This article is about how to start making money flipping furniture.

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You need to treat your furniture flipping side hustle like a real business, if you want to make real money.

If you want to run a furniture flipping business you will need to treat it like an actual business, not a hobby. We are professional flippers and we started off with nothing. Within a year we had a five-figure business selling vintage furniture and home decor. You can start making money flipping furniture from nothing and while we can’t guarantee your results, there are a lot of things you can do to grow your business faster. Here are some tips when you’re a furniture flip beginner and you want to grow your business and increase your furniture flipping profits.

Our first tip is to treat the business like a business. Whether you call it a side hustle or your new venture or your path to financial freedom, whatever. We’re talking about your attitude and your mindset.  It might sound kind of silly or over-the-top, but the sooner we started acting like we had a real business, the sooner our profits and sales began to increase.

Making money flipping furniture requires research: before, during and always

When you first start your furniture flipping business, we consider that the scrappy stage (as opposed to the strategy stage). We picked up a little bit of everything and tried to sell it. We knew that we didn’t want to try to flip cheaply made pieces or anything that required a ton of work. But we did pick up a lot of different things, especially on the home décor side, and especially if it was free! But we tracked regularly all the information about every product. We just used a Google Sheet for a long time, until we had about 100 sales. Later we switched to Airtable for inventory management and Vendoo for crosslisting on multiple platforms. Vendoo has a free plan and we started with that. If you’re interested in Vendoo and need more than the free plan, be sure to use this link to save 25% on Vendoo.

Track inventory and costs and sources of inventory.

We tracked the cost of the item, the purchase date, where we purchased it and any additional costs. Those costs might have included tip for someone to help us get it in the car, or new lampshades if we got a pair of lamps for free with no shades. We did not track supplies against individual items. In other words, if we bought new hardware for a nightstand, we added that cost. But, if we bought a can of paint and paintbrushes that we would apply to multiple items, we didn’t include that as a cost. However, because we had a dedicated bank account, we still kept track of the expense.

But most importantly, the research of what we bought, how much it sold for and how long it took to sell was a huge game changer for us. We started to learn which kinds of items were fast sellers for our market. When you are still at that scrappy stage you want to cast a wide net, but you want to learn from that. So start tracking what you’re selling, and what you’re not.

Photography and staging make a big difference when you first start flipping furniture.

Even when you’re just starting out, you’ll find that good photos and staging can help a lot. If possible, pictures outside can be the easiest because the natural light will help you take well-lit photos without a lot of photography knowhow. If you’re inside, try to at least turn on a lot of lights around the item. We even used one of our floor lamps (a curbside find, obviously) to light the items—anything is better than nothing.

Once we were more established, we invested in a decent light box. But in the beginning, you just want to do your best for it to be well lit. Take photos from every angle, close ups of any imperfections and if possible, also video. Video generally attracts people more than still photos. Plus some platforms are known to have algorithms that favor videos so people will see your listings more frequently if you have a video.

Good photos and staging will help you sell faster.

Staging can make a big difference, although in the beginning, with lower priced items, you don’t have to spend quite as much time. Generally, the more that we are charging, the more time we spend on photos and staging. But that doesn’t mean don’t stage at all. Take lifestyle pictures of the item being used. Put chairs in front of a table. Put a lamp on top of a desk. Take pictures of a lamp on and off (because it also saves you from answering “does it work?” over and over). Try to choose neutral backgrounds and then stage with one or two items that are relatively generic. Just enough to help a buyer imagine it in their own space.

Begin working on a pricing strategy and an inventory management schedule.

When you are running a furniture flipping business, pricing and inventory are sort of related. As you begin to sell things, maybe after a couple dozen, you should begin to experiment with pricing. If things are moving slowly, try dropping the price 10% and waiting a week. If things are flying out the door, raise the price 10%. Related, you don’t want to hold inventory for weeks to make an extra $5-10. For one, it means your cash is tied up in that piece. If you bought it for $10 (whatever it is), and you priced it at $50 and someone offers you $40 after a week, consider taking it. Don’t wait another three weeks for that last $10. In that same time you could have used the $40 to buy four more $10 items and sell each of those at $40 each.

Inventory management should also help drive your pricing adjustments.

The other thing is if you are making money flipping furniture, you will probably begin to run into space constraints. We operated about nine months before we finally had to get a small storage unit. But at first, we lived with a LOT of chairs and tables and nightstands around us! So you want to have a plan for how long you hold inventory. We used our Google Sheet spreadsheet to track what we’d held for 30 days, and we began to move it to on “clearance.” Ideally, we sold it for at least break even within 60 days. (We still do this now, but we track on AirTable as we outgrew the Google Sheet hundreds of items ago!)

