Using Kijiji to sell too small clothes

[GeorgiaK]

I am in the process of selling Ds's too small clothing, furniture, toys, etc. on Kijiji. Love the site and so easy to use and most of all FREE!

[maliha44]

Thats awesome congrats! I've sold a couple things on kijiji as well. I still donate many clothes, but sell the name brand ones.

[greencanuck]

A couple of years ago, I used to make about $100 per month selling surplus items on Kijiji.
When EBay bought Kijiji and started advertising in various media, things got a LOT worse.
You got far more people involved in both selling and buying who were really really not familiar with online classifieds.

As a seller, I get at least 20X as much aggravation with no-shows and time-wasters.
Also, my revenue has gone down to about $10/month from an average of $100/month.

Even as a buyer, it has also got worse with silly idiots placing ads and doing stupid stuff such as:
- not being home for a confirmed appointment to buy (happened with several people, took more than 1 hr travel time, each way),
- trying to raise the price higher than posted in their ad,
- not having the most basic information in their ad
- not answering the basic questions in emails.

If you are selling, I should not have to ask you over and over again ( in 5+ emails) to get a general area of the city that you are located or a specific address to pick up the item.
For me, some locations take 90+ min each way to get the sale item.
The estimated effort for me to get to your location factors into the potential sale.

[lekate]

I was thinking of doing this for woman's clothes, does it work out well? Should I do grab bags or by item? I've sold furniture before, but I've normally just done garage sales for clothes or donated them...

What about books? I'm looking to down size a lot of stuff right now...

[AmberLab]

I love kijiji but I had no luck selling my baby clothes there. I had a ton of baby clothes, bagged by sizes up to 2T. The bags were around $25 and stuffed, with mostly new clothes. No buyers and I even had the ad up for a while. I'm currently pricing it one piece at a time to sell for a local kids clothes show. I'll probably make more money but it's a lot of time involved.

Otherwise, I really have had a lot of luck with kijiji. I don't do holds at all and I usually mention how much the item is at full price. If someone emails me lowballing, I reiterate how much it sells for full price and they are welcome to go pay it because I'm not interested in their offer.

[greencanuck]

I was thinking of doing this for woman's clothes, does it work out well? Should I do grab bags or by item? I've sold furniture before, but I've normally just done garage sales for clothes or donated them...

What about books? I'm looking to down size a lot of stuff right now...

It is a mixed bag.
It depends what how you value your time.

The more detailed your ad ( within reason) the more likely you are to get full value for the item.
Bulk selling ( ie bag of clothes, box of books) is fast and easy , but I would never buy anything that way- but some people would.

Because Kijiji is free online classified, it costs you nothing but time to try.

[greeny]

I really love kijiji...I have sold a lot of stuff on there and even gave some stuff away for free...it's great !

[greencanuck]

52 ads ( with good photos) posted on Kijiji for new or near new items at about 10% the price of new.
Not one sale and had almost 3 hours of my time wasted with emails leading to nothing and no shows for appointments.


I just had three more no-shows for appointments to buy stuff.
Two of those appointments involved many items that needed to be retrieved and spread out to be seen (ie collections with 25 plus items).
About an hour of time was wasted for each of these and I had to work around some visiting guests in my home.

One other interested buyer typed in their email address ( very esoteric) incorrectly, so I could not reply to their interest.

[greeny]

That's one of the downsides to Kijiji, I have had the same happen to me...you wait for someone to show up and they never do...they don't even bother to email you to let you know they aren't coming...but I have also had some great experiences with kijiji as well...so it balanced out for me.

[nightlite]

I could write an essay on my love/hate relationship with Kijiji. I once had FREE items that I had - wait for it - 5 no shows over. And they weren't cheap or used items, I was genuinely trying to pay it forward and make someone else's day. At that point I just said forget it and donated them to the local second hand stores.

I've gotten a lot of great kids stuff on there - wagons, Little Tikes outdoor stuff, etc. It's great for old furniture and vintage finds.

The one big pet peeve I do have is that I find that for every person that finds a deal, there are people who try to sell used items at just below what they bought them for and blatantly overprice the item for sale. Antiques, collectables aside, seriously, if I can buy it for $20 more new at IKEA, don't price it as such online if it's 5 years old.

[Sally888]

Knock on wood, I've had pretty decent luck. Lately around here the new trend is facebook classifieds per town/ county. Lots of goodies on there!