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Best Places to Sell Your Stuff to Make Quick Cash

Posted By Don On In Make Money | Comments Disabled

I am not a fan of clutter. In fact, I have a rule for myself that every time I buy a new shirt or pair of pants, I have to get rid of an old pair. Still, I do find other things lying around the house, unused. For example I had an old home theater system that I no longer was using. The other day I “found” an old digital camera I never use anymore.

This inspired me to do some further cleaning out and de-cluttering around the house. As it stands right now, I have about 20 things I am looking to sell to make money [1], from books to electronics and everything in between. The ultimate question is: where is the best place to sell this stuff for top dollar? Below are the various places I use to sell my stuff for quick cash.

4 Places to Sell Stuff for Quick Cash

  1. Half.com
    Half.com [2] is a company owned by ebay. I use this site for selling my old DVDs and books I no longer use. At first, I was going to use Amazon FBA [3], but ended up getting burnt because of the low selling price of the DVDs. After paying to ship them in and after Amazon took their cut, I was walking away with a cool $0.18. That was after I raised prices because I was losing $0.15 on the previous sales! Unfortunately still, when I raised prices, my sales basically ended.

    So, I turned to Half.com. I was pleasantly surprised when I was listing my books that there weren’t any others listed. I wasn’t selling unheard of books either. One was a copy of Freakonomics [4]. While some might see the lack of titles as a sign to run, I saw it as an opportunity – a monopoly. I could charge anything I wanted. I ended up listing the book at $5 and the next day it sold. In fact, I sold 4 books within the first few days.

    Half.com took their fee and reimbursed me for shipping, and I walked away with $4.25. That’s around 15% in fees, which is a lot, but better than what was happening with Amazon.

  2. Craigslist
    For the larger electronic items, I used Craigslist to sell. I could have gone the ebay route, but didn’t want to deal with shipping. The downsides to Craigslist are annoying to say the least:

    • People bailing at the last minute
    • People low-balling you big time
    • People haggling when they do show up
    • People not responding

    These are the main issues I deal with. The low-ball offers don’t bother me and the people who don’t call back are slightly annoying. But the ones that bail at the last minute and those that haggle are the worst. At first I would let the people talk me down, but not anymore. I already price my stuff to sell, so if you want the item, pay full price for it. Most times, if they’ve driven to get the item, they have the cash and won’t drive away without buying – unless the item is in bad condition. For more see 10 Ways to Maximize Craigslist Revenue [5].

  3. Ebay
    I use ebay [6] for a few things here and there. Usually it is for smaller items that I know I could get more money for if it’s in front of more eyes, but the price is too low to make sense to sell on Amazon [7]. I’ve sold a few things recently and haven’t had any issues. All my items sold and I received an amount of money that I consider reasonable for the item.
  4. Amazon
    I usually only sell new items on Amazon [8], using their FBA program. I have seen more and more about their trade-in program where you can trade in your unused stuff to Amazon. I have not used it, but heard that people get a decent price for trading in DVDs, books, video games and electronics.

    The way it works is you go to the trade-in store and see if you can trade in your item. If you can, and the price is good, you ship it to Amazon for free (they provide a shipping label), and they inspect the item(s). If everything is good, the money you make will be credited to your Amazon account.

    As a test, I just checked the Freakonomics book [4] on Amazon and I could get $2 trading it in. Not bad, but I’ll take the $4.25 I made. Maybe if future books don’t sell on Half.com, I’ll end up sending them in to Amazon.

Which Is The Best?

So which service is the best for making quick cash? It all depends on your circumstances. If you are looking for a super easy way to make some cash, the trade-in program with Amazon seems like the way to go. If you aren’t in a rush, then the other services I listed are a good option.

At the end of the day, you know how much time you want to put into getting rid of your old stuff [9]. That will most likely be the biggest driver of which platform to use.

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