Buy and Sell stuff - Kijiji, EBay, Varagesale

This is an easy one, but if you'd like some spare change in your pocket, sell some stuff or look for stuff you want to buy for sale by others!

Almost all of us will have stuff we don't need or got as gifts that just aren't us. There is a huge market of people like me who don't want to spend full price on stuff if they don't have to, so they will take to searching Kijiji or Facebook sell groups to see if someone has it for sale. 9/10 I have found what I'm looking to buy for sale by someone else cheaper. 

This work both ways; sell your own stuff and look to buy previously used stuff on the same sites. In not a pro at this, but I've tried to list some tips I use below:

Selling:

- do some research, figure out what the product was/is priced as new. Then, sort out whether your item is still in "like new" condition or whether you should make it half price due to wear and tear. Also do some research for your item on the sites you're going to advertise on; what do other people have it priced at?

- take pictures of it. This seems simple, but there are a ridiculous number of ads that have no product pictures of what they're selling. I don't even look at those ads, as there's a trust factor for me. Try to take pictures of all the views that you would want to see if you were buying it. 

- Write a description. Fluffy details of how it came to be in your life are not needed, more important would be keywords like "new with tags", "brand new", "like new condition". Try to be open about the product, if it says Large and fits like a small, say so. It helps build trust in the reader that you are forthcoming. Remember to state "pet friendly home" if you have a dog, and "smoke free" if you're not a smoker, these are important things people ask about for items. 

- copy the description and post it a bunch of places!  Kijiji is always my first stop, followed by a new app called Varagesale (virtual garage sale), followed then by posts in "for sale" groups on Facebook. There are A TON of Facebook sell sites - both for specific items (like horse tack or Disney collectibles), and for generic location-based sell groups. 

- you can also print up small posters and place them in nearby coffee shops (with permission). For large or expensive items like bed frames, couches or instruments this seems to work well. 

- when you post, make sure you only post contact info that is absolutely necessary. I only ever give out my email on posts, and my Facebook name is not my real full name. If you don't want to respond to emails, put only your phone number. When responding to messages, again, just be careful what you put. 

- NEVER arrange to meet at your house unless it's necessary (like a couch or something). I always take my stuff to a coffee shop across the street, for my protection. I advise everyone to do the same: pick a lobby of a grocery store or such, meet at a Tim Hortons and just advise you'll be wearing some bright coloured coat. Safety first!

- if possible, bring a friend. Added backup, plus someone to talk to while you wait for the buyer to show up. 

- people will barter. I usually try to price my items 10%-20% above what I actually want to get for it. People will low-ball as well, so you just need to figure out before you post the item what your lowest is. If in three months of constant posting you still haven't sold it, maybe it is priced too high, and I would suggest researching the price online again. 

Another thing to consider is what you're trying to sell. People have made businesses out of selling items on EBay and Etsy. There's a lady my mom follows online who dumpster dives for items, cleans them up and then sells them on eBay. Some people around town here take tables and chairs slated for the garbage and redecorate them to be pretty beautiful new items, and then sell them on commission in someone else's store. Others do handmade necklaces and charms, and have great stores on Etsy. A lot of all these people have Facebook pages that document their progress on new items, as well as announce upcoming sales to their fans. 

Below are a few examples of some i follow (Tumble and Lorraine do online etsy sales that sell out immediately, and Unique is a storefront that has so many different artisans inside that bring their items to the shop to sell. 

Buying:

- research, again. Learn what the storefront price is and what it comes with. Then, look on Kijiji, Amazon, the shopping channel, Facebook. See who has it and for what price. Figure out what you would be willing to pay after the research. Maybe through the research you found it on sale for half price and don't need to look any further!

- check out bargain bin stores around town. My roommate and I were looking for this one DVD for a year, did not want to spend more than $10 on it. Finally, I posted on a Facebook sell group if people had this for sale and someone said to try this discount DVD shop. I did, and bought the movie for $4. Some of the liquidation world stores around town have surprised me with what awesome stuff they have at the the time.

