I’ve been thinking lately about how, without overdoing it, I could make more money on each item that I’m selling on Craigslist. For appliances, I’ve come up with a few pretty solid ideas.
For example, this morning, a guy came over to purchase a nice dryer from me. When I talked with him on the phone, I told him if he brought his old dryer over I would transfer the power cord to the new dryer he was purchasing from me and recycle his dryer afterwards. I asked him what happened to the dryer and he told me it had suddenly stopped working, and that I might be able to get it going if I tinkered with it. When I went to remove the cord, I found out that the one of the wires in the power cord had melted all the way through, rendering it useless. I had a spare power cord laying around so I installed it on the dryer he was purchasing from me and he was on his way. (I save all the power cords from washers/dryers I scrap to either use them later or recycle for the copper later on.)
Later in the day, I came home and I noticed a screw had not been tightened enough, which causes it to arc back and forth enough to melt the wire all the way through. It hadn’t damaged any other wires, so I went ahead and put a new power cord on the dryer. I turned it on and the thing runs as good and quiet as a brand new dryer. I cleaned it all up and it’s ready to sell. At the very least I was going to get about $14 in scrap metal for the dryer. In this situation which is abnormal, I made an extra $90 because the dryer worked like new after I installed a new power cord.
Tips:
Come up with a plan to make some additional money on your transactions. Find additional services to offer like delivery, set-up and haul away of the old appliances etc. Ask if they are selling anything else. Each situation can be different, but there are often additional services you can provide to those you are buying/selling from to increase your profits.