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Jen & I both recently had a bit of success listing and selling stuff on CraigsList, and following that, a friend asked how I chose CraigsList over ebay. “Well,” began my reply, “I suppose there are a number of reasons to use either,” I explained.
And so there are. I figured it might even be fun to post those here! This might not be interesting to some of you, and it’s not typically the sort of content I post here, but figured it might be useful to some. So, here goes!
CraigsList.org
| PROS | CONS |
| You get the full payment, no fees. | People like to “haggle” on CraigsList, no one thinks the asking price is the actual price. |
| Usually no shipping involved as CraigsList is a localized service. | Smaller marketplace as CraigsList is mainly a local listing. |
| Instant gratification! Almost always a CraigsList sale is made (or not made!) within hours of listing. | |
| Generally, fewer fraudulent transactions here. It’s “policed” by the CraigsList “community”, and the transactions seem to be a bit more “personal”. | |
| Nicer for larger items that you don’t want to figure out how to ship! |
ebay.com
| PROS | CONS |
| DEFINITELY the marketplace. You reach the world with your listing. | There are fees, fees everywhere! |
| More reliable transactions… when you sell something, you can usually expect prompt payment. | Shipping is involved. Figuring out costs, and then, actually shipping. |
| More anonymous transactions in a way… some people prefer this. | Mentioned above, ebay is replete with Phishing scams, and other monkey business. (Of course, they have an entire fraud dept. to handle this, but it’s still much more prevalent.) |
| ebay has been around, so kinda back to marketplace, the buyers and sellers know first to look there, and second that the transaction can mostly be trusted. | |
| PayPal integration is nice. | |
| Even with associated fees, can often make more money on “sellable” items here, as there is the larger marketplace. |
So, as you can see… it mostly comes down to: ebay = marketplace, and craigslist = faster/simpler transaction. At least, that’s how it’s been for us.
In fact… it’s just about time to list some more stuff right now…
Haggling is the norm in situations like this. I'm not really sure how to define the boundries. Maybe when you're buying from "just some guy." If you want to get your asking price, just jack up the listed price. 🙂
As a guy who buys stuff, I tend to turn to Ebay because of the search function and the variety. Craigslist may have what I want buy if I don't see it in the first 100-200 local listings, I generally lose interest. Also, I don't have to talk to anyone on Ebay.
Chi, good "Pro" with the search feature. Forgot about that. It's definitely better at ebay. And yes, I did mention the anonymity thing… that is a feature of ebay as well. They both serve their purposes pretty well.