A very common sight when driving through the suburbs of Auckland are signs stapled to lamp post advertising garage sales that will be taking place over in the area. On the odd occasion I will drive past a garage sale in progress and a lot of the time, it doesn’t look like it would be worth my while to stop and see what they have on offer. People hold garage sales for various reasons, which could include de-cluttering and selling off items or selling because of a need for quick cash. Whatever the reasons may be for holding the sale, it is always nice to do it in such a way that you get the most revenue from your efforts.

Here are a few quick pointers that may come in handy if you are planning a garage sale in the near future:

1. Plan: just like anything else in life, it is good to plan for the sale. Set a date for when you are going to have the sale, what you are going to sell and make sure you have enough stuff to offer to actually warrant having the sale.
2. Price: set a price for EVERYTHING you plan to sell and don’t price it too low, keeping in mind that you want to make the sale worthwhile to you. Set reasonable prices and allow for negotiation and with that said, have a minimum price at which you are willing to let go of items for.
3. Advertise: it goes without saying that you need to let people know about the sale. It is probably best to start advertising a week or so before the sale. Put clear signs up around your neighbourhood and drive by them to make sure they are readable. If you have a few dollars to spare, a good place to advertise would be your local newspaper.
4. Presentation: lay out your items in the area where you are having the sale in such a way that your “big ticket” items are what your customers will see first. Also make sure that there is enough space for people to comfortably walk through and take a look at what you have on offer.
5. Payment: Make sure you have plenty of change on hand from different denomination coins to bills. You want to make the payment process nice and easy. It can be frustrating for a customer when they experience a problem of trying to pay for something because you don’t have change. If your customers don’t have cash, you could offer other payment solutions such as Pago (New Zealand), PayPal Mobile (Worldwide) or Square (U.S.) as options.

2 Extras Tips:

• Keep cash on your person: can you imagine it drawing to the end of a successful sale and someone comes along and walks away with your cash box?
• Consider a group sale: if you are friends with your neighbours, consider having a group sale and make it even more worthwhile for everyone.

Do you have any other tips to make a garage sale successful?

“Garage Sale” Photo by enfocar1200

A few years ago I used to travel to North America or Europe and on the odd occasion home (Zimbabwe) at least once or twice a year. Living in New Zealand, that meant spending a lot of time on planes and covering huge distances. It only made sense for me to sign up to a frequent flyer program and with the destinations that I travelled to the most, the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme was the best programme for me to join.

Over the years I accumulated a lot of frequent flyer points which I eventually redeemed and got a few reward flights for my wife and I. I still had quite a few points left over after that my wife and I used them to get a few things for our baby girl. By converting our frequent flyer points to gift cards from various stores, we were able to get a few things for our daughter without having to shell out the hundreds of dollars that we would have otherwise had to pay.

What I am getting at with all of this is that it may be a good idea to consider using your frequent flyer points to save yourself a bit of money. You may have frequent flyer points sitting in an account somewhere and some which may even have an expiry date. If you are not going to redeem them for award flights you may be able to use them to get gift cards or make purchases with the points directly from the particular frequent flyer store (if they have one). If the particular program you are part of does not have such programmes available for you to take advantage of, Points.com may just be your answer.

About Points.com

It is a site that brings a certain flexibility to points from various programs and gives it users a range of options for what to do with their points.

They allows users to:
- Trade points and miles with other people on GPX (Global Points Exchange)
- Exchange points and miles between your programs
- Buy points or miles so that you reach the required level to get the flight or reward you want
- Share points between the same programs with family or friends
- Redeem your points for gift cards from more than 200 retailers and restaurants

It’s free to join and really doesn’t hurt to give them a go. You would be surprised just how much you may get out of becoming a member.

One thing that a number of people who are making money online tend to neglect or maybe ignore is the issue of paying taxes on their online earnings. One of the reasons for that is that they do not see the amounts they are making online warranted enough to pay tax. Truth of the matter is, there is a high chance you need to pay tax on your online earnings if you are earning a substantial amount of money.

When it comes to earning money via various publisher networks and affiliate programs (a lot of which are based in the US), people are asked to enter their tax information when they sign up. If the new sign ups are not based in the US they generally do not need to provide any information. I got into discussions on forums a while ago and from there on in, the general consensus is that a lot of people start earning, get paid out and forget about paying taxes.

A number of people are also turning to auction sites such as eBay and Amazon to sell goods for a few extra dollars and experience more success than they expected. With that being the case, it is not long before these people find themselves investing more time into selling more and more stuff online and making more and more money and more often than not they are going to receive payment via a service such as PayPal. Last year in the US, legislation was passed that requires the processors of third-party payments (such as PayPal) to report to the IRS individuals who receive at least $20,000 a year in credit or debit card charges from 200 or more transactions. When this legislation is put into place it will make it that much more difficult to evade the taxman.

As already mentioned, the tax laws are different from country to country. For example, if you are selling goods here in New Zealand on a site such a TradeMe, you should declare your online earnings if; you acquired the goods you are selling with the purpose of on-selling, the purpose of the activity is to make a profit or your business involves dealing in these goods. The tax department (IRD) is also said to work closely with TradeMe to make sure people meet their tax obligation.

What I am getting at is, if you are setting out to make a bit of money online it may be a good idea to check what tax laws apply to you. Leading on from that, it may also be a good idea to keep track of your earnings and this can easily be done with finance software such as Quicken, Microsoft Money and QuickBooks. You never know just how far you will get with making money online and if you get to the point where you really need to report your earnings you should be well on the way to being set to avoid the hassle of being chased around by the taxman.

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