I recently sold a number of possessions in my year-long quest to vanquish my credit card debt as quickly as possible. Before this, I had very limited experience using online selling tools, and generally thought of them all as a hassle, so I thought I would try more than one and see how they stacked up. Your experiences may differ, along with your selling requirements, but here’s what I found:
Craigslist
I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with a Craigslist presence (check to see if your hometown is on the list), and I had something that I really didn’t want to bother trying to ship: Guitar Hero III for the Nintento Wii. Craigslist, if you haven’t heard of it, is sort of like a city-wide distributed garage sale. You describe what you have using a free-form text entry field, pictures optional, prices optional, limited only by your imagination.
I said that I had Guitar Hero III for sale, found some Creative Commons photos on Flickr, asked for $50, and that was all there was to it. Within a couple of hours I had two offers. The first person haggled with me and asked if $40 would be okay. So I found a Starbucks that was easy for both of us to get to and met her that evening. If I’d waited a little longer, I could have gotten $50 for it from the second person. Lesson learned.
eBay
I had a number of DVD box sets of a favorite TV show that I wanted to unload (while keeping a soft copy of the better episodes on an external hard drive at home). It was easy enough to copy the details of each episode from a wiki to the “Sell item” page on eBay, and after a few repetitions I found it was even possible to find the vital stats with a database that eBay provided.
There are, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of options for how to sell an item on eBay. I sort of wish there was an “eBay lite” option, or better wizard that stepped me through the process. Also, it tended to break when I used the Safari browser at home. I had to remember to use Firefox.
But my biggest problem with eBay was not really eBay’s fault: they wanted me to estimate shipping costs. The thing is, I don’t own a scale, and I can’t hold something in my hand and say, “yep, that’s about six pounds.”
In general, it seemed to me that eBay is geared toward professional sellers.
Amazon Seller Account
One-click patent silliness notwithstanding, I like Amazon because it is easy. Even without 1-Click, it’s easy. And that ease of use has expanded to their options for selling things online, in my case it was a used video camera.
All I did was find the right model camera by acting as if I was looking to buy one and click a button labeled “Sell yours here”. Specify the condition (new, used, etc.), add comments, pick a price and that’s about it. You get to benefit automatically from any pictures, customer reviews, or any other information that Amazon is already storing about that product.
Amazon also did a good job of estimating the shipping cost for me. The drawback I experienced using Amazon was that I had to wait. This will vary from product to product, of course.
Conclusion
With both Amazon and eBay, there’s something of a process to setting up an account and getting paid. Craiglist is a lot more free-form in that respect. If I was in a real rush, I’d probably use Craigslist again, but for the most part, I prefer Amazon’s way of selling things. I hardly had to lift a finger.
I recently explained my history of having no money and as promised, will now come clean with the mistakes I’m still making:
I’m driving the wrong car
I’ve never owned a car long enough to get it inspected. The first Jeep Cherokee was a lease, and I foolishly let them talk me into not converting the lease into a purchase. Then I couldn’t afford the new Jeep Cherokee, so I took it back and they gave me a Dodge Neon with a loan amount equal to the price of the Neon plus about $6,000. Then I crashed the Neon. That was actually okay, but only because I had Gap Insurance. Always get Gap Insurance, friends. It literally saved me from being homeless.
Years later I got a Scion xB. That thing was delicious, but I grew ever more jealous of my wife’s Prius, so I traded up and got one of my own. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t done that, because I now have a $595 monthly car payment. I know it doesn’t equal out, but it sure feels good to fill the tank only once every two weeks. I’m taking care of the Prius the way I forgot to with the Scion, and I fully intend to drive it until it won’t drive anymore. I think it’s due for inspection sometime this summer.
I love shiny electronics, and they love me
Like most geeks, I have a rapport with computers that is difficult to establish with other humans, and I tend to hoard sources of entertainment. Gadgets are an expensive hobby. It never seems that way to read about them, because the journalists get them for free. I have to remind myself of that. As an Interaction Designer, I’m always looking for a more elegant solution, for more ways to automate my life, and I can rationalize any purchase by telling myself that exposure to these things will help me in my career.
That’s how I managed to “buy” an iPhone. But as you’ve guessed, I put it on a credit card. Nearly everything I own that is worth something was put on a credit card. But I’m committed to stopping that. As of this writing, I have just over $7,000 in credit card debt, which I expect to have paid off within the next 16 months.
So, I have to keep telling myself that I don’t literally need an Apple TV, or a 1 Terabyte external hard drive. When I force myself to think about it, there’s nothing in the entertainment compartment of my lifestyle that is actually broken. It’s just not perfectly elegant, and for right now, because other things are broken, that’ll have to do.
I don’t sell enough of my stuff
When I upgraded my iBook to a new MacBook last May (see previous problem with shiny electronics), only about $1,000 of the purchase went on a credit card, ’cause I managed to sell the iBook on eBay for about $600. I’ve got a boatload of unused electronics that I could be selling, but it seems like such an effort to even bother writing descriptions for them. If you have any advice for doing this more easily, I’m happy to hear it.
The interest rates are too high
On both our cars and the house, our interest rates are higher than they could be. At the time, of course, it was the best we could do. I should mention at this point that my wife’s credit history is slightly worse than mine, and until we started making mortgage payments, my FICO score was on the positive end of “Fair”. Naturally, the FICO isn’t the only thing that creditors look at, but mine has increased roughly 70 points in the last year. One of these days, I should really look into refinancing at least one of the cars.
It’s somewhat painful to admit mistakes, especially when they’re ongoing and not likely to change anytime soon. But if you don’t acknowledge there’s a problem, the likelihood of it being fixed goes down to zero. So, it’s a start.
Email this article
Print this article
