Craigslist & eBay

This post is really just an amendment to my last post as further elaboration is needed on the glory that is ebay.com and craigslist.com. Both of these venues offer great opportunities to get lots of stuff on the cheap and each has a unique advantage over the other.

Craigslist
The history behind Craigslist is quite interesting as it grew out of one man's (Craig, believe it or not) house in San Francisco by word of mouth. The site has remained true to its grassroots with a pure text based website (no annoying, flashing banner ads), a skeleton staff of 24 people, modest profitability, and a refusal to sell out to the man (a la ebay…which actually acquired a 25% stake in Craigslist when one of the former principles decided that selling out to the man was the way to go).

Depending on where you live, Craigslist can either be a feast or a famine. It is most popular in larger, metropolitan areas, especially on the west coast, as these were the first markets targeted during Craigslist’s development. Because of the small staff and communal feel, the site is set up to be self regulated as posts are monitored by the people who use the service. I tell you this to let you know that fraudulent activity can and does occur through people abusing this resource. Use your intuition/common sense when it comes to dealing with other people on the phone or by email. If it doesn't feel right for any reason, don't go through with it.

I like to use Craigslist for big ticket or heavy items that will cost a fortune to ship on ebay or for anything that I want to inspect (like a car) before I buy it. As a rule of thumb, items on Craigslist typically go for less than they are listed for as most buyers have the “garage sale” mentality (e.g. even though a used book is being sold for next to nothing, the buyer wants to get it for half of next to nothing). If you are planning on selling on Craigslist, keep this in mind and try to price your items slightly higher than what you want to sell them for (assuming you don’t price yourself out of the market in comparison to other similar products on Craigslist in your area). Some hard to find or in demand products will go for the asking price if they are priced well, as I recently found out when I purchased a premium used lawnmower and weed eater last summer.

Since Craigslist is targeted at local markets, make the effort to meet the person on the other end of the transaction face to face. This will greatly reduce your chances of getting cheated out of your hard earned money, like the time that Kwame guy from Ghana promised to shares his millions with you. It will also give you a chance to inspect whatever it is you are buying. When you set up a meeting place, make it a neutral site like a shopping center parking lot as it is not recommended to invite strangers over to your house (or visa versa).

eBay
Ebay is a great place to shop online. It has become an ecommerce Mecca for millions of individual business owners and average joes looking to bid on whatever suits their fancy. Unlike Craigslist, ebay listings are monitored, payments are tracked, and members are rated by each other on each transaction. Also unlike Craigslist, ebay is a publicly owned company who is out to make lots of money. Because of this subtle difference, selling on ebay is a bit more expensive than the free option that Craigslist offers.

When you buy things on ebay, always check the seller ratings. Look for sellers with a high overall score, a high positive feedback percentage, and the ability to accept paypal, which enables ebay to track your payments. These three things will greatly reduce your risk of coming up empty. If you are making a larger dollar purchase, there are options such as Escrow.com who will charge a fee to act as an independent third party in the transaction. The third party will hold your payment until they receive confirmation from you that the purchased item has be received at which time they will then release your funds to the seller (as a side note, in all my years of using ebay I’ve never made a purchase that was large enough to warrant such a service).

I typically use ebay for smaller items that are easy to ship. Just the other day I bought a new A/C adapter for my notebook computer for a third of what it would have cost me to buy it direct from the manufacturer. It’s always good to compare the cost of things on ebay to what it would cost to buy the same product from other online retailers. Amazon.com is always a good place to check and you can use resources like Google's Froogle or Yahoo Shopping to compare prices at a variety of smaller online retailers.

I’ve been using both ebay and Craigslist for multiple years and have only been stiffed once on ebay to the tune of $15. I would definitely recommend them to any bargain hunter out there looking to save some coin.

Ciao,
Franco