Connor Sweeney spills the secrets to his lucrative side gig
Credit: Connor Sweeney
NEED TO KNOW
- Connor Sweeney’s side hustle — furniture flipping — makes him thousands of dollars
- He has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, where he shares his flips under the handle The Flip Hut
- Sweeney sat down with PEOPLE, where he shared a few key pieces of advice for beginners who want to follow in his footsteps
Connor Sweeney's side hustle makes him thousands — and he thinks you can do it too.
The New Jersey native was bored like most of the world during the COVID pandemic, living in his childhood home, working a corporate job, and looking for hobbies when he saw a video online of a furniture flipper: someone who buys used home decor, gives it a DIY refresh, and then resells it for a higher price.
He tried his own hand at the side hustle, buying a used end table off of Facebook Marketplace, sanding down the top, adding some new hardware, giving it a fresh coat of paint, and selling it for $100. He was hooked.
Several years later, Sweeney makes thousands from the gig and has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, where he shares his flips under the handle The Flip Hut. And through his platform, he's adamant that his impressive furniture transformations are far less impressive than he makes them out to be.
Credit: Connor Sweeney
“People always say to me, ‘Oh, I could never do that. I never trained to be a furniture flipper. I don't know how to use a saw,' ” he tells PEOPLE in an interview. “I literally started with a can of paint and a sander I found in my garage.”
Most of what Sweeney learned was through video tutorials on YouTube and TikTok. And, he says, a lot of “trial and error.”
“It's just knowing that you're going into something that's probably not gonna be perfect at first,” he adds.
Still, Sweeney has a couple of key pieces of advice for newbie furniture flippers who want to make some extra cash on the side.
The first is the necessary supplies. Sweeney says beginners should start with a trusty can of spray paint, an orbital sander and some cheap hardware. With those three items, you can easily take a chipped piece of furniture and give it a shiny new finish.
“It really is basic, as long as you're not slapping it together and you care about the craftsmanship,” he says.
Credit: Connor Sweeney
The second is to sell smartly. For Sweeney, that means paying attention to the kinds of furniture pieces that sell well in your area and being nimble about adjusting the price to entice new buyers.
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“It might be $25 that makes all of the difference,” he says. “I have times where I have something listed for $300 and have no responses, and I drop it 50 bucks, and then all of the sudden I have 12.”
And if you have to lower the price to the point that you would be losing profit, he adds, never be afraid to flip the piece again in a different style.
“You have a lot of options when things don't sell,” he says.
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