How to Find Free Stuff to Sell: A Guide for Beginner Resellers

Do you want to start a business, but don’t have any money? Do you want to make some extra cash on the side but don’t know where to begin? Don’t worry, it’s not hard at all. In this blog post I’ll outline one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to make money with a side hustle: specifically. how to easily find free stuff to sell that will make you money.

Can You Really Make Money Selling Free Stuff?

I love reselling. Finding something cheap and selling it for more money is the ultimate side hustle game. The one thing that makes the game even more exciting is by reselling things that you can get for free.

You might think that this isn’t possible. However, it is. Making money selling free stuff is totally doable. People are always getting rid of perfectly good items that other people are more than willing to pay for.

How do I know this?

Because I’ve don’t it… multiple times in fact.

So yes, you can really make money selling free stuff. Read on as I show you exactly how to do this. If you follow the outline below, you will know how to find free stuff to sell, make some money reselling those things, and maybe find a side hustle that you love. Oh, and I’m also going to share some of my best tips for finding free stuff that people are literally throwing away.

Why is Finding Free Stuff to Sell a Good Way to Make Money?

A lot of people that want to start a side hustle don’t have a lot (if any) money to invest in their idea. For example, if you want to make money by investing in Bitcoin, you’re going to need to have some start-up capital. If you want to start blogging, you’re going to need to pay for things like domain registration and web hosting.

However, when you resell things you picked up for free, you don’t need any of those things. All you really need is some time to find the items and pick them up, take pictures, upload them, and write a description of the item on your post.

It really is the ultimate Dollars from Cents way of making money. And what’s great is that anyone can do it. You can find free stuff to sell no matter where you live and regardless of your circumstances.

Process for Making Money from Free Stuff

The process of finding free stuff to sell and make money is relatively simple. (It’s similar to how you go about making money by flipping products.) I’ve outlined the process in six easy steps:

1. Find free stuff
2. Get get it
3. Clean it up or fix it up
4. Take good pictures
5. Post for sale online
6. Rinse and repeat

Find Free Stuff

The first step in making money by selling free stuff is to find free stuff that you can actually sell for more money. Remember finding free stuff in and of itself is not going to make you any money; you actually have to find things that have value to other people. Just because something is free doesn’t mean that you can resell it for more.

There are tons of places to find free stuff to sell, including:

• Trash bags or dumpster diving at stores (just make sure that you’re not breaking any laws)
• Thrift stores
• Garage sales and flea markets (though these tend to be more expensive)
• Craigslist postings for free stuff on the “for sale” section
• Facebook marketplace groups where people are giving away their unwanted items

I’ll talk about these (and more) further on in the article, but suffice it say that there really are lots of places (both online and offline) where you can find free things to sell.

Pick It Up

The next step in the process, after finding something for free to sell, is to go pick it up. In order to do this, you’ll need to make time and room in your schedule for picking up the item, as well as a way of transporting it.

First off, you’ll want to contact the person who’s giving away their stuff and arrange a meeting spot (ideally somewhere very close). If they don’t answer right away, just keep trying periodically until they do.

Second, find out how to transport the freebies back home with you. In many cases this will simply be by car; however there are other options too such as taking public transportation or renting something larger like an SUV with enough space for everything.

Clean It/Fix It Up

A lot of items that you’ll get for free might not be in the best shape. That’s OK. You can easily take something that isn’t in great shape and clean it or fix it up. When you do this, the resale value will increase, meaning you’ll make even more money.

For example, I like to find old sneakers to resell. Most of the time, the shoes that people throw out are perfectly good. They just need to be cleaned and or repainted, something that I can easily do in one or two days. After I clean them and make them look nice, I can usually sell them for a decent amount of money.

In the event that you can’t fix or clean what you got for free, you can either throw it away or try to still make a profit on it by selling it for less than what you originally thought. Since you got the item for free to begin with, you’re not really out anything if and when the item does sell.

If the freebies are in really bad shape and there’s no way around fixing them or cleaning them, then don’t worry too much about trying to sell those items — instead just donate those things so someone else can get use out of them at some point down the road.

Take Good Pictures

The next step on how to find free stuff to sell is to take good pictures of the item that you’re selling. Good pictures are super important because they’re what people see first and if they don’t like the pictures then you likely won’t get them to click on your link or buy your item.

The best way to take good photos is by following these steps:

• Use an external light source that doesn’t give off a glare (i.e., natural sunlight)
• Make sure the item is in focus, dark enough for detail but not too blurry, and large enough so it’s easy to make out the size of the item
• If there are any specific features about this particular freebie that would be interesting, such as being organic or ecofriendly, include those details in either captions underneath each photo or in in the the main text
• Include a variety of pictures, from different angles and in different environments (indoors or outdoors)

If you’re not sure on how to take good product photos, you can watch this YouTube video below for some good pointers to remember:

Post the Item for Sale

The next step in the process is to post the item for sale. If you want some ideas on where you can do that, be sure to read my article on how to make money flipping products. It specifically has information on where you can post your items, how to go about doing that, and some pros and cons for each location.

Rinse and Repeat

The real key to making money by flipping free stuff is consistency. If you’re not constantly looking for new free things to resell, you won’t be very successful. Only those resellers that are always on the lookout for new items will come out ahead.

