Today’s topic is Craigslist. Your darned if you do, your darned if you don’t – that about sums up my feelings on it! 

Miss Mustard Seed shared her tips recently for buying things on Craigslist. I encourage you to check her tips out and some of her great finds for inspiration.

Personally, I have sold more than I have purchased on Craigslist. I am always looking to buy something but honestly haven’t found anything that strikes my fancy very often. I’m thinking I might need to try some of Miss Mustard Seed’s search tips!

Safety is the number one concern here people! Let’s face it, you are talking about either bringing someone to your home to buy something or going to some else’s home to purchase something. These are people you most likely have never met and you are dealing with cash. Please take a few precautions, it won’t take much of your time and could make all the difference. My recommendations, safety and otherwise, for selling are below.

• Setup an Account – If you are going to list several items, take a moment and setup a Craigslist account. This makes it a lot easier to edit your items and keep track of what you’ve listed.
• Prohibited Items - I don’t think you would ever try to sell any of these, but here is the list of items you are prohibited from selling on Craigslist just in case.
• Spam happens – yes, when you list something on Craigslist you are bound to get spam. If something looks weird (i.e., you receive the same response from someone, word for word, regarding multiple items OR someone wants to give you a check for more than the amount of the item & have you give them cash back!) it probably is fraud! See my notes re: safety below. Another note on Spam – sometimes Craigslist emails that are legit end up in my spam folder by mistake so if you are selling something, I recommend you check your spam folder daily to ensure a perfectly good email hasn’t ended up there.
• Anonymize – Say again? Well, when posting an item for sale, I recommend choosing the “anonymize” option. By choosing anonymize, your email address will be hidden from anyone that sees your listing. If someone wants to contact you, it goes to Craigslist and then Craigslist emails you. 
• Making a Sale – Yea, someone is interested in your item! Now what? Here’s how I handle it. The first time I get an email from someone I never give them my phone number or address right away. I always reply once without personal info and answer any questions they have and work to setup a date/time. Then, after making sure they seem like real people (and not SPAM), I send my cell phone (never home phone) and address and set a specific time for their visit. If I have several folks interested in an item I tend to honor the order in which they responded.
• Cash is King – I prefer to deal only with cash so when I list an item I make that clear from the beginning by saying “cash only”.
• Safety Safety Safety – This deserves a list of it’s own…
• Location location location – I’ve had someone ask me to meet them somewhere with an item. I would never leave my home and meet someone I don’t know to sell them an item. My feeling is if they are serious and want to see it then they can come to where I am.
• If someone is interested in seeing an item at my home, I make sure my hubby is either home with me OR I make sure my neighbor is home & they know I’m expecting someone. 
• If possible, I move the item outside so I don’t have to have people inside my house. 

So, what tips do you have? what have I missed? Chime in and share below in the comments!


Disclaimer: These are my Junker Newbie Stephanie rules! You do what you are comfortable with.