Wednesday, 13 February 2013 10:30 am
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deckardcanineThis week, I've finally learned some key differences between eBay and Craigslist.
I first put my MacBook only on eBay, because similar items had sold well there -- once for more than I'd paid Apple. Mom warned me that Craigslist was kinda the opposite of an auction site: People would try to talk the price down. I set the starting price at $950, about half the original. Days passed with no bids, and the only response was an evident Nigerian scam. Yep, the glory days of eBay are about a decade behind us.
By contrast, when I posted the same message on Craigslist at the same starting price, I heard from 27 interested parties, mostly in minutes. Some did offer a lower price; others made it a bidding war. I really should have started higher, not for my own profit's sake but for simplicity. Besides, nearly everyone must be let down.
Ultimately I sold it to someone in person for $1,100. I could have gone for $1,200 from another, but that would require shipping and he wasn't one of the first respondents. More importantly, there turned out to be matters much easier to settle in person. My method may not have been the fairest, but with so many people to keep posted, I was rather in a hurry to get it over with.
Oh, one other thing that eBay and Craigslist have in common: bad websites. The format on eBay is uncomfortably rigid, and I had to look up how to do certain things -- like call off the sale when I finally did have a bid there. As for Craigslist, the minimalist site design hasn't been standard since the late '90s, and it's not easy to find where to sign in. (Yeah, my "Downscale" page is minimalist, but I'm not trying to make money off it.)
ADDENDUM: Several respondents asked me to text them about availability. I obliged, but in one case I got clumsy. My first mistake was to reply as if also by email, neither directly identifying myself nor repeating what I was selling. The other mistake, which I cannot blame on Autocorrect, was to skip a Y. So my ambiguous message started with "I have received man offers...."
I first put my MacBook only on eBay, because similar items had sold well there -- once for more than I'd paid Apple. Mom warned me that Craigslist was kinda the opposite of an auction site: People would try to talk the price down. I set the starting price at $950, about half the original. Days passed with no bids, and the only response was an evident Nigerian scam. Yep, the glory days of eBay are about a decade behind us.
By contrast, when I posted the same message on Craigslist at the same starting price, I heard from 27 interested parties, mostly in minutes. Some did offer a lower price; others made it a bidding war. I really should have started higher, not for my own profit's sake but for simplicity. Besides, nearly everyone must be let down.
Ultimately I sold it to someone in person for $1,100. I could have gone for $1,200 from another, but that would require shipping and he wasn't one of the first respondents. More importantly, there turned out to be matters much easier to settle in person. My method may not have been the fairest, but with so many people to keep posted, I was rather in a hurry to get it over with.
Oh, one other thing that eBay and Craigslist have in common: bad websites. The format on eBay is uncomfortably rigid, and I had to look up how to do certain things -- like call off the sale when I finally did have a bid there. As for Craigslist, the minimalist site design hasn't been standard since the late '90s, and it's not easy to find where to sign in. (Yeah, my "Downscale" page is minimalist, but I'm not trying to make money off it.)
ADDENDUM: Several respondents asked me to text them about availability. I obliged, but in one case I got clumsy. My first mistake was to reply as if also by email, neither directly identifying myself nor repeating what I was selling. The other mistake, which I cannot blame on Autocorrect, was to skip a Y. So my ambiguous message started with "I have received man offers...."
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Good thing you didn't post your auction on LiveJournal. If I'd known a brand-new MacBook Pro was going for less than a grand and no one was liable to outbid me, I probably would have been tempted to snatch it up, even though I don't need a new computer, much less a Mac that is also a laptop. I can't resist a bargain.