Selling bangles on free online marketplaces
Where ever possible we have tried to promote www.banglebangle.co.uk via free online marketplaces. The following post outlines the ones we are using so far. If you know of any others that we should be using please feel free to drop us a line.
http://www.sellmefree.co.nz/
This site is based in New Zealand but you can list up to 24 items free of charge. As they say in the promotional material:
- FREE to join.
- FREE to list an item.
- FREE to add photos - as many as 20 if you want to!
- FREE to add a movie - try it, it’s brilliant.
- FREE to add your logo.
- FREE to include a link to your website.
- FREE to add a Skype or MSN address.
- FREE to get help from our Call Centre.
The downside is the site is in New Zealand so postage is a little bit more than posting domestically in the UK. The other major downside is the New Zealand market is completely dominated by www.trademe.co.nz. Sellmefree sas generated little or no traffic except one very obvious attempt to get me to send my bank details to Nigeria.
http://banglebangle.bttradespace.com/
This site is very buggy and looks like it was rushed to the market. They are free to use and they support Paypal transactions though so that is a good thing. Not much in the way of traffic from them in the first month but the bangle ads don’t expire so I hope things pick up for them and therefore me.
Another downside is that you can only list five items before they start charging.
http://www.facebook.com/marketplace/
Great interface, easy to use, free to upload, the ads don’t expire and millions of potential customers. What else could you ask for? Should be a great source of traffic in the long run. And if/when it is I expect they will start charging.
http://www.Loot.com
A very popular free ad paper in the UK. Their website also offers free ads with free image uploads as long as you don’t want any bells and whistles.
The downside is the free adds are deleted after 7 days so you have to keep reposting.
Also the site doesn’t work properly unless you are using IE6. Disappointing.
http://uk.freeads.net/
Freeads looks like the name makes it sound. Cheap and loaded with dodgy offers for gaming sites.
Easy to register and easy to upload though so we will have to wait to see if any traffic comes from it.
http://base.google.co.uk/
The good news is that there is no limit to the number of products you can put up and there is a free tool that lets you upload a spreadsheet with all of your products once a month which is excellent.
The bad news is that even though it is a Google product it is quite buggy and it doesn’t generate much of traffic. I hope that this situation will improve.
http://www.gumtree.com/
Gumtree is a hugely successful bulletin board site that was started in London in 2000 to serve the antipodean community. Since then it has expanded to 60 other cities in 6 countries and gets over a million visitors each month. Ebay have bought it and Gumtree is now part of the wider Kijiji family of bulletin board sites.
The downside is you have to keep posting your ad every few days and the interface is easy to use but labour intensive. So posting more than one bangle at a time can be time consuming.
http://www.kijiji.com/
A global network of free ad bulletin boards owned by Ebay. Great for finding the market leader in different countries and selling bangles.
Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.