BellaOnline Forums Money Online Auctions Need Alternatives to eBay

Help everyone!

I have a 100% rating on eBay - with 731 feedback. But I am about to give up on them. I am just SO frustrated with their policies which require me to sell items at a loss (I'm selling 99 cent CDs and games and such). The level of scammers in there now, with their current feedback policies, are just staggering.

What other options are there? I sell off video games, books, CDs, that sort of random cheap stuff.

I know you'd mentioned not liking freecycle, and I am guessing for the same reasons craiglist is verbotem as well. You want to handle items by mail. Which is fine - i don't like dealing with people in person myself!

Have you looked at half.com, amazon and yahoo auctions?

Right we have had several uncomfortable situations with CraigsList / FreeCycle people never mind all the times they never showed up. I want something where I mail the item out to the person, not that I'm waiting around all day for a stranger to come into my house and they never show.

I imagine I am most familiar with Amazon and have a very high rating there, so I will go there next.

I mostly sell on Amazon..although it's mystifying to me why they only allow new items in several areas. I'd LOVE to buy used toys or baby products! I keep meaning to sell on ebay, but from what you say, it'd be annoying.. I tried it once and set things up, but I never seem to get around to adding that to my activities.

I do use freecycle all the time though, and have had overall *excellent* experiences. And I get great stuff there as well because I've built a good reputation. But that's the only "compensation" of course. I do sell successfully on craigslist.

The other place we do well frankly is the citywide yard sale in our town. But of course you have to store up your stuff for that. It paid last year for our swingset and this year for our pool cover.

Amazon is great for books, CDs etc, but only if you can sell for $5 or more (slightly less for light items like CDs).. otherwise it just isn't worth it.

I just did an article on Suite101 on this if you are interested, Lisa. Also, swapping online is great if you are interested in getting other items in exchange. I did articles on Suite on the top 3 sites I use. This is how I get much of what I review or refer to for breastfeeding and early childhood.

Here's my Suite Profile which has all those articles there...

Nicki's Suite101 profile and articles

Hope that helps!

I'm not sure if the Amazon $5 minimum will work well for me. I sell lots of things for 99 cents and I'm happy that they are out of the house and that someone who doesn't have a lot of money can enjoy it. $5 is probably too high for a lot of the things.

I don't want to get more stuff in - I am already deluged with stuff I'm trying to clear things out.

On Yahoo Auctions, Wikipedia says that that shut down back in 2007 for US folks. They couldn't compete with ebay.

Lisa... if you can be a power seller on Amazon (pay a monthly fee, but drops the 99 cent fee for each listing item), I think you might be able to afford to sell for less. Or if you sell volume, it might be worth it for you to sell for the 99 cents. I don't sell enough volume to make it worth it for me. The sellers selling stuff for a penny are power sellers who then make the money on the shipping and handling overage and that Amazon basically gets nothing off of them by pricing so low. That's a lousy part of their system too.

Nicki

I have strange cycles with my sales. I'll sell a bunch of xbox games to clear those out - then nothing for six months. Then I'll sell all the gamecube games - then nothing for six months. So I'm not on there all the time. I go in cycles, when we're finally ready to "finish off" one of our gaming systems and get rid of the games for it. We're pretty much done with all the CDs, I think we have only a few left somewhere.

Lisa, perhaps this is crazy, but you don't seem to be doing the sales to make money. Your threads talk about giving things to people who want them.

So why bother with the pain and hassle of selling at all? Talk to the charities in your area and find out who DOESN'T throw things away. If you are worried about Goodwill and the Salvation Army, then move along to the many many other charities in your area.

You will have the same excuse to get out of your house and drive to a major town, but will completely bypass the stress of selling. You won't have to worry about annoying the mail carriers or postal clerks, and you can establish a relationship with a charity in your area.

I am interested to hear how you resolved this. :-) Or are you still doing research?