| I will tell you exactly what garage sale shoppers look for when using online and newspaper classified ads to select garage sales and yard sales to visit for their garage sale picking routes.In perusing hundreds, maybe thousands of yard sale ads, I am constantly surprised by how poorly worded many ads are that are in the classifieds. It is not rocket science.
This is what your garage sale classified ad should contain:
- The particulars. Clearly state the days of the week and datesthat your sale will be open, the Times that your sale starts and ends, and the address. That should be the first line. You may wish to add the closest main intersection, but most people either have GPS, or can use Mapquest on their cell phones these days.
- If other families are contributing to your sale, list your sale as a‘Multi-Family Garage Sale’, or ‘Neighborhood’ Garage Sale. It gives the impression that you will have lots of good swag at your sale. The other families do not all have be physically present at your site. If they gave you some stuff to sell, that’s good enough for me.
- Descriptions that include phrases like ‘years of accumulation’,‘1st sale in years!’, and ‘Grandma’s first ever garage sale’ would pique my interest. How about yours?
- List some interesting items that will be for sale at your garage sale. Garage sale advertising really should not be any different than a sales pitch at a department store. Make people interested in going to your sale. What are people looking for that you can use to get them to your sale? Collectibles, Sports Cards, Vinyl Records, Good Furniture, Baby and Kids Clothes, Toys, Old Books, Sporting Goods, Hunting and Fishing Gear, and Name-Brand women’s clothes are several particulars that will bring in customers.
- Also, list large high-value items like newer electronics, bicycles, lawnmowers, outdoor play sets, large collections like stamp collections and music collections.
- Specify whether you allow ‘Early-bird Sales’. You have to understand that even if you started your sale at 5AM, you would still have a couple of die-hards there are 4:30. Early-birds can be good for getting a jump-start on your sales, but often, hosts are still trying to get their sale set up, and dealing with taking money and answering questions from these people can be annoying. I’ve always thought that it was inconsiderate of the early-birds anyway. I never go to yard sales before the start time, just for that reason.
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