My first yard sale made $23. I sat in the driveway for six hours, sold a lamp and some old DVDs, and ended up hauling most of it to Goodwill. The math was humiliating: less than $4 an hour.

The second one made $340. Same stuff, different approach. Here’s what changed.

Pricing: the thing everyone gets wrong

People don’t go to yard sales for fair market value. They go for embarrassingly low prices. Price things at 10-20% of what you paid. A shirt you bought for $30 should be $3. A kitchen gadget: $2. Books: 50 cents or fill-a-bag for $5.

Setup and timing

Saturday morning, 7am start. Serious yard sale buyers are out early. By 11am traffic drops off hard. If you start at 9am you’ve already missed half your customers.

Group items by category and put the best stuff near the street. Furniture and eye-catching items visible from the road pull people in. Clothes and small items go toward the back — people will walk through everything to get to them anyway.

Have change. $40 in ones and fives, plus quarters. The first three people will all hand you twenties for $3 purchases and you’ll run out of change fast.

Signage: big, bold, one word: “SALE” with an arrow. Address in smaller text. Nothing else. Complicated signs are unreadable from a moving car. Put them at every intersection leading to your street. Take them down when you’re done — the neighbors will hate you less.