I am still obsessed with bicycle buying. It has became a daily ritual for me to check out sfbay.craigslist.com, ebay.com, nashbar.com, performancebike.com, jensonusa.com, and treefortbikes.com every single day. If you have the patience to wait for killer deals, good things will come. Some may find this type of behavior a little too obsessive, but I am sure a lot of bicycle aficionados would do the same. Lately, because I am running out of space in my garage, I've been doing a lot of selling too :)
There are two sites for me to sell used bicycles or new/used bike parts: Ebay and Craigslist. EBay currently doesn't charge a listing fee, so you can sell an item without paying a cent, that is before your item is sold. It is also one of the best place to sell something. To a certain extent, Ebay is well known to many parts of the world. Even if you have an item that only a few people in this world appreciate, there will be someone who is willing to pay for it on Ebay. The company's popularity comes in a price too. Luckily, (or unfortunately), if someone bought your item either by auctioning or "buy-it-now," Ebay will charge two fees: 1) 10% of price sold, 2) 10% of shipping; that's 10% from the total (shipping + item price). If your buyer is sending payment through PayPal, there will be an additional 3% charge for a single transaction. If you do the math, Ebay/PayPal will be taking 13% fee out of your cut. It doesn't end here. There's also the handling charge which varies from item to item. Well, those fees are for Ebay to run its business, which includes resolving problems between buyers and sells, running the website, and possibly for its high paying CEO, VP's and other upper management, and making the company look good on paper. (I know... I know am going a little too off topic). I will provide a real world example of how much I get for selling my 2012 Trek Sawyer after all the non-sense cost for listing on Ebay, but before I go into that let's take a look at Ebay's nemesis: Craigslist.
Especially in San Francisco, Craigslist.com is one of the most popular site for selling your used items. If the price is reasonable, it's almost a guarantee that you can sell it. If it's a super awesome deal, you will literally get at least 10 emails asking about your item a second after you created your listing. The whole process of creating a post takes less than a minute, for me at least. This is a no-fee-for-listing, cash, and you'll-get-every-single-penny-you-asked-for transaction. What's the downside? Unfortunately, it's a face-to-face transactions, so safety can be an issue. In the SF Bay Area, there are people who will to kill someone for a PS4, or $400, (sad, sad reality). There are also the unavoidable solicitations, "low ballers," and scams. You have to filter them out and have at least three emails back and forth with the potential buyers until you can sell your items. Compared to Ebay, which attracts potential buyers nationally/globally, an item listed on Craigslist is only known to buyer close to your home. I have had a buyer who drove 80mi from where I live just to buy a bicycle frame, but it was still a good deal for him though. Being said that, there are a lot of awesome people out there. Fortunately, for me, most my experiences on Craigslist have been very positive.
While it's much safer to list something on Ebay, I still prefer to sell on Craigslist based on my own experience. The 10% Ebay fee + 3% Paypal do not justify for me. Ebay will take a cut out of your shipping, which I think is really unfair to the seller, but I can understand where it is coming from. Ebay didn't care about the shipping cost when it first started, so dishonest sellers used to sell their items at lower prices and charge ridiculous shipping fees, so they put more money into their own pocket. Let's say you wanted to sell your item at $80.00 total including shipping, there used to be two ways of doing it: 1) $60.00 (item price) + $20.00 (actual shipping), or 2) $10.00 (item price) + $70.00 (shipping). Even though the buyer eventually pays the same price for an item, the seller can avoid the actual Ebay fee of $6.00 if he or she go with the second option, which the Ebay fee is only $1.00. Try thinking about selling an item for 10 times more, which option should the seller chooses? I'll leave that up to you, but it's Craigslist all the way for me just for its simplicity.
Here's a break down of how much 2012 Trek Sawyer I sold on EBay.
| Buyer won auction @ |
| $921.00 |
| FedEx Standard (from CA to AZ) |
| $100.00 |
| Total: |
| $1,021.00 |
|
|
|
| PayPal Transaction Fees (3% for both item and shipping) | $1021.00 x 3% | $30.63 |
| Ebay | $1021.00 x 10% | $102.10 |
| Bike Box + Misc Cost |
| $10.00 |
| Packing |
| $60.00 |
| Total: |
| $202.73 |
|
|
|
|
| $1,021.00 |
|
| $202.73 |
| What I am really getting back: |
| $818.27 |
