Selling on ebay / or not

[HawkEye244]

Besides amazon/gumtree, are there any auctions sites other than ebay that you use personally and would you recommend them ?

Reason I ask is because ebay seem to take an unreasonable amount in fees for small items.

I have a few things lying around I want to sell on rather than throw or give away which average at about £20 per item. By the time I do the shipping and the trips to/from the post office, and by the time ebay takes it's cut, I lose at least one third of what I make in profit.

The question I'm asking myself is, is it worth the trouble ?

I'm thinking gumtree is the best option, but the wait time to drum up interest will be a lot more, but on the plus side the buyer will collect and it's cash in hand. The market will be smaller as nobody is going to travel across country for insignificant items though.

Any ideas ?

I have used https://ilovefreegle.org/ before to give stuff away, but you would be surprised how inconsiderate and selfish people on there. Often I have listed stuff to give away free, and you will still get people not showing up to collect, or changing the pick up time at short notice, or never replying at all.

 

[blightymam]

I use ebay a lot. Yeah, the fees are high but sometimes (quite often) things sell for more because people get carried away with bidding.
If you sell something for £20, you lose £2 to ebay and slightly less to paypal, so it's more like a quarter you lose. Ebay more often than not give a small allowance of free listings, so no longer pay that. To help with trips to the post office, I start auctions on a Sunday and post everything pretty much on the same day. And recycle packaging to save more!

I've never sold on gumtree etc, but I wouldn't like the thought of people coming to my house or having to wait around for them. At least ebay I can just post stuff in my time.

 

[HawkEye244]

I use ebay a lot. Yeah, the fees are high but sometimes (quite often) things sell for more because people get carried away with bidding.
If you sell something for £20, you lose £2 to ebay and slightly less to paypal, so it's more like a quarter you lose. Ebay more often than not give a small allowance of free listings, so no longer pay that. To help with trips to the post office, I start auctions on a Sunday and post everything pretty much on the same day. And recycle packaging to save more!

I've never sold on gumtree etc, but I wouldn't like the thought of people coming to my house or having to wait around for them. At least ebay I can just post stuff in my time.

If something is worth £20 on the market, that sort of means you have to sell for £30, as ebay/paypal will take 25% and shipping will take the other 25%.. so to make back that £10 don't you have to get it back somehow ?

 

[HawkEye244]

For some reason I can't upload a single photo to ebay, even minimising the size of the photo it just doesn't upload.

 

[Gerrydelasel]

I use eBay for almost everything -recycled packaging is key.
For the few items I don't bother to put on eBay (mostly furniture) I use my local facebook groups. You have to keep bumping your posts to keep them visible, but stuff sells fast, often within minutes of posting. Search for "[your local area] buy and sell" on Facebook.

 

[blightymam]

If something is worth £20 on the market, that sort of means you have to sell for £30, as ebay/paypal will take 25% and shipping will take the other 25%.. so to make back that £10 don't you have to get it back somehow ?

My maths is really bad, but didn't think it would take another tenner to get your money back!

Small parcel is £2.80, 2nd class. That's an extra 28p you'd pay ebay. It's 3.4% + 20p per transaction on paypal. I thought it was 10% of final selling fee (depending on what you are selling, some are more, some are less) not 25%? This is handy http://finalfeecalculator.co.uk/

Ebay will rarely make people millions, but it's handy for ease of use and for getting rid of bits and bobs. It also helped me on occasions, for example, I had a collectable coin given to me when I was born, solid gold. I phoned a lot of coin collectors and they offered me the price of scrap, about £100. I sold it on ebay for what it was worth - £700. Even with the fees, I earned much more. So with all it's flaws, ebay is handy at times. It's just up to you what you think it acceptable for you.

 

[blightymam]

For some reason I can't upload a single photo to ebay, even minimising the size of the photo it just doesn't upload.

Have you saved them as jpeg?

 

[Diyisfun]

For some reason I can't upload a single photo to ebay, even minimising the size of the photo it just doesn't upload.

Have you saved them as jpeg?

I have had many problems with uploading images also, I reduced the size etc.
There are two ways to upload to Ebay I found, one works, the other doesn't

 

[HawkEye244]

For some reason I can't upload a single photo to ebay, even minimising the size of the photo it just doesn't upload.

Have you saved them as jpeg?

Tried resizing the photos by 40% twice to bring it down to less than 200 KB but still it won't upload.

Even if it did the idea of having to do this for every photo for every item is extremely offputting.

I've 3 items I'm going to give to a charity shop because at an average of £20 it's not worth the fukry. I've a roberts radio which according to other items of the same kind on ebay will fetch me around the £100 mark, so worth the bother.

If you've any ideas about the pictures let me know otherwise I'll list on gumtree.

I'm on the look out for good antique forums to get an idea on value for a few misecllanous items I have, no idea what they are worth.

Shame ebay is just refusing to work for me

 

[HawkEye244]

For some reason I can't upload a single photo to ebay, even minimising the size of the photo it just doesn't upload.

Have you saved them as jpeg?

I have had many problems with uploading images also, I reduced the size etc.
There are two ways to upload to Ebay I found, one works, the other doesn't

Yup, and I've made sure it's jpeg format but still they don't upload. If ebay will refuse anything over 100KB they can sling their hook.

 

[Gerrydelasel]

Ebay will upload enormous photos normally -it resizes them automatically. Mine are several megabytes each to start with. Maybe it doesn't like your browser.

 

[HawkEye244]

Ebay will upload enormous photos normally -it resizes them automatically. Mine are several megabytes each to start with. Maybe it doesn't like your browser.

What do you use ?

 

[Gerrydelasel]

Mozilla Firefox

 

[blightymam]

When you list an item and go to upload photo's, there is a choice on the window that pops up, one is basic and the other is standard. Try clicking the other one that you've not tried and give it a go. May help?

Have a look at top left hand on the pic

 

[blightymam]

I've 3 items I'm going to give to a charity shop because at an average of £20 it's not worth the fukry. I've a roberts radio which according to other items of the same kind on ebay will fetch me around the £100 mark, so worth the bother.

But three things at £20 is £60 - surely worth the bother?!! I would. You're nice to help charity tho