How To Buy & Sell Mid Century Modern On Craigslist For Profit - Vol. 4
This series will show you how to buy and sell Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor on Craigslist for a profit. We use these techniques for buying and selling MCM, but the tips and tricks we will show you here can be applied to any niche.
Craigslist is a great vehicle for scanning items that people are selling too low and turn around and flip for a higher profit. The beauty about using Craigslist vs. buying from a Thrift Store or going to a Flea Market is the low cost of time and energy involved. With Craigslist you don't have to leave your house with out knowing exactly (well almost exactly) what you are going to pick up and how much profit you are going to make on it.
That being said Craigslist has become highly competitive with resellers and so below are the tips and tricks we recommend for beating your competition and getting the most out of Craigslist.
In Vol. 4 of this edition I'm going to share a few tricks with regards to buying items. If you have a certain type of item you think you can make money on, chances are a few other people have already been flipping said item for awhile. So how do we set ourselves apart from our competition?
Save Their Photos, Or Take Photos On Site: This trick has saved me so much time and increased my profits its not even funny. It seems like a no brainer or a tip that you'd read and think "ya makes sense" but then never apply but I honestly hope you just do it because you'll instantly see things sell faster with less work and your profits will rise.
Here's what to do and then the reasoning behind it. Once I've set up an appointment on Craigslist, and I mean instantly after I get off the phone with them, I go to their Craigslist post and I save all the photos from their ad. Some times older people consider a Craigslist appointment as a guarantee that their item is going to sell and will take the ad down so do this right away. Next thing you want to do is when you get there take a couple photos of the item in their space. So its not weird I usually say something like "I just wanna grab a few photos so I know how it goes back together once I've got it home" or "just going to send a photo to my wife real quick and see what she thinks". Next what I do is carry it out to my cargo van and set it on the ground. I tell them, which is true, that I need to make space in my van and its going to take a few minutes so I say goodbye and release them from any obligation to help me load it into my van. Once they leave I find an angle the looks good and take a few more pictures of it outside with the better lighting. K thats the method, now the why.
The why is because ads with pictures sell quick. Ads with good pictures sell quicker. Ads where items are staged in an everyday living situation sell even quicker then quicker. For some reason when people see an item photographed outside or at a storage unit they think you're doing it to make money and you get like 20% less people interested in your item. The reason you use these photos for your post versus bringing it home and staging it is because of time.
To live off this type of work you need to be buying and selling multiple items a month. On average we buy around 40 items a month. If each item takes me 30 minutes to pull out of my vehicle, take inside, stage, photograph, transfer to my computer, and then upload to Craigslist its going to take me on average 20 hours a month in extra time. The beauty about taking their photos is that you don't have to do this. I usually just repost my ad with better keywords (article on that to follow) and use their photos and thats all the work I need to do. If for some reason their photos are too dark or blurry, well you still have the photos you took in their house. And if their house just has poor lighting or its super gross well you grabbed a few shots outside as well.
I have really really cool furniture and decor in my apartment. Im not bragging it just comes with the territory as well as sets me up for my next point. I only bring items into my apartment to stage and photograph if the item sucks or is not mid-century at all and I wan't to leverage my awesome apartment and furniture and art to convince the buyer that the item is way cooler then it actually is.
After reading this I really hope you apply the tips and tricks I just mentioned. You can make this job a full time job if you want to but it doesn't have to be that way. Apply the above info into your life and work less! If you guys like these tutorials on how to buy and sell don't forget to subscribe to be notified of the latest content as it comes out and as always if you don't mind hitting the share button below this it would be much appreciated!
Cheers, MCP
