Selling your old stuff can be a great way to make some extra cash. I always recommend looking at Craigslist as an option first because it’s free and easy. If you want to get the most money out of your stuff you’ll have to do just a bit of work. You need to know what your item is worth first of all. You need to know how to list it so that people can find it. And you also need to be able to make adjustments if necessary.
I’ve had years of experience selling things to people. It all started with my mother. When I was young my mom would take me places shopping and I’d bear witness to her art of persuasion. She was a master negotiator, and most importantly she was a great people person. She knew what to say and what not to say to get what she wanted for the right price.
I guess that’s how I got started with my “Candy Store” when I was a young kid in school. I would buy candy in bulk and resell it to people at school. I also made popsicles and sold those. It was a way for me to make some extra money so I could buy my video games. I knew what the candy cost at other places and I would buy in bulk and undersell them. I made a profit and my friends saved money on candy purchases.
When I got old enough I started selling things on eBay and Craigslist. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about buying and selling things. I’m not ashamed to say that I was scammed at one point early on with eBay. It was back in the early 2000s when eBay was still new. These days they have better safeguards to protect from Scams, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
However, if you learn just a little bit you’ll be able to easily pick out the scams and avoid them. There’s really no reason to not use eBay and Craigslist. 9 times out of 10 it’s just another person like you trying to do good business. You just have to know how to watch for that 1 bad person.
Enough chit chat, let’s learn how to sell on Craigslist!
Selling on Craigslist: The Unofficial Guide
1The first thing you need to do is take a great picture of your item. Your item for sale will stand out better if you take a good picture and include it in your listing. Craigslist, not long ago, added “thumb” and “gallery” view to the classic “list” view (as well as “map” view which in my opinion is not as useful to us).
What this means is that when people search a category under the “list” view they will just see the listing in text format with the newest item at the top (or lowest price / highest price first if they chose). When people use the “thumb” view they will see the same text listings with a thumbnail picture next to the listing. When they chose “gallery” they’ll see larger pictures of the listing.
So when you have a good picture of your item that stands out you’re more likely to get someone to click on your listing so they can read about it. 1 great picture can be enough for many items, but some things may require more pictures. If someone is interested in your item they’ll probably want to see as many pictures as you can give them. If you have a smartphone it’s really easy to just snap away pictures and then load them straight from your smartphone to the craigslist listing. That’s the way I do it.
2The next thing you need to do is to try and put your item in the category that it is most likely to sell because there’s lots of traffic going thru category search. People will be looking for things navigating through categories sometimes, and other times they use the search. When you have your picture and you’re ready to post