The Fallacy of Ebay, Craigslist, Poshmark, etc.

You've probably heard someone tell you to sell something on Ebay or Craigslist before. You might have even seen one of the many vids on YouTube about buying shit from liquidations or resale shops or even the flea market. And yeah...you can technically source things from these places. You can even pick up things on the side of the road and sell them, even as parts or scrap, or even just plain on Craigslist or Ebay.

But there's a lie there.

It's a lie of omission.

You see, you can totally sell your old shit on Ebay, and sell other people's old shit, and even buy various shit and sell it, but it's not that easy. You see, when you start picking up shit on the side of the road and even just selling your old shit, it's like starting your own business. Sure, you might sell some shit, but it might take a hell of a long time to sell some shit, and it might be nowhere near what you think it's worth, or anywhere near where the most expensive one sold when checking sold listings on Ebay. Maybe that's due to condition...or the market being flooded with less expensive ones...or there just being only one person that really wanted that thing and happened to check Ebay.

Ebay is not what it used to be, and it kinda never was.

Ebay started a long time ago and had a lot of hype and has actually allowed quite a few people to sell their old shit, including things that they might have thought had no value. Of course, at the same time, a lot of things that people thought had real value, and perhaps even did, have sold for a lot less than they thought they would.

I remember I myself once sold my magic the gathering collection, which was in great condition, for around $20. It was worth a hell of a lot more than that. Of course, it didn't have any of the insanely "overpowered" cards that certain people look for. It was a standard collection. If I had broken it up, I would have gotten a lot more. Hell, I could have probably just built packs and sold it for a lot more on Ebay.

There's this sort of myth with Ebay where you can just put something up there, and if you take good pics and are descriptive, it will magically sell for more than you thought it would. And that can happen...but it probably won't.

In reality, Ebay is kind of broken.

Auctions on Ebay really don't work, unless somehow you magically get the eyes of the kind of people that are really into what you are selling. That can be done by creating a following on Ebay, or social media, or an email list, and getting their eyes on the things you are selling. That can happen by someone seeing your listing and posting it on a forum for people into that sort of thing. That can happen by you doing that. But, not a whole hell of a lot of people check Ebay all the time looking for exactly what you're selling. That means that if you do an auction, it might just sell for extremely lower than you think it's worth.

When you sell on Ebay, you're building a business.

If you want to sell more than just a few things on Ebay for probably lower than what you think they're worth, really, you're starting a business. That means coming up with a good name. That means holding a fuckton of inventory. That means starting social media. That means making your own website and selling things there. That means opening a physical shop, somewhere, likely. That means probably developing a niche. It means taxes. It means separating out your expenses and income from your business so you can report it. It means a lot of things.

Have you heard of Poshmark?

It's a nightmare. It's also a relatively new app that allows you to sell brand name clothes and bags and shoes.

It requires you to share your listings on the app every day, and you probably still won't sell them. It's fucking horrible. You also probably want to add people and share their listings and share listings on social media. It's seriously fucking horrible. Yet it's mentioned by people in YouTube vids as supposedly being good to sell clothes. I have never sold anything on it, because it sucks and is a nightmare and requires a fuckton of work and you still probably won't sell anything at even a fraction of what it's worth. You have to have a huge inventory and you probably also want to list everything on Ebay and stay up on it to delete the listing when it sells.

Craigslist still looks like it was made in 1995 by a very lazy web developer.

Craigslist is totally an option to sell things, and there are other places to sell things, like Facebook groups and stuff as well. But with Craigslist and Facebook, they're really only like ads in the classifieds of the web. You have to list your phone number and possibly get a fuckton of people annoying you just so you can possibly meet up with someone who will try to talk you down in price. There is nothing there that is in any type of marketplace. The drug dealers on the dark web have more advanced interfaces to sell things than are available via craigslist. Of course, that also means no one's taking a cut.

With Ebay and Poshmark and other apps, everybody gets a cut.

Ebay takes listing fees. They take extra fees to give your listing more favorable positions when people are looking for things. Paypal takes fees for accepting your payment. Sadly, the future of cheap crypto payments still hasn't been adopted by these idiots.

So, just know, when you hear someone talking about Ebay and Craigslist and selling things online, it's not easy. It's a business. You have to do some work and hold a lot of inventory. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing. That just means that you can't get easy money. That's also why you can make money. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

_{Unopened 1G iPhone for Sale on eBay for $10,000 by methodshop .com August 10, 2012 (source)
Used under CC BY-SA 2.0}