Dear LazyWeb: eBay frighten Kronk.

[feren]

Dear LazyWeb,

Ladies and gentlemen of the LazyWeb, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world of online auctions frightens and confuses me. I've used eBay for something like a decade now, buying goods of various types from it through the power of the Magical Data Fairies (MDF) that inhabit my DSL modem and computer.

Now I want to do what other people do: sell all the useless crap I have cluttering up my house. I have everything from Cisco IP phones to old SUN workstations and monitors. Old CD-ROM drives. A 2U rackmountable server, fully built. The list goes on like this, just stuff I don't use taking up space. I don't expect to make a killing of profit on this. Hell, I don't expect to even recover one-quarter of the price I paid for this gear when I bought it. I just want to make it go away and I'd like any sort of cash I might make from it in the process. However, I see there's a billion ways of setting up the sales pages and automating billing and checkouts and crap. The only thing I have going for me is a verified "Premier" account with PayPal so I can accept payments through them.

So, I ask you, the selling public: What's the best way to go about this?

Comments

[urocyon.livejournal.com]

Garage sale.

[feren.livejournal.com]

A good point, and one I will be doing come springtime. But I do not believe my neighbors will want or understand a Sun DLT tape library.

[urocyon.livejournal.com]

You mean that rare heirloom Art Deco plant stand? As you should know from your venders, you can sell a dogturd with the right marketing.

Hmm. I don't suppose it's anything newer than DLT2000XT.

[suzuno.livejournal.com]

Wait until 10 cent listing day and then dump them all on there.

[catdragon.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's the same phone I use at work .. of course, working for Cisco, go figure. ^_^

[feren.livejournal.com]

I actually have a 7960 with two 7914 units sitting next to me. I think it's really neat, I think it's bitching to have all those buttons and LCD screens but I have to admit that I'll never use it so I should just sell it.

[catdragon.livejournal.com]

If I could use one at home, I sure as hell would. I love those damned things. :} It's the greatest phone evar! ;) (They pay me to say that...)

[feren.livejournal.com]

I love 'em too. With the site-to-site VPN I have into my office this 7960 is currently acting as my desk phone, with the '14s acting as speed dials. It's so. Damned. Cool.

But it IS silly since work provided a 7940 for me to use... hence my general feeling I should sell the whole shebang off. That is, unless I could convince work to buy the phone and the modules from me....

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I wonder if selling dried cat turds on ebay goes against their rules. And you know, there will always be someone dumb enough to buy it.

Actually, when I was in southwestern Missiouri, one of the neighbors of the friends we were visiting claimed that they knew of someone who would collect tumbleweed and sell them on ebay. And people on the east coast were buying them and putting them in their living rooms. She even made a living doing this! Whatever floats your boat I guess...

[squnq.livejournal.com]

Put it all on a pallet and freight it to me. :)

[aureth.livejournal.com]

Ahh, those good old MDFs....useful little critters.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

I try to do a Tech Swap at least once a year ... if we planned it to go along with your garage sale ... :)

Either that or Ebay. Course that looks like some fun stuff, I'd love to play with.

[ottr.livejournal.com]

Ebay is just like any other marketing tool, really. Especially if you're attempting to sell your wares. Categorize your items and do a keyword search for the same serial or model number to get a feeling for the average price. Also do that same search for "Completed Items" so that you can see whether other people are actually selling the items, or whether the auction ended with no bites. That at least tells you what you can reasonably expect to profit with.

As far as actually listing the item, unless you literally have a garage full of stuff to sell, I wouldn't worry too much about automating the listing process, or going through some third-party service. Your best bet is to just set up a simple HTML template, list the manufacturer's specs of the items, a couple of stock photos from the corporate website, and then a few pics of the actual item to show the condition, and throw it on Ebay.

Other little bits that might help is to consider the time and date that you list the items. If you do a standard 7-day auction, the time and date that you list the items will be fairly critical. Are more people apt to snipe the auction at the last minute on a Sunday night at 10pm, or Monday morning at 10am? I've found that I tend to list most auctions between Friday and Saturday, typically in the evenings around 7pm. Gives people "at work" the option of seeing the items during the week, and bidders final chances after the dinner hour on the weekend.

[harlee-one.livejournal.com]

If ya happen to have a pretty good scanner or a 3 in one type thing.. I'd be happy to try and take it off ya hands. :)