- post on Facebook or on Kijiji that you are "in search of" or "looking for" the item. Put in pictures and maybe a link to the full price item you want, and feel free to put in the price you want to pay. I've done this for a bunch of items and the buying/selling community has a lot of eyes and ears to help you do some of the leg work 

- it doesn't hurt to ask - ask the seller if there are any further discounts or if they'll come down another __$. I've been in stores and asked this and they've said they could apply some coupon I didn't know existed, and some people I've bought Kijiji stuff from have said they'll come down in price. For Kijiji and Facebook, just like how people will try to haggle you down, do the same (respectfully of course). 

- if buying from a person and not a store, arrange to meet somewhere not at their house. Don't walk into someone else's domain, you don't know who else is there. 

- just like selling, try to bring a friend. 

- bring small coin instead of a $20. If you can get them down a little cheaper than the $20 they're asking for, the last thing you then want to do is ask for "change". Bring toonies and loonies and $5 bills. 

Just some tips and tricks I've used. Feel free to share your own!

Discounts for becoming a rep

Just another way to get a discount : become a rep for the product!

I know a bunch of places have this scheme, buy the starter pack which has a bunch of stuff you'd probably actually want, and then get a time limit discount (in some cases it's a lifetime discount) on the products you're interested in. 

I'm a rep for Regal Gifts, though I in no way use this as a business. I use it as a discount offer for myself and family and friends because I think their products are so cool. I signed up, bought the starter pack of catalogues and such, and then got a year long 25% discount on all their products. They have a tiered program that if you sell a certain amount in the year you get a certain discount, so my 25% off turned into 15% off this year because I only "sold" (bought) $1000 of products in this last year.

 Regal also gives you a free "web store" so that you can direct potential customers where to buy stuff that doesn't even involve you. My favourite part about Regal is that you don't "Have" to buy a certain amount every month though. You can, and be entered into draws and such, but there is no requirement, like most companies have. (If there is any interest in you reading this to become a rep and get the discount too, let me know. There are "referral rewards" which would give me a gift card :) )

Most makeup companies that use reps have this program too, like a friend of mine that sells Aloette products (which are great): start with hosting a girls night in party, let the rep do the spiel and hope that people at your party will buy some products, plus you get a free shopping spree for hosting the day. Then, get signed up and even if you don't want to be a rep anymore, keep the discount. I might have missed some details, but I can direct you to my friend if you're interested in learning more. 

There's also Younique makeup products. Buy a $119 starter pack worth over $200, full of cool stuff you'd actually want, and become a "rep", which most people just use for their own discounts. You get a web store as well, but have to sell a certain amount to keep it each year. They also want you to sell/buy $125 every 3 months, and to keep the lifetime discount, you need to sell/buy $1000. Again, if there is interest in more details I can give you my reps/friends contact information. 

There are so many more, but even if you don't want to knock on doors and sell stuff, they can be great to save a little more money on the stuff you'd like to buy anyways. 

Basically everything I can think of has a rep program attached to it: Cleaning products (Norwex), cooking (Epicure), candles (PartyLite and Scentsy), Tupperware, more makeup/creams (Avon, NYX, plus lots more), scrap booking (Close to My Heart), "just for fun" (like Cloud9 lingerie or Fantasia sex toys), leggings (SweetLegs or Mayberry), jewellery (Silpada, Suetables, Kalung, so many more) and clothing (they call the home parties "trunk shows"). If something interests you, try googling it with the search term "be a representative from home".

If you wanted to make one of these a great side business though, there are lots of tools at your disposal to make this happen: social media still seems to be the best way to spread the word and keep interested people informed of the deals and offers. Email blasts, Facebook pages, Pintrest pinning of your favourite products, YouTube videos showing the transformation using the makeup - all of these could help you actually make money in these different opportunities. I love reading the online stories of people who have got out of debt, bought some expensive thing, or just been able to pamper them self from these work at home businesses. :)

Renovations are expensive..

