CRAIGSLIST..Help making $ with Physical Products??

This is because you didn't DELETE YOUR POSTS like you're supposed to!!!





In an answer to your original question, CL marketing is kind of cumbersome and monotonous, but there is no reason that you couldn't do some CL arbitrage if you have money to play with. I've made decent amounts of cash when I was hurting for money by simply finding something someone was selling too cheap and flipping it for the split.

It's by no means full time money, but it does put some extra cash in your pocket if you can hustle your butt off.

Another way to do it is to buy on ebay sell on CL or vise versa. (replace ebay with any of the other popular sites).


I was even able to sell some stuff that I found on freecycle.org for a profit on CL.

Try bartering for some items that you would have normally paid cash for....thus keeping your cash in your pocket

Another question i forgot to ask......... is there any third party company that would work like an escrow so that if i was to sell something to someone who wasn't local there money would be protected and released to me once they got the item i sent them in the mail?

This Craigslists is interesting marketing. The very fact that you can choose the exact area you want to market in means a reasonable success in choosing what to market and what to expect for pricing. Why not set up a reference to a website with paypal access? Then all points would be covered, like all credit cards.

I knew a guy (this was about two years ago) who picked up just about everything he could that was being given away for free on craigslist, and he cleaned things up, and sold them again on CL.

It's a way to pick up some cash, but it can be really labor-intensive. He seemed to enjoy it. (He also had a part-time job, so...)

I have found that taking several clear photos of the item helps it sell better. Also, there is a technique in writing the title of the post. After all, you want people to click on it. So maybe instead of saying - Leather 3 Seat Couch For Sale, you could say something like Like New Black Leather Couch For Sale - Very Comfortalble - Looks Brand New

Which one would you be more likely to click on?

Just be creative

About selling to a non local area, I would arrange payment by paypal and get a tracking number when you ship it to them. I would be careful with selling to non local people though.

Hope that helps

how about provide a service instead of selling physical products?

Lots of great feedback so far everyone. thank you and keep it coming.

Just another thought. Would it be safest to have a potential buyer come to where you live or meet them somewhere there would be alot of other people at like a mall parking lot or something?

Be careful selling on craigslist because this is what happen to a friend of mine. He was selling a bunch of video games. He was paid $300 in cash for all and thought he made a lot of money. Well, when he gets to the bank he find that the three $100 bills are all counterfeit funny money. The FBI was called and he had to explain how he got them and the money was gone.

I'm selling off a lot of our stuff due to............ ANYWAY. I use Craigslist and here are my tips.

Craigslist terms allow relisting every 48 hours --DO IT. Each day's listing scrolls deeper and deeper and are only seen with SEARCH.

Host your own pictures, do not use the CL picture boxes. It makes relisting a lot faster.

For every listing I have I get scam emails. I guess they are phishing for email addresses. Typical is "Do you still have that item for sale" often incorrect grammar.
I have a $10 trakphone and I list the phone number in every posting. I also say, "Call me, I seldom answer email" and have it in bold

Craigslist makes it difficult to find all items someone is selling. I put this in my ads, "See what else I am selling on Craigslist, SEARCH for my phone
number xxx-xxxx" A search brings up all my current ads. If you don't put in a phone number, put in a seach code that is unique i.e. mydoghasfleas A "word" no one else is likely to use.

As someone said, erase your old ads -- WELL, you cannot erase ads. Craigslist keeps them forever. What you do is delete the ad from active listings. 6 months later you can still find the ad in your account listings, it is just not available for others to see.
I have people come to my place and show them items outside, or we drive from my place to storage where I have furniture stored. I don't invite stangers inside.

For some strange reason some people will call and say they are coming over in 15 minutes and they never show. This happens regularly to me. I tell people I will be available for an hour and after that I will not. It saves waiting hours for someone to show up. The buyers understand, the others.....who cares. Local people can make it in an hour. Some say they'll show up after work (and they often do). What I tell them is to call me back when they are ready to come over and if the item is still available it is theirs.
Expect to have people want to negotiate the price. I often negotiate over the phone, but seldom do in person. In person they are more committed to buy since they had to drive to see the item.
I price high to start, often researching similar items on Craiglsist and ebay. I reduce the price every once in a while.
I don't make a lot of money, but I am slowly selling of my stuff.
Some things sell right away and some things take weeks to sell. I just keep relisting until an item sells.

Rent a pickup truck and offer junk hauling services.

You'll make about $80 per haul (after rental and landfill fees), and many times you'll have usable "junk" (bikes, beds, furniture) that you can sell on CL again.

bbminded
lots of great info there, thanks. I actually had thought about getting a pay per minute phone to use just for this!
Now you said host your own pic's instead of the boxes CL offers at the bottom of your post.....How exactly do you do that?

So you said your just selling off some of your stuff. Are you gonna continue selling by outsourcing for products once you sell all you own stuff?

You write your ads with HTML links to the pictures you host on your own website, the same code you use for any picture link.

NO, not going to keep this up as a business. I am just downsizing and moving on......

Any opinions of that alibaba express website. i think its called aliexpress. It has an escrow function so that the seller doesnt get your money untill you get the product. Anyone have any experience with them. And what products are best for your ROI?

MrMonster,
I an not really sure why I occasionally get a physical product flagged, but usually there is a link in the ad to a site-- like the manual for something I am selling or a specification page for a product. OR, my area just has a bunch of trigger happy "craigslist police" who want every i dotted and every t crossed. I just avoid links now. It may not be links but it is all I could figure was my problem with flagged ads.

I actually just got an email from my father who got back from china two days ago. He told me how you could buy alot of "knock off" products for real cheap however some items were legit. I havent talked to much to him yet but he is into golf and apparently found a hook up for golf heads. But thats all i really know right now. but he did send me a link to website that looks alot like an aliexpress site. If anyone knows anything about them please let me know
100 year trade .com I spaced the words out so no one thinks im trying to affiliate with them!