At one time, you could only sell things in front of your house. This is called a garage or yard sale, and many people do it because they don’t have a store. Some people would put their old things in a barn and wait for pickers to come by and ask if they had anything to sell.
Today, you no longer have to do this. You can put up a list of your products online so that anyone in the world can see it. Once you made a sale, you pay a fee. You can put it on marketplaces or, even better, open your own shop.
But not every online market is the same, so we’ll only talk about the best places to sell your goods.
Anything You Want to Sell
In this category, we’ll look at the three best places to sell any kind of product online.
eBay
eBay is one of the oldest places to buy and sell goods online. It’s an auction site, but many sellers now offer their items with a “Buy It Now” button, so people don’t have to bid to win anymore.
eBay began in 1995, and at first, it was called AuctionWeb. A broken laser pointer was the first thing that was sold here. The founder did it just for fun. Later, the site grew, and now it is a billion-dollar company that does business in more than 30 countries.
Pros:
- eBay lets you do dropshipping.
- 168 million people use it regularly
- You can sell anything that is not against the law. You can set up a shop on eBay.
Cons:
- A lot of competitors
- There are many fees, such as an insertion fee, a final value fee, and listing upgrades.
eBay began as a place where people could sell used items. But most of what you can find here now is brand new. But eBay still lets people sell items that have been used before.
Amazon
In 1994, Amazon began as an online store for books. The company was run out of the garage of its founder, Jeff Bezos. More than 45 countries bought books from the company. It made $20,000 a week after two months. Back then, people bought real books, not eBooks.
A long time has passed, and now Amazon is one of the biggest online stores in the world. You can sell anything that isn’t against the law. You can sell audiobooks, eBooks, and used items.
Pros:
- It is a trusted brand
- 300 million users all over the world.
Cons:
- There is a lot of competition
- The fees can be up to 15% of your sales.
Amazon has also made a number of products, such as Alexa, which is a device you can use to connect smart apps to your home appliances. You can talk to Alexa and ask it to look for something on Google or to turn on and off the TV.
Besides that, Amazon also lets you store your products there. Fulfillment by Amazon, also known as Amazon FBA, is the name of this program. In this way of doing business, you will send your items to Amazon, and Amazon will add them to their stock.
You will have to pay a warehouse fee because the items are in the Amazon warehouse. If you sold something on Amazon, the shipping will be taken care of by Amazon.
Craigslist
Craigslist has probably been around since 1995 and is the only website that hasn’t changed how it looks. A simple white background and blue links make up the site. It began as a website for free classified ads, and most of the money it made came from a few paid ads.
Now, more than 9 billion pages are looked at every month. It has more than 2 million job postings every month, and you can sell almost anything for free on it.
Pros:
- You can sell any product or service.
- There are no costs unless you want the version with ads.
- Your name is kept secret.
Cons:
- Buyers are not to be trusted.
- There’s no way to pay, so you have to get in touch with the buyer to set up payment and delivery.
- If you list too many things, you will be blocked.
The best place to sell used things is on Craigslist. People come here to look for things they can buy for a very low price. Some of the people selling things here aren’t even selling. They just want to get rid of their old stuff. But instead of throwing them away, they just give them away for free and post about it on Craigslist.
Crafts and Arts
Now, let’s look at where you can sell arts and crafts online. These websites are all about making things, so you can’t sell things here that you didn’t make yourself.
Etsy
In 2005, Etsy first opened. It is a place where artists can sell things like paintings, home decor, and other things. There are three main types of things here: things that were made by hand, things that are old, and things that were already made, like printed clothes and coffee mugs.
There are now more than 800,000 shops open on Etsy. More than 10 million people can see your items on this site. If an item sold on Etsy, the seller would have to pay a listing fee and a sales fee.
Pros:
- Simple to use and post things on
- Customers can be counted on.
- Millions of people come here to buy hand-made items.
- Has analytics built right in
Cons:
- Hard to get people to notice your product
- You have to pay a listing fee and a payment processing fee.
Etsy is great because buyers don’t have to be members to buy something. They can use their Google account to buy your goods. Just remember that there are a lot of stores on Etsy, so you have to work hard to stand out.
You will have to compete with 800,000 other stores, so if you need to, you should advertise. There are people here who sell hand-made socks and headbands and make $70,000 a month from it.
Ruby Lane
Ruby Lane is a website that sells vintage items and crafts, just like Etsy. It has been around since 1998, and back then, it was mostly about old things. Later, sellers were able to list collectibles, jewelry, and fine art.
