When you’re trying to build a home gym on a budget, you may find that the search is more difficult than your future workouts. If you’ve ever tried to answer a “Used Exercise Bike” or “Pre-Owned Treadmill” classified ad in an urban area, you know what I’m talking about. You may get busy signals on the phone line for hours, only to finally get through and find out that the exercise equipment in question is either sold out or bid up to a price that you can’t deal with. Some unscrupulous sellers will even go so far as to promise the equipment to two or three people and then start the negotiations once all parties show up to get “their” item.
Rather than searching through traditional methods, there are a couple of steps you can take to ensure that your search for home gym equipment is a little less arduous. First, steer clear of your weekly paper. Unless you live in a very small town, or you’re responding about a piece of equipment that’s already overpriced, you’re probably going to be dealing with a lot of competition.
Instead, try the internet. Sites like Craigslist.org offer free classified ads that are published in real-time. The benefit there is that you don’t have to compete with an entire city full of people who all received the same paper at roughly the same time as you. Because online classifieds are published as they are created, you can log on sporadically and find exercise equipment listings that may not have been discovered by others. It’s a little more work, but it’s definitely easier than the wild goose chases you’ll be lead on by many traditional classifieds
Of course, if that’s too much work for you, try my favorite method. Get the buyers to come to you. If you’re serious about buying, all you need to do is let people know it. Think of how many people you know who have unused exercise equipment lying around their homes. Many may never consider the idea of creating an ad to sell their equipment. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be open to getting rid of it.
To take advantage of all that equipment that’s gathering dust, you just need to put your message out there. Create a simple flier detailing what you’re looking for. If you’re on an especially tight budget, you may wish to state your price range, too, so that you can avoid wasting everyone’s time on inquiries about items that are clearly too much.
In most cases, leaving your fliers on community bulletin boards or free online classified sites is more than enough. It may take a few days, but you’ll almost definitely get calls pretty quickly. If that doesn’t work for you, you could also expand your search to include the traditional newspaper classifieds. Many times, “Wanting to Buy” ads are listed for free.
Most importantly, don’t give up. It may take a few weeks to find everything that you need, but on the bright side, it won’t take up much of your time. You can just sit back and wait for the calls, and that’s a lot easier than hopefully browsing the newspaper for weeks on end. With these methods, you should have no trouble building an affordable home gym filled with great used exercise equipment.
