Ebay, Amazon, and Craigslist

Ebay

I'm a big fan of Ebay. I've bought and sold many items on Ebay over the years, and I've gotten good at finding good deals.

When I'm looking for a particular item, I compare Amazon and Ebay (and Half.com if it's a book or movie) to see which site can offer me the best deal.

Ebay has a feature where you can save a search. You can use whatever key words and categories you want to conduct a search. Once you get the results back, you can opt to save that search and receive emails when new items matching that search are listed. I use this extensively when there's something I want to buy but want to wait for a better price. When I receive an email with search results for an item I want, I look them over, and if it's an auction I want to keep an eye on, I just have to add it to my 'watch' list. I've gotten many great deals using this process.

The fees from selling items on Ebay are a bit of a pain, but if I'm getting money for items I wanted to get rid of, I'm not going to be too picky.

Amazon
Amazon has a wish list feature where you can add items from Amazon or other sites to your wish list. Others can then use your wish list to get ideas for Christmas, birthdays, etc. I use it to remind me which books I want. I've read a lot of books lately that I checked out from the library. Once I decided they were worth buying, I added them to my wish list. Some I received for Christmas, and the rest I'll gradually buy as I save up money for them.

Craigslist
I've gotten quite a few good deals on things I've bought on craigslist. Most of these items were bigger toys (like a play kitchen and a sand and water table) or other things for our daughter (like a toddler bed and our jogging stroller), but I've also bought 3 different log beds, all for good prices, and one of them was just down the road from us. Another was clear in the city, so it all averages out. As long as you're willing to make the drive, you can usually find something close to what you're looking for at a good price.

I've tried selling on craigslist with limited success. It seems to work well for larger items that you wouldn't want to ship, but I haven't had much luck selling smaller items. Which is too bad, since there's no fees for selling stuff on craigslist. Although, I'm not real happy with them right now since they've put my account on hold (they just recently made you sign up for an account before you could post anything), and despite multiple emails to their 'customer service', I have yet to receive any response as to why they did that.

In any case, Ebay, Amazon and craigslist are all valuable tools for finding (or getting rid of) items at great prices.