WSO: FACEBOOK FAST CASH 2013

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I’ve been using this method a good bit recently to pick up some extra cash for the holidays and after talking to a few people I was rather shocked to find at how many people are completely unaware of this cool little money maker.

I’ve actually been doing it for years just not as aggressively as I have recently. I’ve used it to make hundreds in just a day or two, and thousands within just a couple weeks.

ANYONE can do this, all you need is a computer and Facebook, you have the rest. I guarantee you can make money with this within a couple days if you simply do it and it’s not beyond saying you could make a full time income from it working only a few hours a week.

WHAT IS IT?

There exists on Facebook a subculture of people buying and selling their stuff everyday. Stuff sitting in your house, stuff you don’t need or want anymore. Cheap stuff, expensive stuff, anything goes. TONS of it.

Think Craigslist, but it happens much faster, it’s highly local and you interact, buy and sell things with a lot of the same people. These communities are also very good about weeding out the bad eggs fast so you don’t have to worry so much about scammers.

I’m in a few of these communities in my local area and it’s amazing at how active they are…I usually see around 20-40 items for sale per day, and the stuff sells very quickly.

The communities themselves are open and closed Facebook groups generally with names like “online yard sale” “online garage sale” “local swap meet” and the like.

Now, right off the bat they seem very simplistic, and they are…but tens thousands of dollars are exchanged in these communities every month.

I’m going to show you how to find them and later I’m going to show you some really cool advanced strategies you can use to up your game and turn 3 and 4 digits a month into 5+ digits a month.

HOW TO FIND THEM

The first thing you want to do is log into your Facebook account and do a search for the name of your town followed by “online yard sale”. Then click the “groups” tab because we only want to search for groups.

So for example, I live in Heber Springs so my search will look like this: “Heber Springs online yard sale”. Get creative with your searches and try different keywords. “Heber Springs Online Garage Sale” “Heber Springs Swap Meet” “Heber Springs Buy Sell And Trade”, etc.

I find them by all kinds of keywords so do be sure to try out a bunch as there will likely be more than one in your area. Also do searches for towns nearby. You can see in the screenshot below that there are several in my surrounding area, just using the term online yard sale.

If you don’t see one in your area, don’t give up. And if all else fails, it’s easy to start your own (and can be more powerful) but we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

Most of these groups will be open to join but you will still need to click the “Join Group” button. The admin will then have to accept your request but most of the time I get added in less than 24 hours.

Notice in the screenshot above that these communities often contain hundreds to thousands of people in them and larger cities often contain tens of thousands of members. When you get in you may be surprised to see how active they are, as I mentioned before having lots of posts daily.Another thing worth mentioning is that I often find these communities built around specific types of items like car & truck sales, ATV & motorcycles, antiques, animals, furniture, art, electronics…all kinds of stuff. You could be an instant online car salesman with zero overhead (besides the car of 

course) doing all of your business of buying and selling cars right within these groups (just an idea J).

So here is what a good post looks like:

First off, be sure to have a good picture of the item. The more the merrier to show different angles. Next you want to

describe in detail what you have to offer. There is no need to be all “internet markety”…just tell them exactly what you have with as many details that you can think of.

In the example above, you see she included the brand, size, condition and asking price of the jeans. Yea, that’s right JEANS…and take a look at the number comments on that post, looks like she may have already sold them and posted it only 7 hours ago.

It just goes to show that you can sell anything. I found that the most popular sellers are clothes, shoes, and electronics, furniture and appliances. Not to say that you can’t sell anything fast, but those are some of the more common things I see in my particular groups.

Always set your price point slightly above what you expect to get for an item. Its common practice for people to offer less and a bit of haggling is normal friendly behavior. If you price a tad higher then you will likely end up with the amount you really want. It’s also common to see people state the price is firm but I found the open price points get a lot more response especially with more popular items.

I’ve also seen communities that are based on auction sales, you can do a search for “[your town] online auction”. These are golden gems because the price is always going up as people go into bidding wars which means more profit for you.

SETTING UP YOUR OWN COMMUNITY

There are several advantages to setting up your own online yard sale community. First, you have full control and you set the rules. You can allow auction sales or whatever you want.

Another is that as the admin, your stuff will generally be more popular. You can even sort of brand it toward a certain style of products. There are a couple other advantages I will go over in a moment.

To set up a group, look under your groups on the right hand side of your Facebook window and click “Create Group”.

Set a name for the group. You want the name to be easily found in search by people looking for it. Use terms like yard sale, garage sale, buy sell trade, swap meet, auction, etc.

Don’t steal the name of another group. So if there is already a “Heber Springs Online Yard Sale” call yours “Heber Springs Buy, Sell & Trade” or something similar.

I suggest keeping your group privacy to “Open”. Members will still have to be approved by you, but it will allow non-members to browse through and find something they like and then

join. Kinda like window shopping. They look in, and find something they like and will join to get it.

You’ll then be asked to choose an icon for your group. You can skip this step if you wish but it’s cool to have an icon that stands out from the others in your area. I chose the little money icon for this test group.

Next you’ll want to click on the ABOUT tab and add a description for your group.

