I would like to sell some things on Craigslist, advice?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have several things that I’d like to sell for various aounts. This weekend I plan to go through and take pictures of everything and put the ads online. I have already priced them out online and (obviously) plan to price them at lower than the average price. I want them out, but it doesn’t hurt if I make a few bucks off them; plus some of them are really too nice just to give away.

I don’t want to ship. I’d rather have people come pick it up, or for us to meet in a common spot. Do people often have success with this? Or should I just resign myself to shipping everything? If so, do I tack on extra for the shipping costs? How much? I mean, I don’t know ahead of time the shipping will cost. If you think I should, I will. But I kind of thought Craiglist was all local!

I know to have lots of detail and I plan to do a separate entry for each thing (they are vastly different things.) Any other advice?

Please don’t tell me to go to Ebay, I don’t have an account there and am not really interested in jumping through the hoops to get one when Craigslist is so much easier. (Plus I don’t have to mess with Paypal).

Also, payment. If I do ship, I have to wait for payment first, and what will happen if I flat-out say “no personal checks”? Will that severely limit my sales?

I have sold a few games on Craigslist before, so I’m not a complete newbie, but these are a whole bunch of varied things. (If I need to list, I guess I could.)

Thanks in advance!

2

In my experience, you should never ship on craigslist, and should always take only cash/paypal as payment. As for the listing, be as detailed as possible. I buy things on occasion from CL, but if the listing isn’t detailed, then I have absolutely zero confidence that the item is what it is, and mostly likely poorly cared for.

3

Don’t have time to answer all of your q’s but;

I’d put all your pictures in the same web-album so whoever opens it to look at one photo will see everything you are selling…just in case they’re interested in the other stuff too.
I would only accept cash and local sales only, no shipping whatsoever, with the buyer coming to your house and making the transaction in your driveway. Not in the house or in the garage. Unless you’ve got peeps with you. I don’t even want strangers in my house, but you can usually gauge a person right away as to their intentions.

4

No, I won’t even do it in my house. :slight_smile: I won’t give out my home address to anyone. But I was thinking near work might be OK. I work in a busy commercial hub that just about everyone in the area knows where it is.

You two guys have decided me - I won’t ship. I never wanted to anyway. And cash will have to be it.

5

Actually, unless you’re trying to unload your stuff quickly, I’d price them around average or maybe even a little more. You might be surprised at what people are willing to pay. If you don’t get any hits for a couple days, lower the price and try again. So much stuff moves through Craigslist that you’ll want to update your ad anyway so it moves back to the top of the list.

6

OK! Will do!

7

My ex-roommate sold some bikes on Craigslist, and he arranged with the buyer to meet at a nearby gas station (a large, well-lit one next to the freeway) to do the exchange. I doubt he did this as a security measure because he’s stupid, but it was easy for us to get the bikes there and easy for the guy to pick them up as the freeway was on his commute.

So I don’t think meeting in a public place to do the exchange is uncommon at all. Near your work is fine but don’t rule out other parking lots you’d be comfortable with if it is easier for the buyer.

Also, when I put up some free firewood on CL, I got a ton of offers really quickly. I wanted to be diplomatic so I planned on giving it to the first responder, but they sort of creeped me out. So I picked the most coherent-sounding responder and the rest was a breeze.

If you have more than one offer, feel free to be picky to the level that makes you most comfortable.

8

Get ready for a lot of no-shows and people wanting to come by RIGHT NOW, regardless what you say in your ad. Be firm about when and where to meet. If you do list anything free, don’t make any promises over the phone or email; make it clear it’s first come first serve.

9

Meet them in a public place and bring plenty of Shithead Repellant.

10

If I had that and could bottle it, I’d be rich. Rich, I tell you!

11

Yeah - don’t be afraid to not respond to people who send incoherent replies. If they can’t be bothered to form a completely cromulant sentence, you don’t need the hassle of dealing with money with them.

12

I just moved (again, sigh) and sold/gave away a lot of stuff on Craigslist. One woman even offered me $10 for something I was giving away for free – we arranged for her to take it off my porch when I wasn’t there, and she stuck the $10 in my mailbox. I am amazed and pleasantly surprised at the good nature of some people.

That being said, I use the following general principles for Craigslist:

– The first responder who gives me their phone number is first in the queue. If I have a lot of responses, I try to contact the first two or three, telling all but the #1 prospect that they are on deck if my first person falls through.

– I give out my address only after I have established a day and rough time when the person promises to come by. I don’t mind giving out my address, since I have a husband and a Louisville Slugger, and have screened out the weirdos by that point through phone conversations. For free stuff, anyway, I like to put things on the porch and people can pick up stuff at their convenience. I give them a deadline and if they don’t meet it, I contact the next person in the queue of prospects and give them the address.

–I had a little trouble with getting attention for some of my free stuff, so I started writing my ads with a little more panache. One memorable one I did a few years back was for a handsfree device I’d bought to go with a cellphone that then broke immediately. So, totally unused device. I wrote an ad from its perspective, along the lines of “Here I am, a perfectly new handsfree, compatible with X and Y and Z phones, and I am just languishing unneeded and unloved in this cruel person’s house! If only I could get out of here and find someone who truly appreciates me!” Within an hour I had an email from a guy that said: “Help is on the way.” :smiley: I think he paid me with $5 in quarters.

–It’s definitely not a good idea to expect to recoup costs on stuff. I sold a bike stand for $20 that I bought for $120, simply to get it the heck out of the house. The guy I sold it to was ecstatic. I had tried to sell it previously for $60 and then $50, but no dice. Hey, at least it’s not part of my clutter anymore, nor is it in a landfill.

–As soon as the item is gone, I delete the ad and use BCC to email everyone who responded. I know people appreciate hearing back from me even if it’s just to say that the item is gone. I try to view Craigslist like a campsite, leaving it as good as or better than it was when I got there.

Good luck! Craiglist can be frustrating, but it can also bring out the best in people.

13

Does anyone try to clean up CL by sending helpful tips to people? I’ll see an atrociously written/worded post and think, “God - this is just going to reappear two days from now because no one is going to respond to this”, and send off a quick, “You need to at least tell us which game system your Guitar Hero game is for”? Just me?

14

The best advice I got on here when I was selling something a while ago was “don’t let people reply by email”…always make them have to call you. I listed a Sony PSP and some games 2 months or so ago (prior to getting said advice) and am still getting the occasional spammer emailing about “my item” and shipping it to god-only-knows-where, always with Paypal as the suggested payment method. I would thus be leery of paypal, as I’ve subsequently heard horror stories of buyers being able to get payments reveresed very easily or using stolen accounts, etc…all of which will cause you to be out item and money.

So, I’d say the rules of thumb are: make them call, only accept cash, and don’t ship anything.

15

Personally, I use email exclusively - just remove your ad when you’re done (good citizenship anyway) and you won’t have any spam unless you actually typed the email in the ad. There’s no need for this, since Craigslist will anonymize your email by default.

I like email because I have dealt with a few needy cranks on the phone. Rather than first come first serve, I usually pick the most coherent, polite, and succinct person (for free items there is a lot of competition, not always so much on anything you’re charging for).

I’ve given away stuff to about thirty different people and sold a few things. Never had a major problem, just occasional time-wasters.