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Cyber Yard SalesOnline Markets Take The Yard Out of Sales
By Louisa Jaggar
Special to The Washington Post
June 5, 2008
The truly 21st-century yard sale is not taking place on driveways or a patch of lawn in front of a house. It's being held on Craigslist, eBay® and other online marketplaces. These sites, especially eBay®, expand a seller's potential customer base astronomically and increase the odds that one person's junk becomes someone else's treasure. What's more, rain or shine, the Internet sale goes on. "Craigslist is my top choice for selling big bulky items, such as sofas and dining room sets, because the cost of shipping big items on eBay® can be exorbitant. eBay® is perfect for selling small items, brand names and collectibles," says Jennifer Hearn of Bethesda, who has sold an entire house, down to the windows and the kitchen sink, using Craigslist and eBay®. Even people with relatively little Web experience find these sites straightforward to navigate. The only requirements are having something worth selling, access to a digital camera and a computer.
Whatever online site you use, consider this basic advice:
• Sell to your audience. These sites are attractive to real bargain hunters, so they're probably not the place to try selling an original Picasso.
• Make your listing descriptive but brief, and use a large, easily readable type font. Be sure to include color, dimensions and condition of your items.
• Always use photos! They're the No. 1 online selling tool
eBay® Tips
Courtney Carlson, mother of two and an eBay® enthusiast, has experienced firsthand how eBay® expands a seller's audience, even for the quirkiest items. "I had a Holly Hobbie quilt that my grandmother sewed for me when I was a little girl. I put it on eBay for $5 just to get rid of it, but, to my great surprise, five people bid on it. Those five Holly Hobbie lovers bid my price up to $59! Shows how huge the universe of eBay buyers really is." eBay® is set up to be user-friendly, walking you through steps on how to upload pictures, enter text and calculate shipping. Registration is free, then eBay charges approximately 4 to 8 percent of the selling price. A dining room set that sells for $500 might cost you about $20 to sell. • There are two basic types of sales: auction format and a fixed-price, buy-it-now listing. Auction means you set a minimum bid and buyers bid over a set time period. It makes sense to start the bidding low unless your item is valuable. A low price brings more viewers, which translates to more bidders. • Describe the condition of your item clearly and accurately, including a list of any accessories. Indicate if the item is damaged or is missing components. The eBay® site includes a feedback forum, where members can rate sellers and their items, so be honest about what you're selling. Sellers with a high rating attract more customers. • Check your auction listing every day. Potential bidders often post questions about the items, and if you don't answer quickly they might drift away. • The buyer pays shipping costs, but the seller is required to estimate what that cost will be. If you underestimate the cost, you pay the difference. • Indicate that you accept only PayPal for payment. PayPal is a secure, fast way to send or receive money online. PayPal charges approximately 2.9 percent of the selling price and is worth every penny to protect you against scams.
• Once payment is received, pack the item carefully and ship the next day. If an item arrives broken or damaged, the buyer can file a claim with eBay® and PayPal to get his money back.
In 1995, Craig Newmark started a free e-mail list announcing events going on around San Francisco. Now the widely known Craigslist has spread to more than 500 sites worldwide and includes job, real estate and classified ads. For the most part, Craigslist sales are local and person-to-person. Go to Craigslist. Locate the area in which you live and look under the For Sale category for the types of items you want to sell. Craigslist posts your listing with up to four pictures for seven days at no charge. When you post your items: • Craigslist does not offer PayPal on its site, so it is best to indicate that you take only cash, unless you already have a PayPal account. • Do not include your address or phone number. Request that interested buyers e-mail you their names and phone numbers so you can call and schedule a time for them to view your item. • Make it clear on your listing that the buyer is responsible for pickup.
I don't know if this has happened to you, but when I found our current sofa at an extraordinary sale price, I had to buy it on the spot. That left me with needing to get rid of our previous sofa in a hurry. I didn't want to set up an account at an auction house to do it. Instead, I chose the more traditional method and listed the sofa in our local newspaper. Since I was home, being on hand to answer phone calls from prospective buyers presented no problem. The sofa sold to the first couple who walked through the door. On the downside, I continued to get phone calls for several days. Today, I might have hauled the old sofa to a drop-off site. If you only have a couple of items to sell, that would be a convenient option. Since drop-off sites take full responsibility for shipping, I would definitely recommend them for selling fragile items. Two years ago friends decided to part with a set of antique dishes. They were given a quote by a company in another state. They even bought china cartons from a local moving company to ship their set. Our friends got very little because of breakage. For items like these, it might be better to leave the shipping to the professionals. The post office turned down their insurance claim.
This is not an auction site, per se, but it offers a way of unburdening your household inexpensively. If you make more than 40 sales a month, that listing will cost you $40 a month. But consider this: if you make fewer than 40 sales a month, as most new business owners do, Amazon charges 99-cents per sale. That’s cheap! Check the details at Amazon for yourself. Be sure to scroll down the landing page to "pricing" to learn about the service described here!
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