Use the description to your advantage, this is prime real estate. Start off by telling them exactly what the group is for. Add lots of keywords which will help people searching for these types of groups.

Set up some ground rules. You don’t want your group to get wild and crazy and they surely will if you don’t have rules in place and you MUST enforce them or members will start leaving if it gets out of control.

Use this space wisely. It’s a great place to stick a link to your website (an Amazon affiliate store for example), or even multiple websites and places that you have.

You can also add some documents to the files, yet another great way to gain extra exposure. You can either upload a document or file or you can create one using their text editor.

Add some useful documents to make their experience better like “How to get more offers on your items” or “Hot items to sell in this group” and even a “Other great places to buy, sell, and trade online”.

You can see in the screenshot above, I’m using their standard text editor to create a new document. This is so awesome because you can put your internet marketing skills to good use. Teach others how to make money online J and then point them to your other sites/products where they can learn more and you can make more money. The more value you provide for free upfront, the more traffic you are going to get to that website you point out in the end. REMEMBER, this is not a sales pitch. Give them good advice and simply drop a link to learn more.

You can also upload more stuff like PDFs that you may have written for making money online, etc. It doesn’t stop there. The upload limit is 25MB so you can also upload audio files and short videos, etc. It’s like an instant high traffic website on steroids. People also have the ability to like and comment on these files so if it’s good content you’ll get good reviews which leads to more people reading them and more people clicking the link inside and more people buying more of your stuff. More more more!!!

Everyone in these groups is looking to make money, particularly online. They are also looking to spend money, so take full advantage of that information. That’s what makes these groups so incredibly powerful and profitable.

Another cool feature of Facebook groups is the ability to start a live chat with the entire group…oh yea baby!

This opens up the chat pane…

Now, listen up closely. DO NOT ABUSE GROUP CHAT!!! You will piss people off VERY quickly using this feature as it starts an instant message chat with everyone in the entire group. Yea, it’s cool to send an instant message to 2k people all at once, but when they all start jumping in the chat people get very angry if you don’t have something worth their time.

A great idea of how to PROPERLY use this feature would be to have regular group auctions. You can do this by creating events in the EVENT tab. Name the event something like “Heber Springs Group Auction” and set it for a certain day and time.

When the auction time comes around, you can go into the group settings and temporarily disable posting for everyone except admins. Then post in the group at the top that you are now holding a live auction.

You will then open up a new group chat and state that the groups live auction is now beginning. People who don’t want to be involved can leave the chat.

So once you get some people in the auction, you can start posting items in the group one at a time and be the auctioneer via the live chat and let people bid on the item, once an item is sold you mark it as sold and the price sold for and the person sold to in the comments on the item’s post and move on to the next item.

This is a wonderful way to highly engage your group and get them fired up. If you do it on a regular basis then you will have a nice following amped up for the auction ready to buy every time. You can charge a small fee to the item owners and make a handsome chunk of change by the end of it.

GETTING PEOPLE TO YOUR GROUP

It’s easier than you think. I commonly see people promoting their group in other similar groups, particularly if your group is aimed at something a little different like antiques. Make sure you are in good with the admins before posting or even ask them to swap a link with you…you post theirs and they post yours…

As your group grows, traffic will naturally come to you from Facebook search as well. This is especially the case when your group is focused on a specific thing like antiques or cars. Also members of other groups regularly point people in the direction of targeted groups. So for example Joe Shmo posts a car in a yard sale group. It’s highly likely someone will suggest that they also post it in Jimmy John’s car sales group for more exposure to their listing.

Also use word of mouth. Spread the news to all of your local friends and have them join the group…they will eventually tell others when someone says “I’m looking to buy a used___” your friend will of course suggest your group.

You can also post flyers around town and even put an ad in your local classifieds paper with the URL of your group. Leave small postcard size flyers at local gas stations on the counter and other local businesses. Most business owners don’t mind as long as it’s free and you can even offer to post a link to their business.

OTHER TIPS AND TRICKS FOR SELLING YOUR STUFF

Get creative with your item listings. This is Facebook so you can also post videos of your items. Videos will surely get more attention and will give prospects a better view of your items.

You can also fire up Photoshop or Gimp and make your images a bit more appealing. You can add little arrows and stuff to certain cool features of the item or even make them funny or

maybe put flames or something around the edges and call it a “fire sale”.

When writing the descriptions for your items keep them short sweet and to the point. No one wants to read a novel about it but you do want to present all important aspects in a speed read manner.

Now let’s jump into some more advanced methods for generating some real dough. These strategies will add zeros to end of your monthly income.

SECRET METHOD #1

It’s easy enough to start out selling the stuff you already have to grab some quick cash. But if you want to turn a good profit you’re going to need more inventory.

One of the best places to do so is offline yard sales. You can get really good stuff at yard sells for REALLY cheap and it’s very easy to talk a yard seller down on their price because they typically just want to get rid of their crap as fast as possible.

Every weekend go out and hit the yard sales in your area, they are easy to find and often people list them in the local classifieds. Grab a good stock of items to sell for the following week.

