How to Make Extra Money Selling Your Stuff on Facebook

In an effort to simplify I’m constantly going through the house to donate or sell items that we don’t need anymore. We are always bringing new items into our homes and I do my best to make a conscious effort to also remove items from my home on a regular basis. My absolute favorite way these days is to sell on local Facebook groups! Some people call them Facebook Buy/Sell Groups or Facebook Yard Sale Groups. Whatever you want to call them, they’re basically local groups for a city or regional area where people can list items they want to sell. I’ve mad at least $1,000 doing this over the last 1-2 years and you can too!

Why Facebook and not Craigslist? Craigslist used to be the go to place for selling your stuff locally. I used it all the time! But listing on Facebook is just so much easier! I get more interest because people are constantly on Facebook, I can check someones profile to make me feel a little better knowing who I’m meeting up with and it’s so much faster than Craigslist. We still use craigslist on occasion, my husband has better luck with cars and car parts there, but in general Facebook is the place to sell locally now and we’ve had tons of success with it.

How to Find Local Facebook Buy Sell Groups

In the search bar on Facebook type in your city and see what comes up. You can try typing things like “City Buy Sell” or “City For Sale”, etc. Try a bunch of different combinations and I’m sure you’ll be able to find a couple groups.

Personally, I only join the bigger groups and don’t even bother with the groups with only a few hundred people in them. The bigger groups have a larger audience of people who might buy your stuff and are just faster moving in general. Sometimes you’ll even be able to find local groups for specific types of items like Kid/Baby items or Furniture. Just search around and join the groups you think might be a good fit for you.

Tip: Make sure when you join a group you read the rules (it’s usually a pinned post at the top) carefully and kind of watch how people interact. It can be easy to just kind of jump in and accidentally break a rule you didn’t even know existed.

How to List Your Items for Sale

1. Take a picture. Seriously don’t even try selling anything without a picture. The great thing is you can pretty much do it all from your phone using the Facebook app or the Facebook Groups app.
2. Go to the group and click “Write Post” or “Sell Something”. The difference with the “Sell Something” type of post is that there is a place for a title, price and location. Then you can also mark it sold which is helpful. Honestly,  I’ve done it both ways and it will work either way.
3. Write a short, but helpful description. People don’t want to read a paragraph about your item unless it’s needed. Include stuff like:
   1. Brand
   2. Measurements
   3. Condition
   4. Any flaws
   5. Mention where you’re generally located if your city is pretty large or if the group covers several cities. Usually the name of your neighborhood or some main cross streets works just so anyone interested knows how far they have to drive.
   6. When someone responds that they’re interested choose a safe place to meet in a semi-crowded area. In my little town it was the Starbucks, there were always half a dozen people meeting to do a transaction. (Yes, sometimes they totally look like drug deals which is what my husband calls it when I meet people to buy/sell.)

It’s really super easy. Some days I’ll list several items in 15 minutes and have them sold by the end of the day. Stuff out of my house AND make a little fun money while I’m at it? Win win.

Some of the items I’ve sold recently

Below I’ll show you some examples of stuff I’ve sold on Facebook recently. I know it’s easier to get an idea of how to do things if you can see examples of how I do the title, description, photos and pricing.

Otterbox iphone case. Paid nothing (got it free when I fixed my broken screen), sold for $20.

White desk, sold for $15. I actually had several people in line for this one!

How cute is this?! I actually grabbed it at Goodwill for $2.99 thinking I’d use it in my sons room as decor, but changed my mind and sold it for $5 pretty quickly.

Since we’re downsizing our house I wanted to downsize our dog crates since our dogs aren’t really that big. Took a couple days, but I sold this one for $60.

This is an example of one where my husband was super impressed. I was cleaning out the stuff under the sink in the bathroom and just threw everything we didn’t need in a box. Most of it was half used (not gross stuff, just lotions, shampoos, etc), but some of it was brand new. I just listed the whole box for $20 (the new items were worth at least that) and I had 8 people in line who wanted the box. Sold another similar (smaller) box from our other bathroom for $10 a week later.

 

Made $50 on my moms old mattress and then even listed a brand new sheet set for $30 in the comments. Made $80 and got the bed out of the house within 2 hours of posting.

I could show you dozens of listings, but I think you get the point! Since we’re about a week away from moving I’ve been selling more than I usually do, but I usually make at least a few hundred bucks a year doing this. It’s super easy and it’s stuff I don’t want cluttering up the house.

Have you started selling items on Facebook? I’d love to hear in the comments below!