OFFLINE: How I made an easy $1,000 with 10 craigslist ads and some forum posts

This doesn't really fall under the usual "offline gold" thing but here is something new I've been doing and I wanted to share with you guys:

I just helped a guy in the local community sell a 1969 Chevy Nova muscle car for $17,000 and got paid a $1,000 commission for doing so.

Since I am an offline consultant, I am well known in the local community as the "internet guy". Because of this, people come to me when they think that I can help them. This is exactly the case with this deal when a man named "Mel" came to me to sell his muscle car.

Mel is a local "wheeler and dealer" who finds people who are selling muscle cars, works them hard, finds their bottom dollar price, shows them the money and walks away with a high dollar muscle car worth thousands of dollars more than what he paid for it. He then flips the car for huge profits in the thousands.

He has done this for years, buying muscle cars low and selling them high. And he's made quite a bit of money doing it. He's sold custom street rods for $40,000 where the buyer just handed him a stack of CASH. Boom!, $15,000 profit just like that!

But his little business is feeling the hurt from the current "economic conditions". Not everyone is willing to drop $20,000 let alone $40,000 on a play car right now. People are holding on to their money. No longer can Mel put his muscle cars in local classified newspapers and bring in a local buyer like he used to. So he's needing to expand his reach beyond the state of Maine and get his cars in front potential buyers all over the world.

The only way he can accomplish that is by leveraging the power of the internet. Mel hasn't got the slightest clue on how to go about using the internet to sell his cars, so he contacted me and told me he was having a hard time selling this car and wanted me to (in his words) "put it on some webs" and bring him a buyer.

Once I sold this car for him, "there would be more deals to follow".
So, here is what I did. Keep in mind I've got about 2 hrs of my time involved into this deal.

I went to his house with digital camera and camcorder in hand and shot some nice pictures and video of the car.

I then went home and wrote up a nice ad for the car based on the information he gave me. Then I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video I took earlier so that it was about 5 mins long and still showcased the whole car in detail.

I then proceeded to post the car all over craigslist in many different states, rewriting the ad a little bit for each state so it wouldn't get flagged and taken down.

I also took the video and deployed it to multiple video sharing sites by using tubemogul.com. I made sure to use keywords in the video title, description and tags.

After all of this, my youtube video was on the first page of google within 10 hrs for the search term: "1969 chevy nova for sale"

As I write this, it's been about 4 weeks since I placed the first ad online and we just got a buyer last night.

That's how I made $1,000 just by posting 10 craigslist ads and uploading 1 video to tubemogul.com

All together I've got about 2 hrs of my time invested into taking the pictures and video and marketing this car on the internet. $500 /hr is not bad! We've got future deals all lined up now as well and I am ready to make some more money with Mel.

Mel is not the only person in the world who needs my help. You can find someone just like Mel in your area who is trying to sell a high dollar item such as a car, rare antique, collector's items or anything else. Most people dont know how to sell things online. Its simple to us, but not them.

I would recommend putting an ad in the local newspaper (because these types of people read it) and craigslist with something along the lines of: "NEED TO SELL SOMETHING? LOCAL INTERNET EXPERT WILL FIND YOU A BUYER IN SHORT TIME"

I plan to take this a step further and pretty much start my own consignment business if I can find the time. I'm going to create a website and display all of the items I have sold or can sell for people.

Right now, I do this purely on word of mouth and referrals. I haven't taken the extra step to advertise this service at all. But I was lucky enough for the opportunity to fall into my lap. If I was starting this from scratch, I'd be running ads in the newspapers, local classifieds and of course craigslist.

Anyways, just some ideas.

-Peter