Ways to safely sell items online without using eBay

by PoolBoy

While eBay may boast the largest online marketplace, it is by no means the only place to buy and sell new and used goods online or otherwise.  Although spectacular in its own right, many eBay buyers are searching for an alternative due to the questionable and rising number of scammers that seem to flood eBay daily.  Additionally, many eBay sellers are also looking desperately for another way to sell so they can avoid the ever-increasing selling fees that eBay seems to grant no ceiling. 

If you're an eBay buyer looking for an alternative that you may want to check out some of the websites below as almost all of them get far less traffic than eBay, but are not necessarily more expensive as far as the actual price of the item listed by the seller, a few of the sites below do not charge the seller at all or very little and the buyer gets the rewards of this.  At the very least some of the sites are worth checking out.  I'm also providing one or two alternatives that may make some sense although not online.

Craigslist

Easily in the running with eBay as far as name recognition, craigslist.com focuses mainly on a local buying and selling atmosphere.  You can list as many items as you like for free assuming you follow their very loose guidelines regarding spamming and listing items under multiple categories.  In most areas craigslist.com is still free for sellers however in some high profile locations and with high profile items they do charge a fee to list.  Craigslist can be forgiven for this because maintenance of a website as large and fully networked as this one is, cannot be free.  There's a great deal of traffic with craigslist.com mainly due to its name recognition and you will find that if your item is priced correctly you will have a great deal of interest outright.  The downside of course is that it is more work for you as a seller and buyer because you have to meet up in order to make the transaction.  Additionally craigslist.com does not offer any sort of protection whatsoever on their end so all sales should be considered final.

Good old-fashioned yard sale

I'm not sure why this one gets overlooked so often, there will be a time, my guess is roughly 20 years from now, when we will all reminisce about how people used to get together on weekends and have sales in the garages and streets and other people would come to the sales to purchase discount goods.  A time without dishonesty or troublesome...

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