High value items are generally easy to find. Electronics, tools and furniture are all high turnover items you can profit nicely on. And don’t overlook shoes…I don’t know what it is but

women just LOVE to buy shoes in these groups, the profit isn’t substantial but with a lot of inventory they can add up.

SECRET METHOD #2

This method was actually inspired by my mother. She used to own a local resell shop and all of her inventory came from auctioned off mini-storage units. Basically this is where someone who was renting a self storage unit doesn’t pay for several months, the storage company can then legally auction off the contents of the entire unit.

These are absolute GOLD MINES, and if you’ve ever seen the TV show “Storage Wars” you know exactly what I mean. You can get these units for cheap cheap, starting around $100+ and there is usually tons of stuff in there waiting for you to sell.

I’ve seen my mother make $5k off a unit she paid $200 for. It’s serious business. This provides you with an almost unlimited supply of stuff to sell and doubles as the perfect place to store your inventory if you pick up the unit rent (usually like $30-40/m). Also it’s a bit safer as you can have buyers meet you at the storage unit instead of your house.

Typically self-storage companies do regular bi-weekly or monthly auctions and depending on the month they can have several units available for auction which increases your chances of getting one cheaper, or buying more units if you have the extra cash. And do bring cash cause they don’t take plastic.

It’s easy enough to go to your local self-storage places and ask when they hold auctions but sometimes they list them in the classifieds as well.

SECRET METHOD #3

Another way to really amp up your game is to buy stuff from online sources like Ebay, Craigslist, Amazon and wholesale provides, etc. This is better if you are looking to sell certain types of products like electronics.

You can dig around and find really good deals on ebay and turn around and sell it for a markup. Now you can really start to generate some serious money with this method. For example if you buy flat screen TVs and bulk sets of clothes, shoes, purses and jewelry. The profit margin is much higher because you are selling higher ticket items.

SECRET METHOD #4

Remember what I said in the beginning about being a car salesman? I was serious. The best way to do this is to either obtain or find a friend with a car dealer license. This is a golden ticket that will give you access to private car auctions exclusive to car dealers. It’s easy enough to get a license just Google it.

The beauty of these auctions is that you can get used cars for extremely low prices. I’m talking only a few hundred bucks for a decent used vehicle.

So you can pick up a car at auction for say $500 in sell it in the groups for $3000. Cha-ching!!!

SECRET METHOD #5

If you thought there couldn’t possibly be more I could add, you were wrong. We can fulfill the most common internet marketing quote. “The money is in the list”. Yep, didn’t think about that one did you?

Why the heck not? This is especially easy if you are the group admin by using the files and documents I mentioned before pointing members to your squeeze pages.

Great examples of products to pitch would be making money with auctions, making money with ebay, craigslist, making money period. These people are here to make money…show them how and get them on your list. It’s also worth mentioning that the people in these groups are usually your average Joes and not internet marketers so they are much easier to market to and get on a list if you are giving them value.

If you don’t own the group you can strike a deal with the admin of your target group. You can approach them in several ways, but you want to be sure that you are focusing on THEM being the one to benefit.

One way you can do this is to offer to write up a document on how to get more offers on stuff or the example docs I mentioned above. They will get kudos for providing their members with good value and info and you get your non-intrusive link for more info at the bottom, it’s a win win. Also you could try and

pay them off for a post in their group but this is less likely to get them on board. DO NOT come off as a marketer just trying to turn a profit. Your goal should be to befriend them and portray that you want to be an active leader in the group and help the admin provide value to their group…this is powerful stuff.

BONUS METHOD: HOW TO GET STUFF TO SELL…FOR FREE!!! You read that right. I absolutely love this one. I’ve got a sweet trick up my sleeve for getting stuff to sell that won’t cost you one red cent.

Not only are there groups on Facebook for buying and selling, but there are also groups for people that are giving away unwanted stuff! These groups are a goldmine.

A lot of the stuff will be junk of course. But the daily browse will usually render a couple good items that you can easily take and resell.

To find these groups, just use the same search as you would for the yard sale groups but replace “yard sale” with “free” or “free stuff” or “give away” etc.

Craigslist is another fantastic place to find free stuff. They even have a “free” section if you look in your local area listing, you’ll see it. I’ve seen tons of valuable stuff go through there. In fact, I was highly surprised that hot tubs are a very common thing to see in the free section on Craigslist. I have no idea why, but I see them quite regularly. How much do you think you could get for a hot tub?

CONCLUSION

This is EASY money guys. Some of the easiest money I’ve ever made. I’ve sold all kinds of things in these groups. iPhones, cars, clothes, baby stuff, dishes, furniture and so much more.

What’s great is you can start RIGHT NOW, literally this very moment fire up Facebook, find a group, and snap a shot of that old couch you’ve been wanting to get rid of forever and score some quick cash within the next day or two.

There are absolutely NO excuses for this method. If you don’t have stuff, go to a yard sale or your momma’s house or your friend Johnny Junior ‘cause I promise they have some crap they just want to get rid of and will gladly let you take it off their hands.

NOW GO OUT THERE AND GET IT!!!