Graduate With a Profit : Make Money While in School

Each year in college there are students that graduate, switch apartments, or change schools and often do not need the stuff they purchased anymore. What do they do with it? A lot of them just throw it away or give it to one of their younger friends that need furniture and accessories. Well, my apartment complex had a great idea - host an apartment yard sale! I am graduating in 12 days and am already starting to ask “What am I going to do with this stuff?” However, most apartment complexes, or at least the other ones here surrounding the campus do anything like this. After a Friday night of partying I woke up and looked out my window to the basketball court where the yard sale was taking place and saw 4 stations. From my view it didn’t look like anything good, so I didn’t bother going down. However there were some flaws associated with the planning of the event on behalf of the apartment complex’s side:

• They picked the biggest party weekend of the year; Quadfest. This is one of the most anticipated weekends of the year for students that attend Radford University and there’s no way that the students are going to give up their weekend of drinking to sit outside and sell old stuff.
• The weather wasn’t that good. It was expected to rain and be chilly all day, which it was.
• The time itself wasn’t good. The fliers said 8-11AM. I ask you again, what college student is going to wake up BEFORE 8AM ON A WEEKEND (most likely hungover) to sell stuff? ZERO!
• Most important mistake: The apartment complex did not advertise OUTSIDE of the apartment complex. They did a great job posting fliers in and around the complex on all doors, but no one from the campus or surrounding area knew about it. So once again, why would anyone attempt to sell anything when there is no promotion going on?

Granted I give the complex a plus for at least attempting it, it was their first year at least and they should keep trying. However, the key here is that anyone can host a yard sale, but it takes special planning. If you were to organize a LARGE campus wide yard sale, I’m sure there would be a good turn out. Just like with the complex, it will take some time for it to get really popular and become a tradition, but once you get the ball rolling, its something that people will remember and most likely participate in next time around.

• You do all the advertising
• Charge sellers like $4 or something small to have a spot at garage sale. If you can make it big enough and prove to them that you are doing a lot of advertising and people know about it, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the $4 to enter to sell their stuff that they’re going to throw away for nothing anyway.
• Have people bring their own cash/change.
• If you coordinate it with the university, you could probably work something out that you can use one parking lot on a weekend, block it off to traffic, and have the university provide tables that people can use — this is where the cover charge comes into play. Granted you may run into problems because unless this is strictly for THE UNIVERSITY (club fundraiser for example) they are most likely going to not help you at all. But once again, worth a shot.