How to sell your unwanted household items: Craigslist sales guideline

Happy New year 2013. Its time for your spring cleaning and throw away all your unwanted household items, right? Wrong! there is far better way to do than throwing away your unwanted items.

Sell it in Craigslist.com . Yes, sell your unwanted stuff and make some profit or break even or earn some dollars.

After buy and selling almost everything including couple of cars, motorcycles, household items, I'm far better knowledgeable in doing it better in craigslist and avoid scams. Follow my lead and learn some useful tips when you sell stuff in craigslist.

• First I hope you know how to create a free account in craigslist? If not, please follow the link to create a free account for you. 
• Find your local Craigslist city page from the list or find a city near you.
• Always do business locally and personally. Avoid trapping yourself in any of non-personal , over the phone or email scams. I always make sure I meet people to do the sales than making any email, over the phone or any other means of money sending like paypal. Almost always these transactions and people are scams. Avoid international sales, they are aleays scams. Don't trap into big check values. 
• Make your advertisement (hope you know how to type a nice short advertisement) short and sweet. Don't put your address, but remember to put your phone number in the content of the add. Please look at one of my craigslist ad I recently posted and successfully sold the item.

Features a full size door, working shutters and decorative shingled roof with skylight
Range top flips over to become outside barbecue grill!
Playhouse interior 55.5" (1.41 m) tall
Assembles easily without hardware (adult assembly required)

Similar new Step2 playhouses sell for about $350. Just $55. Moving, need to sell fast. This week only!
Please call (no text) xxx xxx xxxx

• This is important: avoid posting your email in the ad content or even in the reply to option. Select "hide" option from top in the reply to. Which would display the warning that you there is no reply option. So remember to include your phone number. Its far better to work with someone who calls your which are trustworthy. Also you have a possible record of a person if some scam happens. But with emails, its hard to track some of the sophisticated scams.  
• Don't write very long ads, but include all the features. Also make comparison to the original items and how much they sells so the buyer knows whether he gets the deal or not. 
• If you want to sell the item fast, check how much the same item costs in your local area cragislist ads and make it bit lower sales price. People who buy in craigslist almost always buys from the cheapest person for a similar valued items. Also be realistic, make sure you put up with a worthy cost. Example, I post my playhouse for $75 and nobody contacted. But I made it $55 and almost instantly I got couple of people called and one came and brought the item. By the way, I brought this playhouse for $45 from another craigslist saller months ago and paid $5 for the owner to haul it to me (I had a small car :)) So, here I'm making a $5 extra for using it almost several months till my 3 year old never wanted to play with it anymore. Good deal right?
• Keep your ad active, make sure to use "renew" option from your craigslist account to put your ad back on top. Don't let bury your ad in pile of other ads from the section. I guess you can renew every 48hrs. Here's a dirty little trick for you when you renew your ad. Wait till 11.55pm and renew so that this will go first in the current day when the day ends. Otherwise your ad will be sandwiched between 100s of other ads if you are posting your ad in a very popular section like electronics or computers. 
• Always make sure to select "Owner" option, unless you are dealer. I almost always remove the dealer option when I search items to buy from craigslist. There are some crappy scammers who overuse the dealer option to trap people. 
• Another trick to pop up your ad among others. Use some Icons in-front of your ad title. I always use 3 stars (★ ★ ★) icon infront of mine and it catch the eyes of others. 
• Use some catchy ad title and specially include if there's some special features. Example, one of my sublet ad says there is a $300 incentive, free washer and dryer and water with the sublet. 
• Don't forget to delete your ad when you get a deal and the item is sold. 
• And if you can take your item out of your house to show it, then do that. Always avoid bringing strangers to your house, specially after dark (after 6.30pm or whenever you think its not safe). 
• Always meet potential buyers in a crowded parking lot or in a restaurant like in Mcdonalds, Walmart.
• If you have to keep the item at home to show, then make sure you are not alone at home. Also make sure your significant other or some friend knows that there is someone coming to check out an item. If possible share the phone number of the person called you. Don't ever give them your address just by email. Make sure they call you first and then give them the address. So you have a recorded call transaction in any case.  If you cannot let anybody know about it, then make sure you write down the information of the person or email them back to you. 
• If possible make sure you can monitor them when you come to your house, which color vehicle they came in, what type of vehicle is that, how many people are coming, what is the behavior of the person whether he is careful not to show himself. 

Hope this helps and happy Craigslisting my friends!