Once you’ve gone through this list, it’s time to go back and start over again with a whole new set of free stuff! Keep going until your bank account is full or your basement looks like a storage unit that just won’t quit. 😉

Where to Find Free Stuff to Sell

You might not think so but there are a ton places you can find free stuff to sell, both online and offline. For the most part, you just need to be a little creative on where to look.

Let’s start with places online.

Online

The best places for finding free stuff to sell are the following:

• Craigslist
• Facebook Marketplace
• OfferUp

Let’s take a look at each of those individually.

Craigslist

If you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past 20 years, maybe you don’t know what Craigslist is. Craigslist is a site where people can post ads for all sorts of things, including free stuff that they’re giving away. Sometimes the things that people give away are really trash but other times you can find some great deals.

Let’s take a look at a few of the free things people are giving away in Phoenix, Arizona.

You’ve got a bunch of furniture and a giant polar bear. These an all be picked up for free, fixed up, and then resold for profit.

Facebook Marketplace

I really like using Facebook Marketplace to find stuff to sell as well to for selling stuff that I find. In fact, most of the stuff that I do resell is done on Marketplace. While a lot of the stuff for sale on FB costs money, there is a way that you can search for free stuff that people are just trying to get rid of.

It’s really easy to find free stuff to sell. After you log in to Marketplace (which is right in your Facebook account), scroll down on the left side of the page until you see the “Free Stuff” category.

Once you click on that link, you’ll find a bunch of listing for free stuff that people are giving away. Here’s what popped up on my feed when I check right now:

One thing to remember about FB Marketplace (and something that I think is super annoying, is that people will say stuff is free but when you click on the listing, they’re actually selling whatever they have listed. Check out the above listings. The guy “giving away” the windsurfing equipment just put $0 to try to get more people to click on the listing. However, when you do, he says he’s actually selling the equipment.

OfferUp

The third online place I’m going to mention here is OfferUp, which hasn’t been around as long as Facebook Marketplace and definitely not as long as Craigslist.

However, OfferUp can also be a solid place to find stuff that people are giving away. One of the things that sets OfferUp apart from its competition is that it’s not as widely known as the other two so you might be able to score some nice free stuff without having to fight the competition like you would on Craigslist or Marketplace.

Head over to OfferUp and enter your location on the top search bar. Once you do that, you can use the categories filter on the left see the free items

Just remember that if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. Scams are everywhere and don’t ever give out your personal information, including your phone number.

Look Around You

The second place to find free stuff to sell is by just keeping your eyes open and looking around you. There are so many places that you can find free stuff offline that even if you don’t have access to Craigslist, you should still be able to make some money. Start by paying attention to different things when you drive.

Chances are that when you’re driving to work or to the store now, you’re either paying attention to the song that’s playing or thinking about something else besides what’s around you.

However, if you start paying attention to your immediate environment when you drive, you’ll be surprised at how much you can find for free that is worth something. For example, I was visiting my brother in Texas last summer. He and I had to run to the gas station for something and on the way, we noticed that a house nearby had put a bunch of stuff on the curb.

Now, in most places, that’s the universal sign that the stuff is free for the taking or it’s going to the trash. As we drove by, we noticed that sitting there was a huge Froze playhouse. With all sons, that’s not something that piques my interest but he has little girls who love Elsa.

So he made a mental note of where it was and that night he drove back with his truck, picked up the playhouse, and then cleaned it up for his girls. And when they grow out of it, he can turn around and sell it and make a nice profit off of $0!

Also, don’t limit yourself to just stuff you see on other people’s sidewalks; go through your own stuff and see what you can get rid of. Instead of taking it to Goodwill or Salvation Army (or even the trash), post it online and see if someone will pay you for it. In fact, that’s how I got started flipping products.

I realized that I had an old Amazon Kindle e-reader that I didn’t use anymore and decided to try and sell it. Someone ended up buying it from me and from then on I was hooked at the power of reselling stuff.

Ask Family and Friends

Most people I know have a garbage bag full of old clothes and books in the truck of their car. It’s been sitting there for months now, just waiting to be taken to the local thrift store to be dropped off. And yet, it never happens.

Does this sound familiar?

She had meant to go, really she had. But the days just kept slipping by and before she knew it, another two weeks had gone by with the clothes sitting in her trunk. She’d been too busy at work on her last project, and so now here she was; stuck with a bag of old clothes that needed to be donated.

You can be a solution to this problem! Tell your family and friends that you’ll take their stuff that they are wanting to donate. Take it all. Go through it and see what’s good. List, sell, and make some money. It is really as easy as that. A few weeks ago my wife’s sister wanted to get rid of a bunch of books.

I told her I’d take them off her hands for free. I ended up with about 25 books. Guess what I did? Yep, turned around and sold them for a total of about $30. And it was all profit for hardly any work. I’ll take that any day 🙂

Wrap Up

Reselling things that you can find for free is a great way to make extra money. Not only are there no upfront costs, you can find free stuff everywhere! Hopefully this article on finding free stuff to sell has given you some ideas on how to start your own side hustle. If you have any questions on how you can do this, read the FAQ section below!

FAQ – How to Find Free Stuff to Sell