I bought a house in January after looking at 48+ other houses. As luck would have it, I bought a dud. The previous owners had hid all of the problems with a little paint and plywood. In Feb my basement was basically underwater from foundation cracks and I knew we had to do "some" fixing.

Over the course of a year I spent $20,000 on upgrades and fixes to my house that I had not planned on spending. I don't make a lot of money, but I refused to be in debt. I thought I might spell out below how I saved money on some major items for my Reno and maybe there are components I did that you hadn't thought of to save money. 

-a new roof. A leak in my kitchen led to discovering my roof was basically three layers of old shingles. I shopped around and was quoted over $8000 for my whole roof as the cheapest option. I offered to pay in cash and they reduced it. Then offered to leave their street sign branding out for as long as they wanted and they "threw in" my garage roof for free. I whined about other problems and they also threw in roof vents for free as well. I paid $6800 for the entire roof in the end. 

-new furnace and air conditioner. While the home inspector was an idiot and said everything was hunky-dory, my furnace was this beast of a creature that was no longer working. The air conditioner was also 30 years old. For discounts, it's all about who you know and not being afraid to ask and use friend-of-a-friend for discounts if you have them. My best friends dad is in this line of work and hooked me up with a great itty bitty furnace that now fits in a closet, a new air conditioner, and all new venting for a great deal. He also knew of a furnace rebate promo and sent off for it for me, so I got $250 back there. 

-flooring. I shopped around and was essentially looking for the cheapest I could get. Eventually Rona had a good sale on a particular light wood laminate style, but I wanted to use the Lowes "take 6 months to pay" option. I priced matched with Lowes for a similar style, price matched underpadding with somewhere else and walked out with some great savings. 

-Up flush toilet. These are the fancy basement toilets that don't require piping into the floor and cost over $1000 usually. I got mine for somewhere around $750 while it was on a short promo sale, plus I sent a note to the vendor asking if they had any rebates available if I were to purchase the unit. Saniflow let me send in for a $50 rebate that they didn't advertise, just because I asked. 

-new walls and sub floor. DriCore has a great subfloor material and at the time was just coming out with a new wall material called SmartWall. For their subfloor, my dad made friends with the dricore rep who let dad buy "seconds" from their factory store. Instead of paying $6.50 a tile, we paid something like $5 (not a big deal but that was $155 that stayed in my pocket). Then for the walls, I contacted the company asking how I could use their wall and save money since each panel was $50+. They advised to find some hockey magazine that had a coupon for $10 back a panel, plus if I did a testimonial for them they'd give another $100. We bought the panels on a storewide discount sale of 20% off, then we sent in for the rebate with receipt and got $430 back, plus another $100 when I did the testimonial (read it here: http://www.dricore.com/en/test_sam.aspx). In the end we had too many panels so I took the extras back and got a gift card for something like $250. I also sent in a question to dricore when I had a couple flaws in the wall and they offered another $100 gift card to come out and look themselves. 

-Ontario power authority rebate. This was advertised a bunch, basically make at least two improvements to your home to save energy and get rewarded. I contacted a company which had to basically do a "before" test and an "after" test. Things that qualified were like, changing out windows for reward of $-- a piece, change out doors, reduce "air leakage" in your house by sealing stuff up  around windows and doors and walls, new furnace installed, etc. Unfortunately for me, I only found out about this program AFTER the furnace and 3/4 windows had already been changed out. I missed out on some rebates there which was disappointing, but got $1750 (in two installments) back for what I did complete. 

