Yard Sale Advertising: Top 6 Places To Post A Yard Sale Online (…Or Find Yard Sales Online!)

I recently had my 4th “major” yard sale. (I made $1,013.00 at this one.)

In keeping with modern technology, this was the first time I decided to go beyond simply placing an ad in the local newspaper classifieds section and hanging a few garage sale signs myself.

Looking in the newspaper for garage sales and driving around endlessly on a Saturday morning looking for loot is so last century.

~LifeHacker

I found these to be the 6 best places to post a yard sale online in order to maximize your garage sale advertising reach — for FREE!

Best Yard Sale Online Advertising Sites

I chose these as the top garage sale posting sites because they’re:

• Free. (You do have to register first — for each site. I simply used an old “junk email address” that I don’t care about, then picked a garage sale related username and password, and used them just for this one occasion.)
• Quick and simple. (I posted my yard sale online in less at 5 minutes at each site.)
• A good way to increase your reach and get the attention of shoppers from beyond your immediate neighborhood. (If you have “unique” items listed in your ad, then you never know how far someone will drive to buy it!)
• Giving you things that you alone cannot easily provide to the public — like providing routes & maps to your location, search tools, photos, etc.
• The top ways that shoppers find yard sales to visit. (Yard salers can search by date, type of items, photos, location, and more.)
• Editable after you’ve posted the details of your garage sale. (Think of something else you’re going to sell? You can edit your ad and tweak it as often as you’d like!)

Now onto my top picks, in order…

#1 – Craigslist

Craigslist is, by far, the most popular way that people find out about yard sales online. So you definitely want your garage sale to be listed there! Here’s how to post your yard sale on Craigslist, step-by-step.

#2 – Gsalr.com

This is one of the best and most popular ways to find and map garage sales that you’d like to visit. So you definitely want to be listed here. You can also post up to 50 photos for free with your online ad. For the record, I didn’t post any photos for my garage sale. I meant to post a picture of all the lawn & garden equipment we were selling (because there was a lot of it, and they’re rather unique larger items), but I just never got around to it. I’m sure photos might help your yard sale online ad a little bit (they surely couldn’t hurt), but I don’t know that photos matter that much to the success of your sale.

#3 – YardSales.net

It’s nice to have your yard sale listed here because this site specializes in preparing unique driving routes for yard salers — making it easy for them to bounce from one garage sale to the next one.

#4 – Yard Sale Search

This is a basic garage sale search tool that everyone uses before heading out for a day of yardsaling. It shows your potential buyers all the most common things — like a neighborhood map view and a listing of the items that you’ve got for sale.

#5 – Garage Sale Finder

I can’t imagine how many yard sale shoppers actually use this feature, but this site offers the unique ability to download garage sales into your own personal GPS device — such as Garmin, Magellan, or TomTom.

#6 – GarageSales.com

This site showed the fewest results for garage sales in my area, so I know it’s the least popular of all the sites listed here. But since it was quick and easy to post my own yard sale there, I figured it couldn’t hurt to have my sale listed on one more site.

Again, I posted my yard sale in all 6 of these locations — and my garage sale was, indeed, successful!

How To Write A Yard Sale Online Ad

It’s important to say things the right way when you’re writing a yard sale ad.

Some quick tips:

• Don’t use all CAPS in your online garage sale ads.
• If possible, double-space between each item you list in your yard sale ad. The end result will be a long list of individual items, rather than a long paragraph of items run together.
• Give your garage sale ad a catchy headline. Here are a bunch of yard sale headlines to help you think of a creative headline for your own yard sale ad.
• Don’t list everything that you’re selling — just mention the most expensive, most popular, and most well-known items that will catch peoples’ attention. While collectibles typically don’t sell well at garage sales… IF you’re very specific about the collectibles you’re selling in your ad, then you are more likely to get some people who actually collect those items at your yard sale.
• Get creative when writing your yard sale online ads. While you don’t have much space to be witty on the physical signs that you’ll post, your online ads are the perfect place to “go all out.” Not only can you list (and describe) your “best” items, but you can also use clever wording that shows your personality. By doing this, you’re helping to make your garage sale stand out from all the rest!

This is the wording I used when I posted my yard sale online at each of the above 6 sites:

When To Post Your Yard Sale Online Ads

Personally, I waited until 3 days before my yard sale (which was on Saturday, October 18th).

But most sites let you post your garage sale online as far as 2 months before your actual yard sale date.

There was no particular strategy involved in when I chose to post my sale online, other than the fact that I wasn’t organized enough until then to be able to group the types of items I was going to sell (and know exactly which large items I should highlight in the ad) until a couple days before the sale.

I knew about 2 weeks ahead of time what my actual yard sale date was going to be — so it’s true that I might have been able to generate a little more traffic if people would have seen my sale listed that early.

While serious yard salers plan their shopping weekends and watch for new garage sales to show up months in advance, the majority of garage sale shoppers probably wait until the week of the yard sale date to search for yard sales online. That way, they have a better idea of what the weather is going to be like, and what other things are on their agenda for that weekend.

That said, one good reason to post your yard sale online earlier rather than later is to influence fellow garage sale hosts when they’re trying to decide on a date to have their own sale. Most of us want to have our yard sale on the same day that there are lots of other sales going on in the area — that way shoppers feel like it’s worth their while to drive to this end of town to do some yard sale shopping!

Finally, it’s pretty cool when it’s weeks before your garage sale and your listing is the only one that shows up on these online sites — simply because you chose to post your yard sale online early.

So, my best advice?…

If you happen to know your yard sale date way in advance, then by all means, post it early! You can always edit it if you change any of the details of your sale.

Post your yard sale ad multiple times. We posted a few days before the sale, and then on each sale day. (You’ll have to delete your old ads before you can post new ones.) AND… Post early in the morning on your yard sale dates. Expert yard salers will be checking the Craigslist listings at 5am with their cup of coffee, so get up and get your ads to the top of the listings.

~ Cassie at Wholefully