Selling Advice?

bobbydigital

I know this is buying advice but I couldn't find a sub forum that suited so here it is.

I'm after some selling advice. I'm not getting any interest on my kinesis mtb that I've put up for sale, personally I think it's a decent spec for the money and I've sold quite a few bikes before, all Boardman's that sold very quickly despite not having very good components on them.

I used to sell via ebay, adding my contact details to the listing but as of recent, this is against their policies, so basically ebay want you to go through them 100%. I list a bike with a £500 price tag for example, someone pays via paypal, after fees I end up with £437, which seems pretty steep but maybe I'm a tight ass.

I got banned for 7 days on ebay for saying "I have my business information below if you wish to contact me" so they are pretty strict on this "new" rule they wish to enforce.

Ebay advise me to list bicycles via cars & motorcycles, so I can then do a classified advert, which allows me to add contact details to the listing, it's £15 for 28 days. Has anyone listed their bicycle in that way? I'm not sure that many people would see the bike in that location.


I've tried some other options,

Gumtree seems quite dead.
Sphock seems full of iz wat dat morons who have a love for new terrible carreras.
Pinbike.


I don't use facebook, maybe I should?


I enjoying sourcing all the parts, then build, testings, using the bikes, it's like a little fun mini income maker for me but finding it hard to sale the complete bikes sometimes so any advice on the matter would be great, thanks.

The Rookie

Plenty of bike selling sites on faceache, MTB UK is probably the biggest, plus look for local pages as it makes finding a buyer easier.

cooldad

Ebay charges a bit, but potentially gives you a worldwide market of millions. IMHO worth paying for.
Otherwise our local FB pages are quite active.

I certainly wouldn't look for a bicycle in Motors.

bobbydigital

I guess I got to buy better frames then to make it worth my while.

Right now that 10% eats in to quite a bit of profit.

sell a bike for £500 and lose £50 when the bike might have cost £300 to build, might be better to stick to parts, maybe I should be buying bikes and stripping them rather than buying parts and building bikes.

ebay wants paypal only, at that point you're allowed to exchange personal details, collection point, phone etc but until then you're subject to a telling off.

cooldad

Had a quick look, assume 26er, with 100mm travel?

Not old enough to be retro, not up with the latest trends. Big wheels, tapered steerer etc. Random selection of parts. Just not very sexy, and millions of similar bikes for sale.

Bikes need to be priced to sell, not cost.

bobbydigital

I felt for £350 it was a good deal for someone, but had no takers, I feel if I had the same parts on a boardman frame it would be gone by now.

I see 30/40 watchers on old specilized and boardmans that have octalink cranks and cable brakes, baffling, people would pay more for less.

cooldad

You have to be old to remember Kinesis.

bobbydigital

I only saw an xc pro 3 frame for sale on ebay and then learnt about them from there. Maybe one of the last times I can I'm not old enough to know about them.

joshuagame94

I find a lot of the time it can be the time of year. Sometimes being patient is essential as people will be shopping around before buying anything. But Facebook is a good bet on the buy and sell pages

02gf74

ebay is the best for selling but I am finding that at the moment it is difficult to get anywhere near the price I think my items should be selling for; it is a good time for buying though,