-windows, sump pump bucket and perforated hose piping. Not sure if I should promote these ones, but when it comes to unnecessarily expensive items, watch for how they're priced in store. The windows for my basement were $250 each, so when dad was at a store and found one priced in the wrong spot at $75 he didn't ask questions! He got three windows for $75 each. Same deal with the sump pump hose, which was in really the wrong spot and I paid something like $20 for the $100 hose. The sump pump bucket (which looks like a garbage can with a weird lid) was scanned at the cash register as only $25 because she only scanned the lid. The bucket portion was another ridiculous amount so we just paid and didn't ask questions. 

-drop ceiling and tiles. Kijiji! I am a shameless Kijiji buyer and seller. We found used tiles from an office and paid $150 for 85 tiles (that's 1.75 each compared to brand new 6.50 each) and another guy took $150 for three boxes of metal bars. After installing the ceiling for my whole basement, including closets, I still had a box and half leftover. I took these back to a store for a store credit and got a whopping $170 back. I still have 20 tiles leftover as well, which are sitting on Kijiji right now (so far sold 5 for $10 haha)

-vanity, sink, medicine cabinet and shelf. Outlets or warehouse or "re-store" places. Vanities are expensive, so we were happy to find an outlet-style store nearby. I picked out a vanity with matching cabinet and shelf and paid $250 for it all, which for the same version at Lowes started at $1000. 

-paint and supplies. Ask your family and try the cheap stuff. Chances are someone in your family and friends network has paint supplies in a bucket in a closet somewhere. Mine did, everywhere. I didn't have to buy a roller, brush or tape - just paint. For paint I wanted a basic grey, but since it's just a basement I didn't want anything fancy. Walmart had a sale on "Loop" paint, plus when I talked to customer service they said we could try a bucket and if it sucked we could bring it back (if we only used a bit). I took a chance and bought buckets for $15 a piece on sale and was actually very happy with the result. Two coats and it had good coverage and dried quick. Bonus!

-ceiling fans, faucets, and more. Auctions! There is a great "home renovation auction" place called Bryan's that is a great place to start shopping. They specialize in complete kitchen cabinet packages, but also sell everything else for renovations. At any one auction they'll have sinks, toilets, hot tubs, exercise equipment, flooring, seasonal stuff, doors and windows, faucets, drills, dehumidifiers and more. It is an auction setting so you should know your budget before walking in. We were able to get two really really ugly ceiling fans for $20 each that painted beautifully. We also got a couple faucets there for cheap and I think every time we went we came home with something else. When I get around to fixing my kitchen, I'll be starting there for my cabinets. 

Okay that was a lot and doesn't cover everything either, but it gives a good breadth of ways to save on your next big project. I might write a part 2 of this, considering I saved on every single item in my renovation :)

A typical shopping trip

Very quickly, here's the normal shopping trip do's I do!

1. Peruse the flyers. I like paper flyers for the initial deal search, but for ease of price matching, I view and clip the good offers to the Flipp app. All the stores I've been in so far accept the app flyers for price matching. 

2. I will start a list on a piece of paper of the items I want to buy, with additional columns for: "coupon", "price match" and "app rebate". I'll make my shopping list on the one side and then fill in the columns on the other side as I go through the next steps. 

(I had two (3!) totally free items on this list with coupons :) )

3. I'll cross check great deals with my coupon binder. In a few cases I'll have a coupon for the item already on my shopping list and can get a double deal. I'll also add items to the list and do the Flipp "flyer search" for buy one get one coupons or high value coupons ($3 off coupon and maybe the product is on a great sale that makes it $3). 

4. Go through my 6 rebate apps and see what items are offered there that I should jump on. Again, write down any items on my shopping list that catch my eye (like milk). 

5. Again check and see if there's a coupon for any of the app rebate offers. I love when the stars align and I'll have stuff written in every one of the columns for a triple deal!

To be honest, I usually spend about half an hour doing all the above. I try to keep my shopping list rather small, but over $60 worth (you'll see why later). 

6. Shop! With my phone and clipped Flipp offers and my coupon book and my  paper shopping list, I say yes to a shopping cart! I try to shop on Sunday morning, when the Sunday drivers are in church and everyone else is recovering from Saturday night. The lines are short before 11am and the cashiers don't give a whole lot of trouble to you with coupons if there's no one in line behind you. 

