I opened the doors officially on Monday. Between then and today I've made about $300, $200 of that came from a bedroom set. $250/wk is what I need to break even. It's a great starting point, especially considering I have 1.5 months free and 2 months of half rent after that.
It's helping that kids are going back to school now and I'm so close to 3 major universities!
I think the ones that struggle depend solely on sales from the traffic that comes to the store organically. I post heavily on craigslist, anything that I get from a unit that I would throw out, I put up for free to get people to come to the store. Everybody who walks in is a potential sales person for your store. So, even if they just take the free away, I could end up with some word of mouth.
My website has been up for a couple of weeks and is gaining ground on google, I've gotten maybe 4-5 calls this week from my website.
As long as I continue to push craigslist, amazon and ebay, I'll be able to make rent and a bit of money no sweat.