Selling Via Private Ads?

*LoveBug*

OK, new to this so thought I would ask and save myself a whole lot of trouble if I do something wrong.

I don't have an ebay account and with the fees and everything I figured it's not the best choice, maybe I'm wrong I don't know.

So I thought about selling things, books, games etc via private ads on sites like preloved, gumtree, vista street etc. Is this a good idea or not? My other questions are:

Is it as easy as whipping something up on there and waiting for a sale, getting money via paypal and thats that?

Is there any grey area with this, like if someone disputes something you've sold or such like, or problems with paypal.

How do you do it? I mean I know how to put ads up, but when someone gets in contact, what then? Do you make them pay beforehand then send the item out? Anything else that you would need to do?

I'm not looking at doing this as a job, just wanting to get rid of some bits that I have sorted out that I don't want, so I'm just looking to try this out see if you can make any money doing it.

I hope that all makes some kind of sense!

soolin

Gumtree is meant to be a face to face venue so you advertise something and if there are any takers just arrange for the item to be colelcted. If you start offering postage then yes you have all the problems of paypal disputes etc just as you would on ebay.

Also only a few types of things go well on Gumtree, I usually have half a dozen things listed at a time and have only made two sales in a couple of years. Both those items went to local people who were really nice, but I also got a few dozen scam emails about shipping to places with fake paypal emails or Western Union scams.

I think Gumtree has its uses for certain fast moving things, but for normal bits and bobs I htink it is rather limited.