Graham Hancock

Selling Your Stuff

I jumped on the eBay bandwagon in 1998 as it was starting to become a household name. A little over four years ago eBay and I had a falling out. We couldn’t reconcile our differences, and I stopped using the service altogether. During that time I was introduced to Amazon Marketplace by a friend and I’ve never looked back.

This past weekend I sold an old Panasonic HD camcorder on Amazon Marketplace and the experience prompted me to write this little piece about the benefits of using Amazon Marketplace over eBay.

Auctions vs. Marketplaces

A certain amount of risk comes into play whenever you decide to sell anything online. Due to eBay’s popularity, and lack of moderation, fraud has become a problem on their service.

In December of 2005 I paid $50 to list a laptop on eBay. That auction was taken down twice by fraudulent bidders. Ebay charged me to re-list the laptop twice, and when I decided to close the listing for good eBay wouldn’t refund me my initial $50 listing fee for the laptop. This was the experience that turned me away from eBay forever.

Amazon Marketplace is much different. You register for a seller account, you list your items, you set your price, and your items appear on the Amazon product page for those items under the “Used and New” column. If an Amazon customer prefers your used item and its price compared to Amazon’s price then they’ll buy your item.

With Amazon you get the price you asked for plus $6 added on for shipping and Amazon will subtract a 9% commission on the sale. The amount left over is then deposited into to your checking account. No listing fees, no PayPal commission. Amazon is the middle man. It’s simple, effective, and easy.

Selling my camcorder

This weekend I listed my old Panasonic HD camcorder on Amazon for $350. Within hours someone bought the camera, paid the asking price and Amazon subtracted about $30 for their commission and I was left with about $326 in total earnings from the sale.

If I had sold the camera with eBay I would have spent hours working on the listing page, paid extra for higher visibility; I would’ve had to pay a $10+ listing fee and then PayPal would have subtracted another $10-$20 for their commission if the buyer had used PayPal.

In all, selling my camcorder on Amazon saved me time, effort, money, and possibly undue stress had the listing been taken down by a fraudulent bidder, or if the auction closed at an unsatisfactory price. On Amazon I’m also able to sell items faster. A standard eBay listing has to sit for at least 5 days unless you make it a “Buy It Now” listing.

Closing thoughts…

I think what makes eBay so appealing to people is the risk/reward factor. Everyone thinks that they can put an old baseball card on eBay and watch as people fight over it bidding up and up and up, and the real winner in a bidding war is the item’s seller.

But in my 7+ years of being an eBay user the mythical bidding war never happened on any item I tried to sell. Most eBay users are looking for a great deal on something. Bidding wars are rare unless it is a coveted item. Marketplaces are a friendlier atmosphere where you set your price and if someone comes along and thinks the price is reasonable, they’ll pounce. End of sale.