Selling Our Stuff

Its been almost exactly six months since we posted about our decision to start deliberately unloading our stuff here, with a follow up post here.

On top of the money we have made, there have been a few changes along the way:

  • eBay Classifieds has vanished and been replaced by a site called Close5, which we haven’t bothered to sign up for.
  • We added the same items we had on Craigslist to the local site of backpage.com. You may have heard of this classified site due to their prevalence of adult services advertised. So far we haven’t noticed any traffic from our ads here.

In sum, this is what we have accomplished so far. Prices are in Canadian dollars with the current exchange of approx 30%:

  • Amazon $339. We only listed books here, sometimes duplicating a book listing that we have on eBay to try and maximize exposure.
  • Let Go $689. Our items here started out strong but have started to taper a bit. We have the same items listed here as per Craigslist and Backpage.com to maximize exposure. Highest priced items sold here was a Bose sound system for $150. While easy to post and get your ad out there, this service has the most prevalence of people contacting you to say they’re interested, and then never appear when you arrange a time to meet.
  • Craigslist $2,496. Like on LetGo, we started out strong here and now have leveled off. Most expensive item sold here was a Fender amp for $400.
  • eBay $5,326. eBay has been our most successful site by far, which should come as no surprise due to the essentially worldwide audience you have access to. Most expensive item sold here was a Boss GT-10 guitar effects board for $200.
  • Total $8,910. Over 6 months of selling. Not a bad haul but some other considerations below.

We deal strictly through PayPal with our eBay sales. When using them to move money around, you can count on losing 1-3% on the exchange depending on the situation/transaction.

With Amazon, we have our Canadian bank account listed with them, so they convert the funds before deposit and we lose a small amount there as well.

For all our listing on eBay or Amazon, count on losing approx 30% off the gross sale amount due to expenses such as listing fees, postage, supplies, etc.

Amazon items sell at about 1.5 per month, while eBay items move around 5-6 per week.

USPS has a pickup service in our neighbourhood which is a BIG help.

At the moment we have $14,896 CAN listed on eBay. This does not mean they will all sell, nor will they get their current asking price if they do. For example, I just lowered about 1/3 of our items by approx 20% since Christmas.

We have managed to list almost all the books we own on eBay and Amazon, less the ones useful for sailing, but we probably have 2/3 more overall value in other items we could list sitting around unused or unwanted. A lot of these items we won’t bother listing online due to their bulk or current usefulness to us; think clothing, furniture and kitchen items.

Eye on the prize!

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