Top 10 Tricks For Turning Your Junk Into Money

If you’re looking to declutter a little bit, there’s no better way to do so than selling your junk online. Here are our top 10 tips and tricks for getting the most money out of your old, unwanted stuff.

Image: Quazie.

10. Find Out How Much It’s Worth

The first thing you need to do, obviously, is to get an accurate figure for how much your junk is actually worth. After all, it may not be worth selling if it’ll only net you a few bucks. You can always search eBay’s completed listings for a good guide.

9. Make Sure It’s In Good Condition

Whatever you’re selling, it’ll fetch a better price if it’s in the best condition possible. If you have the original box and other materials, that’s fantastic and the more you’ve protected it from wear and tear, the better.

8. Securely Wipe Any Data On Your Gadgets

If you’re selling an old piece of tech, one of the most important steps is to wipe it clean. You don’t want to send someone a laptop they can easily hack into and steal your personal information. Here’s how to securely wipe your laptop before selling it and here’s what you should do to your phone — including a secure wipe and obviously, deactivating it from your current number.

7. Take A Good Picture

One of the best ways to make your stuff more enticing is to take a good, high quality picture. If all you have is a blurry mobile phone photo or two, people are going to pass it by for the more professional looking ones. Here are some tips for getting the best photo possible, like using white posterboard and getting natural light at sunrise or sunset. A decent camera always helps too, of course, but some good lighting can go a long way. Also, never use stock photos of products — it’s always more convincing from a buyer’s perspective to see the actual product they’re purchasing.

6. Figure Out Where To Sell It

So your stuff is all ready to be sold, but you need to decide: is this more of an eBay transaction, or is it a better candidate for the classifieds? Each outlet has its pros and cons, and it depends on how much your stuff ends up being worth. Of course, if you’d rather not deal with strangers, you can try just selling to your friends using Facebook.

5. Avoid Unnecessary Fees

It may seem like penny pinching (literally), but why pay extra fees and percentages of your sale when you don’t have to? For example, use a bit of simple HTML to embed extra photos on an eBay listing without incurring fees. Keep track of what fees you’re paying as you sell and Google around to see if there’s a way around them. You might be able to make a few extra bucks off your sale.

4. Avoid Coming Off Like A Scammer

Like a high quality photo, you should make sure your listing doesn’t fall into any of the unprofessional traps that can make you look like a scammer. A detailed description, proper grammar, and honesty about its condition can go a long way. Check out our checklist for remembering the important details and make sure you sound reliable. You’re likely to get a lot more hits (and money) if you do.

3. Maximise Your Listing’s Views

The more people see your listing, the quicker you’ll sell your stuff (and the better prices you can get for it). There are a lot of tricks to maximizing the eyeballs on your page, depending on the site you use. For example, you should end your eBay auctions between 6:30 PM and 10:30 PM, when most people are browsing the site and your soon-to-end listing will be at the top. You should also check and make sure your listing is spelled correctly.

2. Sell Your Stuff Quickly

Patience will likely get you better results than being hasty, but if you want to sell your stuff quickly, you can bundle items together or use eBay’s “Buy Now” feature to give buyers the option to purchase you goods immediately.

1. Don’t Get Screwed

Unfortunately, when it comes to dealing directly with other people, sometimes someone will try to screw you out of your well-deserved money. Know what you can do to avoid getting screwed online and know the rules for your specific site, too. You can use more dastardly methods to deal with eBay deadbeats.


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