How to buy or sell anything for free on Kijiji

Kijiji takes over from newspaper want ads and eBay

By Stephen Pate – You can sell or buy almost anything including a house on Kijiji.com without paying a cent for the ad or commission. The hard part is getting organized and started. The fun is meeting buyers and banking the cash.

The only downside to Kijiji is that the buyers tend to be localized.  Update – this has changed to some extent since Kijiji is buying Google ads and selling ads to other online sites like Reverb.com. You may get buyer interest from far away so prepare a policy on shipping.

Ads on Kijiji are free. While you can pay Kijiji to keep your ad on the front page, mark it urgent or a top ad, it isn’t necessary to get a sale.

Newspaper want ads used to be the only way to advertise things locally. For cars, rooms to rent, things for sale and real estate the newspapers had the market sewn up. At $30 a day for the smallest ad, it could get expensive fairly quickly.

The Internet has changed all that and newspapers are suffering from only a few pages of ads from people like the government who have our money to waste.

I like to have a spring sale-athon every couple of years. It cleans out things that aren’t being used and them to cash. Five years ago, PEI Locals was a good place to advertise stuff. You could also put up ads in grocery stories with tear-off tags.

eBay is another Internet sales channel; however, it costs money to post ads and there are too many fraud artists on eBay. One year I bought 3 video cameras and sent two back as dead-on-arrival. eBay has worked to clean it up but bad deals still happen too often and it usually costs $100 each time the deal goes wrong for freight and brokerage. I have also tried Facebook Marketplace which is produced no sales.

Enter Kijiji, which is owned by eBay. The trick is that Kijiji is supposed to be for local sales where you can examine the goods before you purchase and hand the cash over to the buyer or vice versa. Kijiji is also where the buyers and sellers are meeting.

Stephen’s Spring Sale-athon

This year I decided to sell off a bedroom set in my spare room. I put the Kijiji ad in Toronto, Moncton, Halifax and Charlottetown which is against the rules. You are only supposed to advertise in the area where you live. Lots of people are breaking that rule. The Gibbard mahogany set over 200 views and sold quickly.

The buyers were from Moncton. They were so impressed with Kijiji they listed their house. When they came for the bedroom furniture on Sunday, they got a phone call about a written offer for their house and rushed back to Moncton. They will save about $8,000 by selling the house themselves on Kijiji.

Most of the real estate for sale on Kijiji is listed by agents but that didn’t stop the couple from Moncton from using Kijiji to sell their home on their own.

Tips for Kijiji Selling

Sales and marketing are the same whether you use Kijiji, the paper or an agent.

1. Know the market. Find out what similar items are going for in the area. I like to Watch eBay items for musical instruments and electronics to see what things are moving and the selling price. Check real estate prices and watch what sells within a few weeks.

2. Use as many pictures as possible. Keep them clean and in focus. Don’t clutter the picture with items that are not for sale, like the dog’s food dish. The more pictures a buyer can see the easier it is for them to accept the quality and features of your item.

3. Make the ad headline sell. “House in Charlottetown” doesn’t sell. “Warm home near schools and shopping” sells. Each thing you are selling has something unique which should be the headline.

4. Write one or two paragraphs that describe the item and its appeal to you.

5. Include details about the item.

6. Avoid the use of ALL CAPS or too much bold type.

7. Be honest and be open. People can smell a phony salesman. If you are believable your sale will happen with less effort.

8. Organize how you will ship the item if the buyer is not near you. The bus takes small freight. Parcel Post or UPS can do the trick.

9. Organize how you will accept payment. Cash is good but you can also accept Interac bank transfers or PayPal, which is owned by eBay as well.

10. Have fun and enjoy the sales process.

This spring I’ve sold everything from an expensive bedroom set, a Cajun accordion, keyboard and guitar amps, a Les Paul guitar, and a Kindle. Buyers have been in Charlottetown, Moncton, Halifax, Toronto and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I have a few more items to go. And like I said, the best part is banking the cash.