I've been trying to figure out how many sales a book gets based on it's Amazon Best Sellers rank. If you don't mind, how many sales do you get per month? I'm guessing that since things have died down it would be lucky to get 1 or 2 sales per month, but maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks for the offer, but I already have my domain. Is your book online? If so, what's it called and where is it? Maybe I own a copy. I bought some back in 2012 but I think they were all from Glendon Cameron. Also, how much is an ISBN?

I have to say, I've never seen anything like that before! I once had a unit with built in shelving (lots of it) that I had to remove as part of the unit, but a floating TV... not once.

I see it now. I contacted StorageUnitAuctionList to see if they are indeed affiliated with the site. I have a feeling "Powered by" means "We steal content from"... but I could be wrong.

Interesting, your experience in the business seems very similar to mine. A lot of trail and error, and keeping pace with seasonal changes, and longer term trends.

I didn't have a problem keeping pace, I had a problem with wanting to expand too quickly. Having a 5000 sq ft warehouse, and then a 2000 sq foot retail store split between 2 of us was just not cutting it. I made the dumb decision to close the warehouse and focus on the new retail store. Except, there was zoning in place that didn't allow thrift stores, so we focused on antiques and collectibles. We lost a majority of our previous customers and had a hard time finding new ones. This, with waaaay more overhead depleted me of all of my savings. Instead of $0.25 per sq ft at the warehouse, I was paying $1 per sq ft AND bringing in less money. We rode it out for a year hoping we could build up the newer business model, but it failed miserably and I filed bankruptcy.

In the beginning, if you can’t afford warehouse space, your next best thing will be storing and selling out of a storage unit, or two, or three, or four, etc. At my peak, I had three 10’ x 30’ storage lockers, and a pretty good system at that. I kept all the ready-to-sell furniture in one, the ready-to-sell “smalls” in another, and the third I kept for processing. This set me back roughly $650 per month, but I was making enough keep going. Note: I always put my profits back into the business so that I could grow it. If your loan, savings account, or significant other’s salary is enough to support your bills, I suggest doing this.

So, using storage lockers as storage sounds great right? No, not entirely. First and foremost, although you can now have buyers come to you, you will still have the problem with Craigslist buyers who show up late, or don’t show up at all. But, you can keep working in the meantime. Another downfall is there may be no electricity, lighting, or Wi-Fi access in order for you to post new items online. Let’s just say my smartphone got a workout!

In addition to those problems, you are also limited by the hours of the storage facility. Fortunately for me, because I was an LLC, the storage manager let me access my storage unit’s 24x7, which was great.

If you do decide to go the storage unit route, I recommend:

•   Sign up for the storage units with your business name!  This gives you some leverage and the possibility of 24x7 access to your storage locker(s).

•   If you are getting multiple lockers, try to get them as close together as possible. I had two, right next to each other, and a third that was a hike away, which wasn’t very convenient.

•   Get a system going before you max out your storage. I suggest having one locker for processing and one locker for selling.

•   Leave an aisle in all of your lockers so that you can get all the way to the back. You don’t want to block yourself from selling your inventory. Sales are the life-blood of your business.

Hello everyone, I've been doing storage auctions for roughly 10 years. 8 of those years were as a side hobby, and two years as a full fledged LLC. To make a long story short, when the economy tanked, I lost my full-time career job and had to take action fast. Since I was already doing so well with storage auctions as a hobby, I took out a loan against my retirement and started my own storage auction business.

Within a short time, I was making over six grand per month consistently for an entire year. Then I made a huge mistake and closed my original warehouse in exchange for a retail location with more overhead, less space, and zoning restrictions that led me to change business models and lose my loyal customers. This eventually led to filing bankruptcy… ouch!

I learned a lot along the way - what I did right, and what I did wrong, and I'm currently putting it all together into a book. I know there's already a ton of books on Amazon, but from what I've read, most of them aren't that great and don’t provide real sound advice about starting a legitimate business. It’s my goal to address as many of these issues as possible to take someone from hobbyist to professional, while balancing the needs of newbies and seasoned pros.

At this time, I have no definite release date. The book is mostly done. I’m just working on some finishing touches and learning exactly how to self publish on Amazon Kindle. However, I always love a good challenge and know it’ll be worth it if I can help at least one person. I would like to get this book out to as many people for free as possible, but I’m not going to post a link in here because I tried once already and the post was deleted. I’m sure it came off as spammy which I didn’t intend.

If you have any questions, post them here and I’ll do my best to get back to everyone. Also, to be clear, I don’t pretend to be some super storage auction guru. This is just my experience, what I have learned, what I know that works, and what I know that doesn’t work. I’m definitely not rich, and in fact, I’m presently quite poor. This book is just a personal passion that I have been working on for the last 6 months.

I hope I can be of help to anyone on the forum. I don’t mind answering questions about my personal life or my business. Everything is a learning experience, good and bad!

I have always been the silent bidder type. In addition, I would work with someone else to get a bid in under the radar when others would try to get my locker. Sometimes I will move around during bidding and act disinterested until people would stop watching to see if I bid. I would toss in a bid while they weren't looking and then immediately turn around and continue to act disinterested before they could look in my direction to see if it was me that bid or someone else.