family vacation or just to save and start to build the security your family deserves.

The internet provides abundant opportunities for the motivated to generate some extra cash.  In the coming days, weeks and months, we will explore Affiliate Marketing and discuss what works and what does not work.  We will review affiliate marketing books and online programs.