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I've sold a few things but the no shows are a pain. When someone who contacted me by email didn't come to pick a mattress/boxspring that I had already moved out to the driveway I relisted and said the first one here gets it and had someone here is 30 minutes.
How many people have used Craig's list to sell or purchase anything? I have heard people talking about it and thought I would look for a used extension ladder on Craig's list. Anyway, I have someone delivering a ladder to me at work this afternoon. Also I saw where one of my customers had a listing for wanting to purchase something. What a coincidence, I just traded what he is looking for in Saturday and may sell it to him today. This may yurn out to be a good source of saving and making money. I better clean out the garage.
I use Craigslist all the time. I've never had a problem with either selling or buying.
I've used it a few times to sell some things. I've always been happy, if the item sells great if not I'm not really out anything but a few minutes of my time.
Craigslist sometimes requires patience. You'll find yourself listing the same items a few times to sell. Also, just be smart about things. The scammer emails are pretty apparant. They have the same format and usually offer you more than your asking price, don't want to see the merchandice in person, and want you to send it somewhere when they send you a "money order." My rule is if you can't meet me in person to view the goods, then I don't deal with you. I bring everything to my work office so the buyer has to meet me on my turf and with a bunch of co workers at the ready. That eliminates the need to give people your home address etc. YOu could also meet at a public place like a grocery parking lot, but my philosophy is that if things turned for the worse, my coworkers would be more apt to come to my aid than bystanders. Do all business in cash or a postal money order. I have made two long distance transactions, but I spoke with these people extensively and had a good feeling about them. Normally I would not.
To say I'm obsessed with Craigslist would be an understatement. I live in NJ and there are 4 different areas I wanted to search everyday in case an item I wanted appeared. NYC, North Jersey, South Jersey and Philly.
Because it was so tedious to search I wrote my own program to search Craigslist for me, download the ad, format it for my Blackberry browser and email me the most recent search results (without the ones I had previously seen). Now I can search multiple markets for multiple items just by checking my email.
It works awesome and runs throughout the day. Every time my Blackberry chimes, my g/f asks me who it is.
"It' CraigsList hun." and then she rolls her eyes at me, lol.
I buy and sell on craigslist all the time, I barter as well and have had some great luck trading with folks, mostly music stuff as I play guitar. I also use it when I am interested in finding bandmates to play with. I rarely have flakes, but I always respond with my phone number, buying or selling and refuse to do the entire correspondance through email, I think anyone who actually calls, is far more likely to show up compared to an email "where are you, I can be there in an hour"
Recently, i have been searching free stuff a lot. I have made some pretty good money getting free stuff on craigslist and selling it on ebay a number of occasions.
Patience... that's for sure!
I discovered a post from which I 'borrowed' a phrase that helps cut opening the spam. He added the following to his post:
"To avoid spam, please type REMOTE in the subject line and then I'll know it's from a REAL person"
Of course one could always use the same word, like Please type CRAIG in the subject line, which I will be doing. He used the item name, as you can see.
I am always searching the Craig's List Wanted section and I discovered a way to search all the Wanted/Free sections from all of Craig's List locations, with one search:
-In Google, click Advanced Search and I put, in these fields:
-all these words: "Adapter" or "Computer" or "Remote"
(Since I have several hundred computer power adapters, printer adapters, cell phone adapters, etc. which I buy from charity thrift shops)
-this exact wording or phrase I usually enter: "2009-10" (w/o quotes) for listings in October, 2009, or just "2009" if I want more hits.
-one or more of these words: "Dell" "Gateway" "Sony" or "Denon" or "Sharp" or "JVC" or "Sprint" "Verizon" "Samsung"
-any of these unwanted words: classifieds
-Results per page: 100
-Search within a site or domain: craigslist.org/wan
If you're looking for free stuff you can use either of the following:
free site:craigslist.org/
or
free site:craigslist.org/zip/
which will give you back millions of hits, which you can further refine by
adding, say, "2009-10", don't show "Classifieds", show only "Best of Craig"
etc., you get the idea. Tweak it to fit your search!
Most calls I got ended up with the people being unwilling to travel out where we are and vice versa for what I find.
Yes, I know what you mean! I'm in a small town, Palm Springs, CA (15,000-ish, off-season) so I got a PayPal account. Took a week or so but now, before I ship, I send the buyer and 'invoice' from PayPal and don't ship until they confirm payment. Buyers can use MC/Visa/AMEX.
Here is the boilerplate I use in my posts:
"Out of town? We'll invoice you using PayPal - You don't have to have a PayPal account AND you can pay with Visa/MC/Amex as well! Be sure to call first, please.
Note: I don't take your Credit/Debit card info, nor do I get a copy of it. PayPal takes care of that.
Shipping would be whatever actual shipping cost amounts to...
For small items the post office charges $4.95 for 2 or 3 day priority mail"
You can, of course, get a PayPal account to pay the seller, too! If they REALLY want to sell!
I have had luck getting rid of many things this past 6 months or so. I find the secret is the timing of what you are offering. Such as I put my xctry skiis on it in January and I could have sold 6 sets locally. The "free" section is great in getting rid of stuff you don't want to put in the landfill because it has some use left. A couple things I moved on the "free" list were a recliner that still reclined and had a working massage. The seat had a bit of a sag and we wanted a new one. I also got rid of an old computer monitor that someone came to pick up and use for his "games". I got $50 for a bakers rack that hadn't even been assembled - brand new. The beauty of it is I never have to send anything. They all came and picked the stuff up.
Silly question but, when I go to craigslist all i get is a page with all the states listed, is there a master main page? I tried a few times and kept getting this page, so I don't really look there for anything.
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