Pros:
- Lanes include antiques, vintage collectibles, glass, jewelry, dolls, and vintage fashion.
- It’s a market for old things, so buyers have a lot of money.
Cons:
Setting up shop is too expensive. You have to pay $100 to set up your store and $69 a month to keep it running.
A one-time fee of $0.19 is charged for each listing.
Ruby Lane is good because it does not take a cut of the sales. Before a seller’s products or store go live, the company also checks them out. The company has a team of people who know a lot about vintage and old things.
ArtPlode
This is a good place to buy or sell paintings. The art on the site has a total value of more than $10 million. There are paintings and sculptures on this site.
ArtPlode is great because it doesn’t charge you a fee when you sell a piece of art. It charges a one-time fee of $60 per listing instead. This is a small fee, since you can get up to $5,000 for your art here.
Pros:
- There are a lot of groups based on where, what kind of painting, and where it came from.
- has a list of artists who are on it
- There are many ways to narrow down what you want to buy, such as size, price, subject, style, and seller location.
Cons:
- There is no protection for either the buyer or the seller.
ArtPlode is a place to buy and sell expensive art, but not so expensive because paintings here can be bought for as little as $1,000. If you want to sell something on ArtPlode, all you have to do is sign up and pay a one-time fee for each item. You have to get in touch with the buyer to find out how to ship the item or negotiate a price that the buyer is willing to pay.
Make your own shop
Now, you can build your own store if you don’t want to sell and compete with other people in a marketplace. Shopify, BigCommerce, and WordPress are the three things we think you should use.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the world’s biggest website builders. You can build a website that is all set up for a small monthly fee. It is easy to use, and you can set up your own store with a domain name of your choice.
Pros:
- There are many topics to choose from.
- Small fees each month
- Simple to set up
- You can use thousands of apps to improve your store.
Cons:
- Every time you make a sale, you have to pay a fee.
- The free themes can only do so much.
- Not every app is free.
If you want to build an online store but don’t know how to code, Shopify is the place to go. The themes have a drag-and-drop feature that lets you upload photos of your products and then write a description. It works with a lot of apps, which makes it easy to give your website a unique look.
Shopify has a number of different plans. The Lite version, which costs $9 per month, is the least expensive. This does not give you a website, though. You can instead use Shopify to sell through social media.
BigCommerce
It is similar to Shopify. It makes it easy to make a website, but unlike WordPress, it is not focused on blogs. It’s been around since 2009, and the web store you build here lets you charge your customers’ credit cards.
There are two types of account in BigCommerce. The name of the first one is Essentials. The name of the second one is Enterprise. The Essentials program is for small businesses, and the Enterprise account is for big businesses with a lot of traffic.
Pros:
- Tools of high quality for a well-performing website
- 24/7 customer support
- It has marketing guides that can help you increase sales and marketing guides that explain how to use ads.
- A small fee of $29.95 per month to subscribe
- You only pay the fee of the payment processor you chose to use for your sales.
- Allows for more than one currency and language
- Unlimited accounts for staff
Cons:
- The ideas here are pricey.
- If you want more features, you have to move up to a higher plan.
BigCommerce also works with a large number of apps. These are apps that can help you get more emails or make shipping better. There are both free and paid apps, and the developers are very helpful.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular way to make a website. It helps keep 34% of the internet running. It is best known for its blog sites, but it has been offering e-commerce services for a long time.
You need an e-Commerce Plan to build a WordPress store. This is the most expensive, and the price will depend on which country you are in. With the e-commerce plan, you can build an online store, add products, and charge customers.
Plans below the e-commerce plan might let you charge money, but they have so many restrictions that you can’t use them to build a fully functional web store.
Pros:
- Has a wide range of free themes
- Has Google Analytics built in and comes with SEO tools to help you get more traffic.
- can take money from more than 60 countries
- Has connections to shipping companies
Cons:
- Costs a lot; a subscription can cost up to $50 per month
- Not as easy to use as Shopify; it takes time to learn how to work.
WordPress is the most popular website builder in the whole world. This is the best choice if you run blogs and other websites because you will only have to use one system. You can make more than one website with one account, which is different from Shopify, where one email address can only support one website.
Summary
Selling online has never been easier. Today, you are close to all the tools you need. Many of these are free, and when an item sells, you only have to pay a small percentage of the sale price. Most websites charge cents for each listing, so the listing fees are also fine.
If you have too much stuff at home and want to sell it, you should go to a marketplace where you can list your items. But if you’re selling brand-name items, you need to make your own website. When you make your own website, you decide how it looks.
