A question I get regularly asked by my readers is – Where is the best place to sell my car boot sale goods online? While eBay might be the obvious choice for many, there are alternatives which you may want to consider to help grow your business. Here is Part 1 of the Car Boot Sale Tips quick reference guide to the choosing an online marketplace;

eBay – The UK’s biggest Online Marketplace

• Massive Customer Base – Highest traffic out of all marketplaces with a very active customer base who regularly buy.

• Sell Anything – Unlike other marketplaces like Amazon or Play Trade, you can list an item in every conceivable niche and industry, so long as it isn’t Illegal or Prohibited

• Fees – eBay fees are still considerably lower than those of Amazon Marketplace and Play Trade, making it the most cost effective and popular marketplace.

• Flexibility – There are multiple listing options opens to you, including auctions, buy it now’s (BIN’s) and virtual shopfronts, meaning you can select the best one for your business.

• Listing Time – Listing items is time consuming and frustrating on eBay while their bulk listing tool, Turbo Lister, is unreliable and unintuitive.

• Changes – eBay is continually introducing new policies such as compulsory free postage in many categories and Top Rated Seller (TSR’s), which can be frustrating for sellers.

• Fees – eBay Increased Fees several times in 2009, much to the disgust of private and business sellers alike. Will they do the same in 2010?

• PayPal – The PayPal dispute resolution process is open to unfair refund claims, and sellers are often left out in the cold with their outcomes.

Amazon – UK’s biggest online retailer

• Popular – Amazon is the UK’s most popular online retailer. Listing on the marketplace gives you excellent visibility to their vast customer base.

• Ease of Use – You can list an item in less than a minute on Amazon. Enter the price, quantity and a short description and you’re done.

• More Professional – Buyers generally view the Amazon Marketplace as being more businesslike and professional. As a result they are often willing to pay a higher price for their purchases.

• Transparency – Amazon tell you how much you will pay in fees every time you list an item. eBay makes it much harder to get a snapshot of fees due to its multi-tiered system of insertion fees, final value fees and PayPal fees.

• Cost – There’s no escaping the fact that Amazon Marketplace is expensive – currently 17.25% + 86p closing fee for every item, though the 86p fee is waived if you pay a £28.75 subscription fee per month.

• Product Range – Unlike on eBay, you are limited in that you can only list products that they already have on their website. It is possible to build new listings in certain areas, but for the most part it is time consuming and counterproductive, as your competitors can use it too.

• Cash Flow – Withdrawals from Amazon take longer than that of PayPal’s, which can harm your cash flow, especially if you are on a tight budget.

• Repricing – Items are ordered by price on Amazon so, if you are the cheapest then you will have the most visibility, after Amazon’s listing. The problem is many sellers use software that automatically undercuts you by 1p, considerably reducing your items visibility.

Play Trade – Amazon’s smaller cousin

• Cheaper Pricing – PlayTrades fees are lower than Amazon’s. You pay 10% per sale + a 50p completion fee, which is waived if you pay a monthly subscription fee of £19.95. You then pay an additional 5% for withdrawals.

• Less Competition – Many sellers overlook Play Trade as a marketplace because it is much smaller than eBay and Amazon. As a result there is less competition and the ‘chase to the bottom’ on prices is less pronounced.

• Tickets – You can also sell tickets on Play Trade, giving ticket touts another outlet for their goods.

• Slower Sales – When I listed on Play Trade I found that my items took considerably longer to sell than on Amazon or eBay, despite very competitive pricing. I assumed that this was due to much lower listing impressions.

• Small Product Range – Play.com has a considerably smaller product catalogue than Amazon, which means that you may not be able to list many of your products. As a result most sellers couldn’t list exclusively on Play Trade.

• Poor Sales Reports – From an accounts perspective, the sales reports provided by Play Trade (and Amazon) are very poor. There is no option for a monthly financial summary or statement like there is on PayPal, which is very disappointing.

Have I missed anything? Does anyone else have any feedback from selling on eBay, Amazon or Playtrade?