Following up from the article where I told you that my friend once did a carboot stall and earned just £2 profit for all of her efforts, you may recall that I said that she was doing another one with her daughter this weekend gone.

Well I am happy to say that this time they managed to sell quite a few items and made just shy of £80.

Well… they would have if they hadn’t spent around £30 on bacon butties and cakes.

£30 sounds like a lot on food for two people, and it would be but they bought cakes for the rest of the family so it’s not too bad, but it still brings their daily profit down to around £50.

The food they bought came out of that money so it’s kind of free when you think about it.

All in all, it was an okay day apparently.

They got rid of some stuff they no longer needed, they got some tasty treats for free and also went home £50 up.

£50 is £50, it’s better than nothing.

As I always say, it’s better in your pocket than someone else’s.

I don’t believe that my friend intends to do another carboot market anytime soon.

The stuff which was not sold was taken to a charity shop on the way home.

So whatever remained will be sold and the money put to some good use, which is good.

As you know, I’m not a huge fan of doing carboot markets to make some extra money… not unless you are running it, then they can be a real money spinner.

The farmer who owned the land charged £6 per pitch (£5 if you paid upfront online) and there were 100 cars at the market. At £5 that is a nice £500 for simply letting people park in your field for a few hours.

The price to enter the market as a customer was £1 and so if you had 200 people visit – usually these places can attract a lot more than that figure – you have another £200 for very little.

With so many people paying cash, I dare say that for every five pounds that went into the official bucket, one went into the ‘back pocket’.

I’m not saying that that is what I would do… but you know… I imagine it happens.

“Oh, no, the turnout this week was really poor Mr Taxman, we expected 700 people, but sadly only 500 came.

“I know, it LOOKS like there are more and you might be right, it’s a field and we get a lot of non-payers jumping though the hedge. It’s so hard to stop them and keep track of them as I’m sure you appreciate Mr Taxman. ”

There’s a business idea for you there… if you own a decent amount of land you might want to consider a carboot market.

I don’t know what the legal requirements are for running one, but all you supply is a place for people to gather and you get paid for it.

You could also capitalise on it more by selling food and drink to the public, or at least allow someone else to serve food and you charge a premium day rent or take a cut of the profits.

Going back to my friend who made £50 selling her parents unwanted items (£80 if you ignore the fact they bought food out of what they made), there was a lot of time and effort spent making that money whereas in the screenshot below, you can see that in the space of 2 hours and 10 minutes, £43.20 was made trading the Germany 40 market.

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