So I have a very love-hate with eBay. If you have read my other posts, you know I see them as all razzle dazzle and confetti and very little care to details and maintenance. I really a lot of people don’t see these small things as important but they really are so if you want more details on those, please check out some of my other posts on eBay.
If you are OVER eBay and want an alternative or you just don’t want all of your eggs in one basket, here are some other places to sell your stuff. I have NOT included any sites where there is no real shipping option so Facebook Marketplace, LetGo and Craigslist are not included here. If you want to list on those, go ahead. Personally I do not want to go wait on someone I have never met to exchange cash and products (after a couple here was murdered selling a car on Craigslist, the police department made it very easy to go do those meets at the police department so if you are into meeting in person, maybe set that up as your meeting place)
Here are some of the others and I am sure there are more so don’t rant if I missed one 🙂
1 – AMAZON — Pretty obvious choice but maybe not the first or best choice for some sellers. For me, I can’t get my main products into Amazon as they are restricted categories so I have moved them way to the back of my list. BUT if you sell only a few items and you have enough inventory to do FBA, you should really consider it. The fees are HIGH but seriously the workload is LOW if you do FBA because Amazon do all the shipping and picking for you. And their seller interface and listing tool is SUPER easy to use just you may have lower margins but if you still have margin, it may be a good avenue for you. If you cannot do FBA, you will lose out on a lot of the prime customer so if you have a very unique product, it may still be ok. I buy lots of plants and seeds on Amazon and the sellers all seem to have lots of business and they ship themselves. Amazon will allow you to print a label with pretty much the same discounts you get on eBay and you can owe it to them on your account so a bit more convenient and transparent than eBay where you have to use your paypal balance for every single label.
2 – Mercari – Lots of people I know love Mercari. I am not a super fan of it mostly because it just doesn’t have a lot of buyers but here are the good things about it. The listing tool is SUPER EASY and the layout is great and it makes your photos pop and uploading photos is super fast. They take a flat 10% of the sale and there is no listing fee. So if you haven’t sold anything, there is no upfront fee and it does not have a super complicated fee structure like eBay does where you have to look at your invoice to figure out all the little nickels and dimes. Mercari will send you a shipping label so if you don’t really have a good grasp on shipping and are new to selling, that could really help. I found for lightweight items that I do, it wasn’t a good deal and I could do better on my own but it is a nice option just weigh it against your regular rates if you use a different shipping tool right now.
3- OfferUp – So this is a Craigslist-y type site that this week just added a shipping option. From what I hear it is still a bit glitchy (like their lowest shipping is $5 so people who sell light cheap things are going to WAY WAY overpay for shipping) but just something to keep in mind as I am sure they will tweak that and the shipping thing is super new this week so I won’t beat them up for it as they are literally JUST starting with that idea but it is an established site so it may have the traffic, might be worth a shot!
4 – Your Own Domain – This for some is the ultimate in control. You don’t have to worry about eBay downtime or eBay peak-a-boo with your listings. But there is a downside. You have to put in the work, you have to design it (or use a service like shopify to skip that part) but even if you use a service, you still have to drive traffic to your site which isn’t always super easy. So this does allow you to “not be owned” by the whims of a shopping site, but all the things the shopping site give, like traffic, are now up to you.
Those are just a few — there are lots more and I will give you another list in a few weeks 🙂