05.22.06
Forget eBay. Check out Craigslist
With a friend, I’ve recently started importing memory chips in bulk from China, direct from factory. Of course, my first thought was to sell them on eBay. Right away though, I found that the going price on eBay was only $10-15 higher than my cost. At this rate, I would have to move a lot of volume to see any sort of profit.
My friend decided to post them on the Toronto Craigslist forum and within a few days they were all gone, at nearly a 100% markup. If you are thinking of entering the eBay business and you live in a large enough metropolitan area, try Craigslist first — you’ll be surprised how many replies you receive. Your customers will appreciate it as they won’t have to pay shipping fees and will receive the product faster, and you won’t have to pay PayPal fees, eBay auction & final value fees, and won’t have any worries of credit card chargebacks.
A few tips when selling on Craigslist:
- Never post your home address or home phone number on the site. Leave an email or cell number where you can be reached.
- Meet in a public place. Try a coffee shop or gas station. Bring the item you are selling in a backpack or bag.
- Count the cash together to avoid any misunderstandings.
So far, it seems to be working for me. Give Craigslist a try and let me know how it workes out in your city.
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Memory Chips eh?
What kind?
I live in the Uk and i we dont have many sites where you can do things like that, as someone will always find some way of ruining things for everyone else, if only they had a middle man to handle all that stuff for you. Well private items say.
I’ve long been a Craig’s List user, I’ve bought and sold an unreal number of things on it. That being said though, I just looked at my local version and the people selling RAM were selling it for more than I could buy it on Newegg! Personally I’d rather have to wait a week and get an awesome company standing behind it (hello warranty!) unless it was priced low enough to make it worth the experiment…
I’ve bought some things off of craigslist, but I’ve not had much luck selling. The problem is that your item gets buried under all the subsequent postings; not many people have the patience to either do a search or scroll to see more postings. I’ve posted the same ad in a few different (target demographics) cities that have netted a sale or two. And since it’s free, easy to use, it’s worth doing it.
I would also suggest using CL for advertising your services and / or lessons. These sections of CL aren’t nearly as swamped. I made my first ad about being an eBay Trading Assistant, ironically, and have received a decent biz lead from it.
CL is definately an untapped source! Let’s use it more.
Don’t forget to resubmit your ad every 7 days!
Don http://www.retro-bowling-shirts.com, http://www.bowlig-rockabilly-shirts.com
Thanks for the tip. I used craiglist to get rid of some stuff I had been trying to move for a while.
Cheers,
Gio
DIY Audio Projects
I heard about Craiglist years ago and thought it would never take off, but indeed it is gaining momentum….Ebay has some competition out there.
It almost seems like eBay wants to push people to other venues like Craigslist. eBay has been doing strange stuff for years now, constantly raising fees and making to generally unfriendly to sellers.
I have bought and sold a couple things on Craigslist. You’ll meet an interest crowd but I never had any problems.
Just my two cents,
Chuck
Thanks for this great plugin! Works fine – only my old PDA doesn’t understand UTF-8 – most blogs are coded like this – so special characters aren’t displayed correctly.