 To be honest, we consider a sale at breakeven to be a “loss” in the sense that we didn’t make any money. And when you factor in whatever time we spent cleaning, photographing and listing it, we did lose money. So our goal was always to make a little profit, and hold no longer than 30 days, when possible. The only exception was occasionally we would luck into something truly valuable and we were willing to wait quite a while for the right buyer. This is rarely more than 2-3% of our inventory, however.

Treat your furniture flipping side hustle money seriously, right from the start.

We tried early on to have a separate budget for buying and selling things. That can be as simple as an old wallet for cash, and then you regularly move some of that cash into a bank account. (You should be prepared for a decent amount of cash transactions once you start making money flipping furniture.) Try to dedicate one credit card or debit card to purchases. We use a Chase Business Banking account and found it to be a really good experience. But whatever you do, if you start a furniture flipping side hustle, you want to start tracking both incoming cash and expenses early.

Open a business bank account as soon you start making money flipping furniture.

We can’t give you any kind of tax advice. You should get professional advice for your situation. But you may want to open a business bank account relatively early. This way you can easily track the money coming in as business income and the costs of your business in the same account. You’re probably going to get a lot of payments by Zelle and Venmo, and when you accept those payments into your main account, it’s going to be hard to track your business income. We went with a Chase business bank account because the fees were really reasonable and we could open the account online. Also–and this is NOT tax advice–the monthly fee of your business bank account may be tax deductible.

Pro tip: we don’t recommend using your personal bank account for business income. Some banks will even close your account if they realize you’re using a personal account for business purposes.

Also, if you decide to begin selling online, you’ll need an account for those payments to deposit into. Whether that’s just adding shipping to your Facebook and OfferUp accounts, or adding on Ebay and Etsy or similar online only platform, you’re going to need a place to accept online deposits. Plus, if you have a business checking account, you can use the debit card to purchase all your business needs which should make it easier for record keeping.

Begin learning a little SEO to start making money flipping furniture faster.

This is one lesson we could have learned a little sooner. You don’t have to overthink all your early listings with perfect keyword research. But, you do want to start getting a little better with product titles and descriptions. You can do basic SEO keyword research–the free SEO lessons from Stupid Simple SEO were a great start for us. Right now, you’re not choosing things based exactly on what the market is looking for and then going and getting them. But what you can do is look at other listings for similar items.

For example, most people would list: “Great Looking Thomasville Vintage Five Drawer White Chest of Drawers.” But for SEO purposes you might want to say “Wood Chest of Drawers in White with Five Drawers by Thomasville.” A customer probably isn’t looking for a “great looking Thomasville vintage” item. Your title should read more like what someone is looking for. Start with the basic item (wood chest of drawers) then add specifics like color and brand (white, five drawers, Thomasville).

If you’re selling decor, you might also think of reasons why someone is buying the item. So, instead of listing something as “Noritake China Nightsong Pattern Porcelain Cup and Saucer” say “Cup and Saucer Fine China for Tea Party, Vintage Tea Party Decor”. And then say in the listing the brand and china pattern. This isn’t always true though: if you know the brand is the selling point as in “Authentic Eames Chair” then you should definitely use the brand name.

Start understanding your customers and building a community.

This is actually a very simple thing. We listened to what our customers were buying and for what purpose, which helped us realize what was most valuable. And, those conversations helped us connect with buyers. People began to follow us on Facebook and Offer Up. Some even put in requests, asking us to keep an eye out for various items. If we were starting over, we might have had business cards and email list from the beginning. That seemed pretty aggressive back then! But the truth is, the sooner you can begin to own a list of customers, the better. And frankly, we were shocked how many people became repeat shoppers.

Although we didn’t really know it at first, by only offering good condition solid wood vintage furniture and quality vintage room décor, we became a better option than a lot of people in our market. Even though our tables were $30-75 max in most cases back then, we were pleasant and reliable. Our items were clean and in good condition, and any material imperfections were described and/or photographed. Something as simple as good customer service goes a long way.

The last thing to remember when making money selling furniture is that it’s a business, if you treat it like one.

No one thing above will cement your success, or your failure. But the point is to treat your furniture flipping side hustle like a business, if you want to grow results. When you are in the mindset that this is a real business, it will change your perspective. You will think like a business owner and act like a business owner. And eventually you can make money like a business owner! Making money flipping furniture can be not only fun and rewarding but a lucrative business.

This article is about how to start making money flipping furniture.

Other articles to check out next:

Read this if you’re starting a flipping business from nothing.

If you have been flipping furniture for money for a while, read this post about how to grow your business to a five-figure income.

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