The selling of the stuff might be the most symbolic part of the process of moving out and moving on from your old life in the name of long-term travel.
I was initially dreading selling my furniture on Craig’s List. I figured it would take weeks, I’d be dealing with flakey buyers, and I’d have a hard time finding purchasers to haul away all of my unwanted furniture.
In actuality, the process was actually pretty easy and, dare I say it, thrilling.
I had originally purchased my furniture two years ago for around $700 secondhand. My final tally upon move-out was pretty close to $600.
Once I got the formula down, I sold off every last item of furniture, every dish, and every fork, in less than a week.
The following is my methodology for how to best engineer a Craig’s List sale:
First: Do A Little Research
To size up the competition, I did a quick search for each furniture item to get an idea of pricing prior to listing. Lots of people had cheap furniture for sale, but the bulk of the cheap stuff looked cheap, and the expensive stuff was mostly listed by people who must have no idea how Craig’s List works.
Even though I know my stuff could probably have fetched a little over what I was asking for it, I was willing to undercut the other sellers in order to get my volume up and make the process quick. As long as I could sell all of my stuff rather than having to figure out how to haul it away, it was worth it to shave off here and there (after all, storage and hauling costs add up).
This step only requires 2-3 minutes, tops.
Next: Market
Most postings on CL are crap with crap photos of crap stuff. It’s easy to get a leg up on the competition simply by using adjectives like “beautiful, ” “chic” and “comfortable” in taglines to get people clicking. Once they’ve clicked, keep it very short, to the point, and informative – including item measurements and pick up requirements. Answer any obvious questions in the posting so that your email inbox doesn’t get bogged down with people seeking information.
Most importantly, have good pictures of your stuff. Just by taking pictures during daylight hours, making sure the furniture was spotless, and using instagram filters, I made my photos look about ten times better than the competition with very little effort.
