Imaging Resource/PriceGrabber "Storefronts" -
Sell that old digicam - Fast!
A new way to sell your digicam (scanner, printer, memory card, etc, etc.)
By Dave Etchells
Out with the old to pay for the new!
For most of us, selling a piece of old gear has come to mean one thing: eBay. It's a great way to get extract money from old toys to pay for new toys (a perpetual cycle, it seems), and I've used it often. It isn't perfect though. You have to wait for the auction to run its course, even if a motivated buyer might want to buy the whatever-it-is earlier, and eBay's 15% commission has to be considered too. (It's true that eBay has a "buy it now" option, but it doesn't help once someone's bid on your item. - And unless the BuyItNow price is a good bit less than the "going" rate, my experience has been that most buyers will just hold off, hoping they'll luck out and win the item in the auction at a lower price than you're asking.)
"Storefronts" - A new way to sell
Recently, our "shopping partner" PriceGrabber.com has been experimenting with an alternative to the eBay approach for individuals wanting to sell equipment on a one-off basis, taking advantage of the huge numbers of shoppers using the PriceGrabber price-comparison service. After months of work, they've finally gotten the system bulletproof enough to roll it out to the public in a big way. - And all our loyal IR readers will be among the first to benefit!
As you probably know, PriceGrabber is one of the largest price-comparison sites on the internet, and they've been our partner in presenting our price-check pages for over a year now. Hundreds of thousands of people visit the PriceGrabber site daily to check prices on a range of products. - And I can attest to the popularity of their service among people shopping for digicams, given the literally thousands of people who click-over to their site every day from ours.
PriceGrabber's new "Storefronts" service lists products being sold by individuals right on the same price-comparison pages carrying their retail listings. Thus, anyone shopping for an XYZ digicam will see *your* XYZ offering right along with those from the regular merchants! If they're interested, they can buy it right away, without waiting for an auction to end. You get your money, they get their camera, and it can all happen quickly. (Assuming of course, that you listed the camera for a reasonable price in the first place.) Better yet, PriceGrabber's commission on the sale is only 7.5%, compared to eBay's 15. (Best of all, if you list your camera through the IR pricing pages, PriceGrabber donates a portion of the sale price to help support this site. ;-)
Personal Experience
This can be a very effective way to sell a used digicam, as I learned myself when I gave the service a try a couple of weeks ago. My wife Marti had used a Fujifilm FinePix 4700 as her main digital camera for a year or so, before we upgraded it to a FinePix 6800 last year. The 4700 was in great shape, but we'd never gotten around to selling it.
When I heard about the PriceGrabber Storefront idea, I figured I'd give it a whirl, using the 4700 as my guinea pig. Late one Sunday night, I went through the (pretty simple) process to set up a Storefront for myself, and list the camera. Tuesday morning I had a buyer, and I had the money in my PayPal account about an hour after that. Wow!
I listed the 4700 for about $30 less than what recent auctions on eBay had closed at, figuring that a price that much below the "going rate" would lead someone to snap it up quickly. In hindsight, I could probably have gotten a good bit more for it and still sold it almost as fast. - But I didn't really lose that much compared to an eBay auction anyway, by the time I factored in the 7.5% differential between eBay's commission and PriceGrabber's. - I figure that overall, it worked out that I gave up about $7-8 relative to what I might have gotten on eBay, in exchange for which I had my cash in less than 2 days. (And if I'd been just a little less generous in my asking price, I'd probably have come out ahead on both money and time.)
For what it's worth, my buyer seemed pretty happy with the process too. No hovering over the computer, watching an auction, no worrying about getting "sniped" at the last minute, just a straightforward purchase, payment, and shipment.
Some Philosophy
Pondering the whole concept, I think there's a subtle (or many not so subtle) influence that works in your favor when you list a used product in a PriceGrabber storefront: There are a lot of new products listed alongside it, and that gives you an almost unfair advantage, since people are going to be seeing your price next to prices for new items. There's no secret that the product you're listing is used, and that it should therefore cost less than a new one, but compared to the prices of the new items listed next to it, your price will look low and therefore appealing.
When Storefronts may not work
Of course, all this isn't to say that PriceGrabber Storefronts are the be-all, end-all for selling used equipment. For one thing, with an auction you always end up (by definition) getting exactly the most the market will bear for your product. If there happens to be someone out there who really, really wants your gadget, they might run the bidding way up, netting you more. - But that only applies if there are two someones, who both really, really want the item. If there's only one, the price won't get bid up beyond "normal" levels. - And for "normal" pricing, there's that 7.5% difference between Storefronts and eBay to consider.
The other thing is that the PriceGrabber approach is naturally going to work best for relatively recent products. That is, it will work best if you're listing a product that a sizeable number of people are still doing price searches for. It worked well for Marti's FinePix 4700, but I'm not sure it would have worked for a camera too much older than that. (Actually, I have an old Casio QV-8000 that I might give a whirl there, just to see how a really old product plays.) My guess is that you'll have better luck selling older products on eBay. (I'll try selling the QV-8000, and report back here on what my experience was with that camera.)
Grains of salt
Naturally, take this with the appropriate grain of salt: It worked great for me, but as they say, YMMV(Your Mileage May Vary). - I'm basing my enthusiasm on a general appreciation of the concept, but supported by only a single personal experience. (Albeit a very positive one.) The speed with which you manage to sell something will be a function of the price you're asking, the number of people interested in that particular product, and the number of other folks selling their used WonderCams at the same time. All of which could vary wildly.
I have to say that this looks like a winning concept though, particularly given what I know about the number of digicam shoppers who hit the PriceGrabber pages every day, just from our site alone. And I can definitely testify that the experience of setting up the storefront (and indeed, the entire transaction) was fast and painless when I gave it a try myself.
Go forth & sell!
So, if you have a digicam (or anything else, for that matter) to sell, click here to find out how to sell it in an Imaging Resource/PriceGrabber Storefront! (The quicker you sell it, the quicker you'll get that new WonderCam you have your eyes on!)
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
As you can tell, I'm pretty upbeat on the whole Storefront concept. - But what do you think? We'd really like to hear what IR readers think about the idea, so we put together a little survey to solicit your feedback and comments. - Would you let us know what you think about it? (It'll take less than 2 minutes, I promise!)
Click here to take the survey!
