What To Sell To Make Extra Money Online (and where to sell)

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Everyone needs extra money. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that nearly all of us just plain need more money and it’s not even “extra”.

I’ve gone from times in my life where I needed extra money to buy diapers to needing extra money to pay my car payment to needing extra money to (hopefully) save for retirement.

Wherever you are in life, a little more money can be the lubrication that just makes everything work as it should.

In fact, that was the entire premise when we started this blog, to help people make an extra $1,000/month by selling stuff online.

The average home has around $7,000 of “stuff” that can be sold.

Just look around the room you’re in right now, everything random thing you see was once money and that money was once time. You’ve traded pieces of your life for stuff.

What if we could change some of the stuff back into money? Well, we can. Let’s do it.

The best way to make extra money in the short term is to sell your unneeded items locally or online. Look for items with value that can be easily photographed and shipped and list them on popular platforms such as eBay, Poshmark, or Mercari.

5 Things You Can Sell To Make Money Online

If you’ve visited many garage sales, you’ll know that just about anything can be sold. The problem is that selling a shelf full of trinkets for $1 each isn’t going to make much difference in your life.

We actually spend most of our “free time” in thrift stores looking for items to sell but, since you’re just starting out, let’s figure out how you can make extra money by selling your own stuff.

Here are a few items that almost everyone has around their house that can easily be turned into extra money:

1. Clothing. If you’re like me, you probably won’t make much extra money selling clothes on eBay because most of your clothes are already from eBay or thrift stores. However, if you (or your significant other) make a habit of buying expensive items, your closet can become a veritable gold mine. (Read Our Best Selling Clothing Brands Article)
2. Shoes. I’ve seen Instagram posts of people with an entire closet full of Jordan still in the box. If that was my house you can bet that I would be turning those shoes into extra cash. Shoes of all kinds can be sold for good money including athletic shoes, work boots, dress shoes, specialty shoes, snow boots, etc. (Read Our Best Selling Shoes Article)
3. Electronics. I’m not talking about pawning your T.V. There are tons of electronics around the average person’s home that can be sold for a bit of extra money. Look for old phones, laptops, kitchen gadgets, window air conditioners (if it’s winter), old stereos, video games or consoles, etc.
4. Tools. Power tools, hand tools, crafting items, sewing machines, yard equipment, all of it sells. If you are able to ship your items you can put them on eBay and open yourself up to a huge pool of buyers!
5. Unused Baby Stuff. If you have had kids, you probably have unused baby stuff around. Our youngest is only 3 but we’ve already sold a car seat, a jogging stroller, crib, highchair, bumbo seat, nursing pillows and much more!

We covered many more items you can find around your home (and at thrift stores) to sell for extra cash in our article 31 Best Non-Clothing Items To Sell On eBay. You can also check out some other articles to learn the types of things we sell for extra money:

Once you start seeing the stuff around your house as little stacks of cash your life will never be the same. Clearing out your extra items for extra money is the best possible “have your cake and eat it too” scenario as you get a cleaner living space and extra cash!

Where Should You Sell Your Stuff Online?

Figuring out where to sell your items is going to depend on a lot of things. Namely, what you’ve found to sell and how quickly you need money.

If you’re down to the wire and need money to pay bills then your options are pretty limited. Selling items online is not a route to fast money. The sooner you need money (in other words, the more desperate you are) the less money you’ll have to accept. If you’re in this boat you are limited to local sales.

So, if selling online isn’t an option, this is the order I’d go about it:

1. Facebook Marketplace
2. Pawn Shop (for more expensive items)
3. Yard Sale

Now, if you’re in cleaning mode or you’ve got a little more breathing room, I hope you’ve found items that are easy to take pictures of and ship because we’re going digital!

The best items for making money online are small but valuable.

So where should we offer them for sale? Well, the places where they’re most likely to sell, obviously! In my opinion, the best places for most people to make money are:

• eBay
• Mercari
• Poshmark

Now, if you are selling specialty types of items then you should try some of the alternatives to eBay where there are more focused customers.

While each of these platforms has its own requirements, there are few tips that will help you maximize your profits:

• Take Great Pictures. A picture is the first impression your buyer will get and will often dictate whether or not they actually click through to your listing.
• Give Complete Descriptions. Don’t leave anything out! Mention every little thing you can, including flaws. You’ll have happier customers and fewer returns.
• Offer Excellent Service. Pack well, ship fast, upload tracking, etc. Customers will feel more comfortable with you and future customers will be reassured by your positive feedback.
• Price Items Competitively. We’ll all want top dollar for our items but if you need quickly, price your item to sell. You already bought the item so it’s all just a bonus at this point anyway!
• List Your Items On Several Platforms. The more platforms your item is on the better your chances of selling. Since it’s super time-consuming to list your item in several places we use an inexpensive program called List Perfectly which lets us quickly crosspost our items onto 11 different platforms.

While making “fast money” online is kind of a misnomer (since it’s usually quite difficult and time-consuming) if you follow the above tips you should be able to make some extra money to stretch your budget or take that vacation!

How Much Extra Money Can You Make Selling Things Online?

Believe it or not, some people make six-figures flipping random stuff online.

In the past year, we’ve sold around $80,000 worth of goods on eBay and another $13,000 on Mercari. However, we make a full-time hobby out of buying items from thrift stores and yard sales to resell.

If you are like most people, you probably (hopefully) don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars of random stuff sitting around your house.

When we first started out, we were able to make $2-3,000 selling online before we started buying items specifically to resell.

It has been estimated that the average home has around $7,000 worth of “extra” items that can be sold online. Personally, that number seems a bit high but I feel that most people could make at least $1,000 from things sitting around their house that they’ll never miss.

How We Made An Extra $1,000 Selling Our Stuff

It’s been over 5 years since we started selling on eBay so I don’t remember most of the things that we sold in that first purge of our house. I do remember some car parts, textbooks, and clothing but that’s about it.

However, the prospect of writing this article inspired us to go through our house again and de-junk to see if we could make some extra money. Long story short, we did. We not only found two iPhones that we had stuck in a drawer after our last upgrade but decided to sell my wife’s old laptop, some books, some of my clothes, and some kid’s clothes.

While we still have more than half of our items for sale, check out the ones that we have already sold:

Now, every online selling platform has fees (Mercari fees are the lowest, eBay fees are mid-range, and Poshmark’s are the highest) but even after shipping all of our items and paying our dues, we’re expecting to make over $1,000 in “extra” money this month.

Conclusion

So, at the end of the day, making extra money is not impossible but it will definitely take some work! However, being able to sell some of your items online to turn them back into cash is a life-changing discovery.

Now, every time you upgrade or move on from something you can simply sell it! It’s good for the environment, makes someone else happy, and funds your next venture.

Happy selling!

Looking for other ways to make money? We’ve tried just about every method there is and these are the best methods if you need to turn $100 into $1,000 quickly!