I held a garage sale today.

It’s a natural fit—I just moved and had some stuff I didn’t want to move. My neighbor had been doing some cleaning, and she had stuff to sell as well.

We did not make a lot of money.

Here’s what I learned:

  • Advertise early, advertise often. And advertise in places that the people who would like your stuff will be.
  • Make it super easy for people to find you.
  • Lots of people just want to look.
  • Everybody wants the big fish—the bonus money in the purse, or the super-valuable furniture that can be resold for 1000% markup
  • If you actually want to make money, you need to sell things that people want

I didn’t plan it this way, but selling IRL was a good dry run before selling online. There’s something helpful about the immediate feedback and the feel of counting cash in a cashbox that helps solidify these lessons.

Anyway, make it easy for people to buy. Otherwise, they won’t.

Not rocket science but it’s something that I’m liable to forget in the quest for really good copy or optimized demographic segmentation. (Or whatever.)