Michael 0:00

What's up? What's up? What's up teammates, Michael from winning to wealth here and this is money talk Monday number 32. This week I'm going to share how we've spent the weekend, make a little bit of money on Facebook marketplace. And I'll give you a few tips to kind of help you do the same thing if you're interested. So

Unknown Speaker 0:17

let's talk about it.

Michael 0:32

Now, before we get into the marketplace part, I gotta let you know kind of like how we even got to the point of wanting to sell stuff on marketplace in the first place. So last week, Taylor and I decided to buy some bikes for just a little exercise and to kind of get out of the house and do something different. And well, we also have this two year old sitting here so we had to get one of those bike trailers too and so we start shopping around and quickly realized that you cannot find a bike in any store in Houston these days. So we went to Facebook marketplace, which I'll be honest, that's probably where we should have started anyway, but hey, that's beside the point. And so we found several bikes there with some being from folks who like bought brand new bikes at the store and just kind of jacked up the prices. And then some being older bikes that people were either just trying to get rid of, or maybe they just saw an opportunity to sell it for more than they could have back in like February or March. I don't know that's whatever. So anyway, we find a few bikes that we like and I start noticing that like these bikes are going like within an hour like all the good deals cuz you know me I'm all about a deal. Like I don't care. If you know you have a bike for 150 bucks if the bike is a $90 bike, it's not a good deal. I want the $200 bike that somebody is trying to get rid of for 150. So we ended up buying these bikes in this couple who had only had them for like three weeks and they just decided that they really didn't enjoy biking in the Texas summer as much as they thought so They actually listed one bike for 120. And they have bought it for 148 plus tax. So after losing out on so many bikes, like I'm telling you, it was like an hour of them being lifted, I'd send a message and it's like this bike is already sold. So once I saw this one and haven't lost like four or five already, I was like, Alright, I'm just pulling the trigger, we'll try to negotiate later, whatever, I just want this bike. And so I get there. And that's where they start telling me about like them given up on this dream they had of like riding bikes on the trail and all this stuff. And it's two of them. So I'm thinking like, okay, so both of you gave up like, Why is there only one bike? Do you have another bike like I'm looking for too? And they said, Yeah, and so I was like, What do you want to sell on that one? And so once they said, Yeah, I was like, oh, great opportunity to negotiate. So I offered $200 for the two bikes instead of the 240 that I would have paid initially. And we ended up meeting in the middle at 220, which is like almost $80 less than what we would have bought them for in the store. So Good deal all around for us. And like I said, these bikes, they are brand spanking new, like the whole time I'm driving home with these bikes in the back of the SUV. I can like smell the rubber from the tire like they're that new. I mean, the wheels are just like super black. Like there's not a scuff on them. I mean, you could just tell like, these are like fresh out of the package bikes, like the bolts hadn't even really been tightened all the way or anything like that. So I'm pretty excited about this. And oh, yeah, I forgot I found the trailer. So these trailers are going for like $130 I have found one for Allison the day before for like 50 bucks. So that's almost 160 Let me see $156 that we saved on the bikes and the trailer off of what we would have paid brand new. So then the next day, Taylor gets thinking about like, Hey, we should clean out our garage because now we got these bikes we got to make room for because well I'll be honest, like we we still got a little bit of junk in there from when we moved in two years ago. And it's not like Awful like, get that picture out of your head, like we can still fit a car in there. And you know, like we can walk around in there without tripping over stuff or anything like that. But there's still just a lot of junk like junk like crazy in there. So Taylor gets this idea to start selling some of this stuff. And the goal becomes like, hey, what if we could sell this stuff and make enough to cover the cost of the bikes in the trailer? Now, me coming from sales, and I haven't sold nothing since April. I'm like bet. Let's do it. Like, I'm all about this. So we started with a few big ticket items. Like I had this air compressor that was like two years old. I'd only use it like one time. We still had our old oven that came with the house that's been sitting in our garage for like over a year now. I know. Like don't don't judge me on that. So and Taylor also has this guitar that her parents bought her a couple years back. And so she took lessons and did that whole thing and just realize you know what, this is just not for me. But this guitar has It's just been around and been with us ever since. I mean, like years now. And so again, the goal is to just get this stuff gone within a week, and to make the money to pay back for the bikes. And so seeing as how we had just spent a few days on marketplace trying to get bikes, I knew the importance of good photos. So we made sure that we had really good lighting and really tried to capture a few images of all of the items from you know, various angles, different angles that way as folks are scrolling, they're able to see everything they're able like a lot of the questions that people ask when you list stuff like that is because you didn't take good pictures or write a good description. So we made sure we took good pictures and we