This usually takes me 30-45 min to do everything. I'll shop the aisles too looking for clearance items or other sales I might not have seen. I'll take coupons out of the book to use and put them all together in one slot on the first page. Makes the end checking out easier. 

7. Pay. Laying items out on the conveyer is the most stressful moment. I'll usually group things by the column(s) I have on my sheet. Items at full price or only on the app go first, which allows me to tell the cashier that I have price matching and coupons in this purchase. Then, usually just coupons next, item with the coupon on top. Then, price matching items/and coupons. These are showing an item, showing the item on the Flipp flyer, then handing the coupon. While they're reading the coupon, I can have the next Flipp flyer item pulled up on my phone. 

8. Double check receipt. Yep, I'm one of those people who will stand at the end of the cash out aisle looking at the receipt. Doesn't take me long to make sure that all of the full price items came up correctly and that the number of coupons I have on my list equals the number of -$.00 items on my receipt. I put the receipt somewhere easy and home I go!

9. Once home and unloaded into my kitchen, out comes the Neilsen home scanner. Enter the details of who and where, then start scanning items and entering any sale prices. I keep the receipt out to remember everything as I go item per item, and as I put away each product. This takes me 10-15 min to get everything scanned and away. Finish off by putting in the total paid, and then I usually press send on the Neilsen scanner to transmit the data. 

10. The table is cleared of product and only the receipt is left. I'll sit down then and do the rebate apps. If your receipt is over $60, then you can enter the Checkout 51 contest they have every week, and then sometimes a couple apps will give you .25 for receipts over $50 too. I'll scan the receipt for each app, select the items, and I'll usually keep track on the back of my receipt of what I've claimed (.25 milk, .50 bread, etc). Apps usually take a couple days to process and approve your claims, so just scribbling them on the back of my receipt helps me remember what I'm still waiting on (and makes me feel proud that the $60 receipt is actually $59.50 haha). This doesn't take me long at all usually, and every nickle helps. 

I'd say a shopping trip like this is 2 hours, which isn't for me a big deal, especially compared to people who take those two hours just wandering the store for product, who don't price match or coupon. :)

Time is of the essence when it comes to coupons and deals!

Watching a lot of court shows lately and in a court of law, this is an important line to add on any contract. What it means in the law system is that a person can't take their sweet time for years, it means they need to pay back your loan to them as soon as possible.

Couponing is much the same. If you don't make the time to go and buy a good deal, you'll miss out. Case in point, tonight's couple items...

I saw on Saturday that a couple of my e-rebate apps had scrubbing bubbles items on it. One was a buy two SC Johnson products and get $3.00 back and another app had buy any 2 scrubbing bubbles bathroom and get $4.00 back. Combine that with a Food Basics deal for $3.00 a bottle, and that's pretty good. Combine THAT with a manufacturers coupon I printed from online I had for buy one get one free, and now that's a great deal. 

Couldn't bring myself I go out to grab any of these this weekend and went out tonight instead. Well one of the apps was sold out tonight, so instead I got two bottles for $1. Still good, but we all like the idea of being "paid" to take stuff out from the store. 

Another of tonight's deals I missed the boat on was Pledge Floor cleaner. One one of the apps for $7 back a bottle, and I have a manufacturers coupon for save $5 each. Walked down the aisle and ran into a lady who was very excited to see a "fellow couponer" and asked if I was in on the Pledge deal. I said I hoped so and she said, yeah this was her third lap going to different cashiers to get the deal. Of course, when I got to the spot on the shelf she had cleared the shelf of all pledge products. Whomp whomp. 

So, note, another good tip is to make your shopping day either Thursday or Friday, when most of the apps have just refreshed their deals. After the weekend, all the other die hard couponer a have cleared the shelves and the available deals from the apps.