This is a story about how I made money from junk cars. It’s a story from 2009 when I was a twenty-something guy working for a bank.
A few years ago, our CEO decided that the bank would need to make more money and had the idea for “Junk Car Marketing” (because he saw it as an opportunity to make some extra cash). He came up with the name first, then we tested it out on potential customers to see if it would work and so on.
This was back in 2009 and there was no way we could have afforded any marketing at all back then. You can try to get some of your own junk car cash today.
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Making Money off Your Junk Car
There are two basic ways you can make money off your junk car. The first is by selling it to someone who needs a new car, and the second, and more interesting, is to get it valued as scrap metal, then resell it at a profit.
The first method, scrap metal valuation (the process of finding a buyer for your old car), is easy enough. All you need to do is find the person who needs a new car and get him to agree to buy your junk car for $5 per hour. Then you (or the person you’ve negotiated with) just have to sell your junk car at their public auction:
You can then sell it on eBay or Craigslist for thousands of dollars (or even go much higher if you’re lucky), taking a commission on every dollar that gets sold.
The second method, selling cars as scrap metal, requires a bit more effort — but in many cases, that effort doesn’t involve any time at all. You just buy some old cars from junkyards or auction houses like this one in New York City:
You then take them to auction houses like this one in San Francisco:
Or even make the trip down the coast to Los Angeles like this guy did (we’re not sure why he chose L.A.: we think he was just sold on sunshine):
After that, you just sell them again on eBay or Craigslist for hundreds of thousands of dollars each. In his video, he talks about how he makes $100 per day selling cars as scrap metal, but we don’t know if he works full-time doing this kind of thing — or if his wife does too; either way we have no idea how much money he made per month from his home-based operation…but here’s hoping for more!
How to Sell a Junk Car Online
The most substantial and immediate way to make some money off a junk car is through the sale of it on eBay or Craigslist. But there are many other ways of making money off your old, broken-down vehicle.
While I have no interest in selling my junk car for cash, I have done a lot of research into the subject. In this post on my site I list some of the more profitable methods I’ve found for making money off your old vehicle:
* Selling Your Junk Car Online * Selling Your Junk Car on eBay * How to Get Cash For Junk Cars on Craigslist * How to Sell Your Junk Car Through A Local Auto Trader * How to Build an Online Business Using Junk Cars (My Own Way) * How to Sell Your Reconditioned Vehicle On eBay * How to Sell Reconditioned Vehicles On Craigslist
There are also a few other related posts, including:
* Selling You Junk Car with eBay * Selling Your Junk Car with Craigslist (or Both) * Buying Cheap Cheaper Low-Cost Too Much Money $$$$$$ Most People Looking for an Auto Trader Are Trying to Make Some Cash Off Their Vehicles? They Don’t Know There Are Other Ways To Make Some Cash Off Them! After you have decided what you want out of your junk car and how much you are willing to pay for it, then you need to go about selling it. If you decide that selling your junk car online is the way you want to do it, then here are some things that will help you get started: 1. The Ideal Location For Selling Your Old Car Online This can be as simple or as elaborate as you want it. In fact, depending on what kind of seller you want how much traffic they want how much time they want and how many different people they expect them all to be looking at them at one time will determine how comprehensive or simplistic the site should be. It also depends a lot on their reputation for quality transactions; which doable things can be added; what kind of
What is the Best Way to Get Rid of an Old Car?
Of the things that you can take away from this post is that you can (1) have a ton of fun collecting junk cars and (2) make a little money. If you like to take things apart, then this is an easy way to earn some extra cash. If not, then it’s probably more of a hobby for you and only really worth doing if your friends are around.
The trick is to find junk cars for sale in a rather specific way:
• Check Craigslist.com
• Search Google for “How much do junk cars cost”
• Look at the photos of the cars and try to figure out who they belong to and how old they are
• The cheapest place I found was $200 per car so I didn’t get my hands on any expensive cars
If you have a specific reason for going into this (maybe your sister needs her car fixed), then price should be an important consideration too. The more useful your car, the better price you’ll get; and if it’s in bad condition, then cheap isn’t necessarily good enough. For example, I had no idea what type of car I was looking at before reading this post (and was surprised by how many were older models) but because it was old and rusty, I couldn’t afford $200 per car like on Craigslist — so I just went with the cheaper model that fit my budget better. Also keep in mind that the higher mileage on your car, the more expensive it will be when sold (unless repaired or otherwise modified).
The Benefits of Selling Your Car to a Junk Yard
Many of us have a few old cars in our garages, but how often do we sell them? You’d be surprised to know that you can make money from a junk car not just because it’s a nice piece of steel and the tires have been flogged, but because you have some good tools at your disposal.
Not only can you make money off your old car, but you can also collect the scrap metal and sell it to a junkyard. This is an incredibly smart strategy as there are many ways to improve your car and make more money.
Sometimes, people will get rid of their cars right away; other times they may try to get around the fact that they no longer use them by selling them to scrap yards. Also, some people buy cars just to turn them into another stage in their life journey (like buying a new house or starting a new career). But there are millions of people who don’t even think about getting rid of their vehicles for any reason — after all, why would anyone pay for something that isn’t even useful?
If you want to find out if there is indeed money in your old junk car — and perhaps even if there is — then start looking at what other options might be available for you. Sure, buying another old truck or a used car might be cheaper than selling your junked vehicle, but trading up means paying more upfront for something new (or paying more down with interest), which can be risky if you don’t know what you are doing.
Haas Automotive has been returning cars to their owners since 1971, so whether yours was an accident-prone model or an old one that worked fine when they had it running properly — they have the experience and tools needed to get these machines back up and running again! And yes — they do offer financing options too.
Conclusion
You’re probably excited: you have a perfectly good old car that can be fixed up or repurposed into something useful, or even just a pile of junk. It’s an easy sale — all you need is some cash. What kind of cash? Lots of it.
How about $1,000 for the car? That’s not too bad, but even that doesn’t work out so well because the car might actually cost less in real dollars than it does in estimates — and if it does cost more, then you are out of luck.
You could try to negotiate $100 to $200 from someone who has only a few bucks lying around and wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible, but take note: if that person comes back with a list of other cars he or she will sell for $10,000 (or even $50,000!), that person is asking way too much and you are robbed blind.
Rather than selling your car for cash (as long as it was still on the road at the time), would you rather have someone else pay you money to fix up the vehicle so that they could sell it at a profit? If so, then there are several options available: call an auction where multiple bidders compete to buy your junk car; turn your vehicle into scrap ores and sell them; sell them yourself at auction (this is actually possible for older cars); live off your junk car for many years until there is nothing left (you might want to consider this option if your car is made out of steel), or even steal your own junk car off another driver and drive away with it . . . though this will likely get back on police radar after a while!
Not all vehicles can be sold for cash; and even where they can be sold for cash, there may be reasons why somebody isn’t going to want to pay for them. In this case, what works best is to turn them into “vehicle donation” programs where people donate their scraped-together cars instead of buying them outright. The best example I know is called Wreckless Disposal in Los Angeles — check out their site here. You may have heard stories about people getting really rich by turning their old cars into tow trucks. They do indeed come from all over the world — from Canada and Mexico especially — but there are also stories about people turning their old cars.
Click here to see cash for junk cars.