You can make money selling coupons. Don't expect to get rich doing this, but it can pay surprisingly well, depending on the effort you are prepared to put in. The great thing about selling coupons is that you need no prior experience and next to no start up outlay. Anyone can do it regardless of age, and your location need not be a hindrance either.

1. You need a regular supply of coupons. There are two basic sources for coupons that you can sell. You can get them from supermarkets directly, or from newspapers, especially Sunday newspapers.

2. Visit all the supermarkets and big shops in your area. Look for coupons. You will find them in the ad sheets, or placed strategically in the aisles, often in front of the very products they offer a discount on. They are free to take, so help yourself. You may feel a bit self-conscious doing this at first, but ask a store manager if you can, should you want to be honest about it. He or she will tell you to simply help yourself.

3. Buy a variety of Sunday newspapers. You will find coupons as inserts, or there to be cut out. Collect as many coupons as you can find. The more you can find the better. Remember, you can buy several copies of the same Sunday newspaper and get even more coupons. Ask your friends to keep their Sunday newspapers for you. They will probably glad to get rid of them once they have been read.

4. Don't print out coupons from off the Internet. Yes, it may say that it's OK, but in reality you will find that some store will be reluctant to take them, or even accuse the person who has them of forgery. Your customers will not be happy if that happens to them! You should be able to find plenty of real coupons without having to resort to printing off online coupons.

5. Group your coupons in batches. If you plan to sell them on Ebay, go to the: Home & Garden / Food & Wine / Food Coupons section of the website and see what others are doing. Then you should find your own style, based on what is commonly done.

Basically, you can group your coupon by exact product or by product type. For example, you could have 10 coupons for one single product brand name, or 10 coupons for 10 different brand name products that all do the same thing.

6. Coupons can easily be sold on auction websites. Ebay is the biggest and most popular of these. You will need an account with Ebay, which is free. Next you will need to create a listing for your coupons. Keep it simple. Don't try to sell all your coupons from one listing. Instead, sell either a batch of a single product, or a batch of a product type, as explained in step number 5 above.

If you have more coupons for more products, create more listings. This will keep your marketing efforts simple and uncluttered. It will not confuse the visitor to your listings. For the photo of your listing, simply take a digital photo of one of the coupons you are selling.

7. You will need to be able to accept payment on Ebay. PayPal is a good choice, and Ebay owns PayPal, so it is easily integrated into the listing. It's also free to open a PayPal account.