Are you ready?
So, are you ready then? Today is ‘Black Friday’ which means that Monday is ‘Cyber (or Manic) Monday’!
I mentioned these very important dates in a blog post last week but if you missed it you can read it here. I suggested you get yourself in gear for some of the busiest predicted sales days during the festive period.
Black Friday deals have been available on Amazon throughout this week and this Monday is historically the day when everyone goes “Eeek, Christmas is less than 4 weeks away and I haven’t started my Christmas shopping yet!” The credit card is swiftly whipped out and people start spending.…
So, did you take my advice and get your products listed in preparation? I hope so!
If not, there’s still time but you’ll need to list today – use a 3 day auction style listing if you want your items to end on Cyber Monday and if you are running Buy It Now listings make sure you include a reference to Christmas Gifts because every little tweak helps!
Phew!
Ok, now on to other things. Earlier this week I read a story in my local daily newspaper that told of an extremely popular local ‘Sunday Car Boot’ sale that is set to close imminently. This struck a particular chord with me because it takes place at a venue that I have been to countless times since I was just a child and the boot sale has always been extremely popular in the local area. I have always enjoyed going to car boot sales – I think it’s my nosy nature – not only as a buyer, but as a seller too!
I used to regularly have a good old clear out, load up the car with my ‘junk’, throw in the pasting table and off I’d go at the crack of dawn down to my local racecourse which is in fact is one of the biggest car boot venues in the area, attracting browsers from far and wide.
The reasons given were that the venue simply couldn’t accommodate the Sunday sale any more which is very sad – both for the organizer and for the punters. I was interested to read that the organizer – a local gentleman who has been running the sale for years – is now desperately looking for another venue – and this was good to hear.
Why? Because it tells me that car boot sales are still as popular as ever! He could have simply closed the doors and that would be that, but by popular demand he is now actively looking for a new venue and hopefully the sales will continue!
Why am I telling you this?
Well, because following the very successful launch of my brand new eTail Academy, I have received several questions from new members asking me how exactly much capital they really need to get started. I always respond with the good news in fact you actually need very little to enable you to purchase your first lot of stock. I spent approximately £150 on my first small wholesale lot almost 10 years ago, so a figure of around £200 or so is what you should aim to have to enable you to get started.
And here’s where the car boot sales come in!
A long time before I started my online business, I used to do car boot sales simply to make a bit of extra cash once every few months. It’s true when they say ‘one man’s junk is another man’s treasure’ because I used to regularly make over £100 from the bits and pieces that were sitting in my house taking up space and gathering dust.
So, thinking about raising cash to buy your first wholesale lot, rather than just having a clear out at home, it can be profitable for you to purchase a load of inexpensive items from a cash and carry for say between £25 and £50 and then selling these items on at double the price at a car boot sale, thus doubling your capital to spend on stock for your online business.
You might be thinking, why go to the trouble of buying stock at a cash and carry and then selling it at a car boot sale just to make money to buy stock to resell on eBay or a similar site – doesn’t this all sound a bit long-winded? Why not just cut out the middle bit – in this case the car boot sale – and just buy some items from a cash and carry and list them online?
Well, of course you could do that, however the thing with selling anything online is that you have to do your research and be absolutely sure that the items you are going to list will actually sell, and quite honestly, a random batch of cheap cash and carry items most probably won’t!
However, cash and carry items are ideal for car boot sales where you can reach a wide range of people from all walks of life who are mostly just looking for cheap knick-knacks – i.e. non-specifics.
People go to car boot sales for something to do on a Sunday but they are usually not looking for anything in particular. A bargain is a bargain though and most can’t resist buying something whether they want it or not.
So, let’s say you’re off to your local car boot sale. What should you take with you to sell? For example, you could offer a range of goods purchased in bulk from a supplier such as MX Wholesale. They offer items such as packs of dishcloths, cutlery with novelty ends, bottle openers, toy robots, pirate swords and kites.
You could get all this and more for less than £50!
The aim then is to at least double your initial investment, which shouldn’t be difficult given that most of the items will cost you pennies.
If you do decide to do this, a little trick you can use is to only put a couple of each item that you have out on display at a time (to disguise the fact that you in fact have multiples of each item). Mix this in with some personal stuff (old lamps, books, toys etc) so that interested buyers assume that your items are limited and if they want them they will have to buy now or miss out!
If you set yourself a target and do four car boot sales in a month and make £50 profit each time, that’s £200 made in 30 days which is more than enough to get you started on eBay. And all for just a couple of early mornings and a few hours work!