Hosting Your Own Yard Sale: Making Signs

I love, love, love to go yard sale shopping on Saturday mornings!  I get up early, have a plan of what I’m looking to buy, and head out.

I don’t usually check the newspaper or the internet for the list of available yard sales that day.  I rely on another source to point the way for me…signs that people hang up.

On any given Saturday, you can drive around town and see hundreds of homemade signs nailed to telephone poles, all pointing the way to a particular yard sale.

Obviously, signs are really important when it comes to advertising a yard sale.  Keeping this in mind, when it came time for hosting my own yard sale I wanted to make sure that my own signs were something that a marketing genius would have come up with.

Here are the basic strategies for creating an advertising masterpiece:

• Frequency:  You want to make a skillion of those signs!
• Consistency:  You want them to all look the same.
• Legibility:  If they can’t read the sign, they won’t come.
• Size:  If they can’t see the sign, they won’t come.
• Simplicity:  If it’s jumbled with a thousand words, they won’t have time to read all of it.
• Eye-catchability:  Bright colors and creative shapes will make your signs stand out!

I realize that I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill.  Yes, we are simply talking about making signs for a yard sale.  But why not do it the way Coca-Cola or Chick-Fil-A would do it?!?  Let’s make these yard sale signs the best that anyone has ever seen, and let’s make a million dollars by hosting a yard sale!  🙂

Talk is cheap.  Anyone can say “do this” or “try that”.  I want you to know that the sign strategies that my husband and I have come up with are tried and true.  We made $1300 at last year’s yard sale…$1300 selling unwanted “junk”!!

The signs that we made, and the strategy behind them, were just one of several components of putting together a successful yard sale.  I go into much more detail in my book, The Yard Sale Book, but for now I want to share with you the basics of our yard sale sign strategy.

How I Make the Signs:

1. First, buy around 40 poster boards, all of them in the same neon color.  I have found that they are cheapest at Dollar Tree…two for one dollar.
2. Cut them in half and then, using a jumbo magic marker, write the exact same script on everyone one of them:
   Mega Yard Sale!
   555 Nowhere Drive
   Date
   
   
3. Leave a blank space at the bottom to draw in a directional arrow.   You will draw them in as you hang them up.
4. Then buy about 25 file folders in the same color (or close to it) as the poster boards.
5. Cut them in half.  These smaller signs will be posted around your actual neighborhood.  Leave a blank space at the bottom for a directional arrow.  They will also read:
   Mega Yard Sale!
   555 Nowhere Drive
   Date

A finished file folder sign that we hung up on a pole in our neighborhood.

My husband and I set aside the Thursday night before the yard sale for our big Yard Sale Sign Hang-Up!!  (we consider it a date!)

How We Hang the Signs:

1. What you will need to bring with you in the car:  staple gun and extra staples, duct tape, all of your posters, and a jumbo magic marker.
2. On the nearest major street/highway to your house, saturate the area with the large posters.
3. Make sure your signs go in both directions, so both lanes of traffic can read them.
4. Hang one up AT LEAST one sign on every other telephone pole.  If the poles are metal, use duct tape.  If the poles are wooden, use the staple gun.
5. When you hang up a sign, quickly draw in a directional arrow guiding the flow of traffic to your house.
6. Go at least three miles in both directions.
7. Use the small file folder signs in your neighborhood.  Saturate the area until you have used all of your signs.  Concentrate on intersecting streets and cut-through areas.

Once you have hung up all of your posters, a person should have to try pretty hard to not notice all of your signs!  You want to make it clear that your yard sale is worth coming to…more worth it than any other yard sale out there!

At the entrance to your neighborhood, hang up a large sheet sign.  When I say “large”, I’m talking six to seven feet in length and about four feet high!

I make my “sheet” sign out of teacher’s bulletin board paper.  I write in gigantic letters:

The Biggest Most Well-Organized Yard Sale!!

That is all the text I have on it; the only other item on the giant “billboard” is a directional arrow.  I secure it into the ground with wooden stakes.  And if it’s a windy day, I cut a few slits in it so that the wind will blow through it rather than blow it over.

You couldn’t ignore that sign if you tried!

And last but not least, I always place a full-sized poster with balloons attached in my front yard.  Just in case anyone missed the 120 signs along the street and seven-foot banner at the entrance to my neighborhood.  🙂

Notice all of the cars…those our our “customers”!! And little Rudy on the car there is our greeter. 🙂

Well, after all this work you should feel like a professional marketer!  But I promise you…it’s so worth the effort.  I cannot even begin to number the amount of shoppers at our yard sale that commented (no, exclaimed!!) about the shocking number of signs that we had hung up!

So happy money-making!  And please, if you follow this model, share your experience!

PS.  Don’t forget to pick up your signs day after your yard sale!

“Yard Sign” Photo in the header by AWA

Lauren Souers

Hi, my name is Lauren. I am the wife of one fine man and the momma of four (huge) young children – three boys and one princess! I love all of them. I mostly clean up messes and feed people all day, and it’s really fun to write about it. Jesus is the rock of my family – we love and serve a mighty King! I hope you leave here full of hope that “tired” can be good.