cleaned off any dust or debris or anything like that. made sure the items look real nice. And we took pictures and use the best four or five photos of each item. Now this is important again, because bad photos are just your old dirty items. It's just not attractive. like nobody wants you junk. People want to feel like they got a deal, especially when you're up against some really good competition like is what's happening right now on marketplace. And so once we had the photos done, the next thing we did was search for other listings for those same items. So we wanted to find similar items and kind of get a feel for where they were priced, how long they had been listed, all those sorts of things. And so if we noticed that there were older listings, we tried to make note of the price because again, we didn't want to hold this stuff for two or three weeks. We were trying to make our money back within a week. And so we again, we wanted to move quick, but we also wanted to get $270 back to cover the bikes in the trailer. Now if there weren't comparable items listed, like with the air compressor, what I did was I would look online and try to get the price of some newer ones, then I would check the availability and so with the air compressor, I noticed it like they're sold out everywhere you like you cannot get it and so I knew there was demand and I also knew that I wouldn't have to be too far off from the new price which was a really good thing. So all of this combined took less than, like 15 minutes, and I was happy with the price that we set for everything. And so once we had the photos in the pricing, we set up the listings on Facebook marketplace. And we decided not to cross post on other platforms, because we just didn't want the hassle of like trying to respond to everybody in different places and trying to keep up with who's who. Just all this stuff. And so we made sure the pictures were good, we uploaded them, we had the pricing, right, we listed that on the ad. And then we made sure we use good language in our description. So for example, with the oven, we didn't just we weren't just like old oven, come get it. Like we've made sure that we've mentioned how everything works perfectly fine. The only reason we're selling this oven is because it came with the house and we upgraded our entire kitchen to black stainless like, you know, we basically took out a lot of the questions up front. And so we also mentioned how we wouldn't hold it for anybody and everything on this is like first come first serve. So that kind of creates a sense of urgency and people so Once we hit publish, it really seemed like the responses just started rolling in. And we ended up selling the oven and the air compressor within a couple hours for like 200 bucks. And we listed the guitar and the AMP for 225. And we got like one message on that. But Facebook actually does this cool thing where they show you how many people have checked out your listing. And so because a good number of people have seen the listing, but we didn't get a lot of messages, and we knew the pictures in the description were really good. We decided that hey, you know what, this must be a price issue. So we dropped it from 225 to 200 on Sunday morning, which is yesterday when you're listening to this. And so we we got some interest, but nobody has purchased it yet at the time I'm recording of this. But it's good to know that we're so close to our goal with like the most expensive listing generating interest now, and so hopefully it's sold by the time you're hearing this, but I'll definitely update on our progress in the Facebook group sometime during the week once this thing sells, but I wanted to share all this to say that like all the stuff that you own us To be money. So if you find yourself wanting some extra cash, whether it be because like you need the cash or if it's because you just want to cover a new purchase like we did selling stuff that really doesn't bring you any value or use is a great way to generate some income. And to do this, you can start by just going around your house and just looking for old items that you don't have much use for and just start snapping pictures and listing stuff like I know guys who have just like tons of football jerseys that they don't even wear anymore. They sized out of them. I take pictures of that stuff and list it like people go crazy for that kind of stuff. And I wanted to share this because it's especially important right now with like so many of you out of work or even concerned about your job and trying to save up as much as you can. So anyway, like that's all I wanted to share this week is like our journey of really falling in love with the hustle and Facebook marketplace. It's really been a fun weekend setting this all up and kind of navigating everything with Taylor like really believe she's gotten super excited about this whole thing. And she's mentioned a couple times how she wants to like have more stuff listed this week, but we'll see how it goes like so long as nothing that I value or actually still want goes missing. I'm totally cool with it, like do your thing hustle, get the money. But I do want to say like, if you guys decide to start hustling this week and start selling some stuff, let me know in the private Facebook group, like I'd love to shout you out on the podcast if you sell something really awesome for a great price. And if you're not an official teammate yet, head over to winning to wealth, comm slash teammates, and join the family. Like I'd love to celebrate your wins with you, and really help you navigate any of the money challenges that we all face. Also, if you're enjoying the podcast and you haven't done so yet, be sure to leave a five star review on Apple podcasts. But hey, that's all the time I have for this money talk. So until we talk again, keep racking up those wins one at a time. Take care

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