Trying to sell a used bike -arrgh!

[Cataboo]

I don't sell on ebay for a living or anything, but I have sold on it for the last couple of years. It's more than possible to still make a living on ebay, but you do really have to adjust your target population and how you sell things. Auctions starting at 99 cents or whatever, don't work. Expect that you're really only going to have 1 or 2 bids over your reserve price and set your reserve price accordingly.

Up until the financial crisis of the last few months, it was quite possible for sellers to have a field day on ebay - because 1. microsoft live, buyers knew they were getting 20-30% cashback on items, and savvy sellers were raising their buy it nows and including links on how to use microsoft live in their auction as the cashback percentage rose. People were selling store gift cards for above their cash value. 2. The US dollar was so low in comparison to the rest of the world, that it was quite easy to sell things at high prices to canadians, europeans, asians & australians... You just had to be selling them things that they can't get discounted in their country. Things are somewhat slow lately and I think that's more because everyone's broken from christmas and discouraged by the economy meltdown.

30 day buy it now listings do work much better than 5 day auction listings, and it's part of adjusting your selling to the current environment on ebay. Set your price to something that's more than fair, allow a best offer in case someone wants to get a $20 discount to make it feel like they've got a bargain... and you're only paying 10 cents to see if they'll bite. Whereas, put up a 5 day auction listing with a high reserve, and you're spending a few dollars to see if it'll sell. I guess it's also 10 cents to do a 5 day buy it now listing, but why would you set it shorter?

I've been lucky in that in however many items I've sold on ebay, I haven't had any packages go astray or serious buyer complaints. I always ship with some sort of delivery confirmation, and especially if it's going overseas, I take pictures of the item that I'm sending. I've had one person claim that there was a coffee stain (which possibly could have happened in customs) and one claiming the item was torn - but I sent them pictures and referred them to the shipping insurance. None seem to have pursued it. There does seem to be some people that when they're disgruntled you can just refund them some of their payment to make them happy and go away - and I think those people once they realize that works tend to keep acting disgruntled the next few times they buy something.
I live in a large metropolitan area with a lot of traffic, so on craigslist there's a lot of people meeting halfway in spots that are convenient to both for errands or whatever...