NAMM 2017: Selling Your Music Gear On Reverb.com

Aloha!

I have been selling music gear on the biggest online auction website for almost 20 years now, and as the years have gone by my satisfaction has waned as costs and regulations have ballooned, while finding buyers has become more difficult. Don't even get me started on Craigslist, which is a cesspool of humanity and scam artists.

I have been using Reverb.com for online purchases for a year now, but never even thought of using it to unload gear that I am no longer using. And I have a lot of gear that is not doing much of anything right now! After speaking with Rachel from Reverb.com at the 2017 NAMM show, I am going to have to give it a shot and get some of my guitars, basses, speakers, and live sound equipment up for sale pronto.

Reverb.com is pretty much an online service that puts buyers in touch with retailers and everyday people who are selling new and used gear. The company is based in Chicago and was founded in 2013 by David Kalt, who you might also know as the head honcho for Chicago Music Exchange. This website is a completely separate entity that was founded to be “An online community created and run by musicians where buying and selling music gear is easy and affordable.”

In my dealings with Reverb.com, I think that they have achieved this goal. When I buy something through them my interactions are with musicians who are knowledgeable about their products. Many online auction site sellers know nothing about the gear they are peddling, and I have been disappointed many times with products I have received. This is not the case with Reverb, as my very few less than great experiences were solved quickly after contacting the sellers, who were more than happy to make things right.

Rachel went through the whole process of signing up for a Reverb.com account, which is free, and explained the fee structure to me. It is simple, really. There is no fee to list items, and Reverb.com collects a 3.5% fee of the final selling price of items ($0.50 minimum and $350 maximum fee) – compare this to what you are paying on other sites. She also showed me how to list items (also easy - only one page to fill out) and let me know that listings can go until the items sell, with no charge if you need to cancel the listing for any reason.

It seems like a no-brainer, so I am going to have to give Reverb.com a shot. I will document how everything goes, and provide updates on Rex and the Bass. In the meantime, head over to reverb.com to check things out for yourself!

Mahalo!

Selling Your Guitar, Part 3: selling on eBay

Hola vamanos!

Today we continue the series on how to sell your guitars, and we move on the big mama of internet sales: eBay. As I said earlier in the series, they will take a big cut out of your proceeds, but they are the biggest game in town, and you should have good chances of selling your guitar there.

But, people make plenty of little mistakes when they list their instruments, and these little mistakes can lead to leaving big money on the table when the auction ends. Here are some hints, based on what I have seen over the years:

1. Make sure your instrument is in the correct CATEGORY. When buyers sort search resorts by brand model and dexterity, you could be left out if you put down the wrong information, or if you left the fields blank.

2. Most buyers initiate there searches with keywords, so make your auction TITLE as descriptive as possible and use all of the characters that they allow. Include the brand and model, and add in USA if it was made there and if you think it will help sales. Oh, and make sure you spell everything correctly. Try searching for a “percision bass”, and I bet you will find a few.

3. We covered the item DESCRIPTION in day one of the series. Head back there and take a look. It increases my pages views, you know…

4. PHOTOS. See Item 3.

5. When figuring out PRICING, start out by checking what similar instruments have sold for recently. If you have a real set of stones on you, start it out with $1 and no reserve. I double-dog dare you. Or, if you are hoping for a quicker sale, set a BUY-IT-NOW price. Your starting price has to be at least 10% lower than the buy-it-now price.

6. Or, if you are not sure how much you are going to get for it, you could set a RESERVE price. I use reserve price auctions to get people interested in my items and get them bidding early. This is especially useful if items cost more than a few hundred dollars, where a higher starting price might discourage bidding. Also, if the item hits reserve early, it usually avoids the dozen guys that bid in the last five seconds, all hoping to be the highest, which is not always the best for the seller. This helps to preserve my interest, by making sure I get my price for the item and usually quite a bit more. If I reveal the reserve to even one person, that person has the advantage over all of the other bidders, and negates the whole purpose of having a reserve auction. I cannot understand sellers that will actually list the reserve price in the auction, as they might as well just list a starting price, especially as there is an extra fee to list an item with a reserve. Surely a reserve will tick a few people off (and usually this is the smarter people who do not have a sheep mentality), and of course they are free to shop elsewhere. If it is an item that they want they will bid if they really want it. Reserve prices are not unusual, or limited to eBay. All auction houses use reserve pricing, and the majority of big ticket items that they sell have a reserve. Whoo! Gnarly ranting paragraph! Sorry.

7. Pay close attention to your AUCTION END TIME. I almost always run 7-day auctions, and aim to have them end around 7:00PM on a Wednesday or Thursday night. eBay will let you pick your end time for an extra 10 cents and it is worth it. Most people wait until the last minute to bid. You are selling a guitar, right? Musicians are not going to be home on Friday or Saturday nights to bid. Ditto for holidays. I stupidly had an auction end on New Year’s Day one time, and nobody bid. Dang it.

8. You need to figure out your SHIPPING COSTS, and this is one area where eBay gets the most complaints. Admittedly, some sellers do gouge their customers, but then again, many people do not realize how much it costs to ship a bass. Generally, I make shipping free, and just bump up the price of the instrument to compensate. They can’t complain if it is free, right?

9. And lastly, give some thought to offering INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING. You know what? The dollar sucks pretty hard right now, making our products a pretty good deal in the rest of the world. I’ve had no problems shipping to Germany, England, France, Romania, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Just be careful to verify maximum package size and maximum insured amounts before agreeing to ship.

Next time we will be talking about how to choose your shipper. Check in often!

Mahalo!

Selling Your Guitar, Part 2: selling outside of eBay

Howdy!

Last time we went through writing up a description and taking photos of your guitar, and now we move on to the fun part of actually trying to sell it.

When I mention selling guitars, people automatically assume that I mean through eBay. But, before selling your guitar on eBay, give an honest effort at trying to sell it somewhere else first. eBay takes a huge cut in fees, and then double-dips and charges you more fees when you accept PayPal. Hit up your friends first, and maybe the electronic bulletin board at your work.

If you have no luck there, try to make a local deal with somebody through Craigslist. I’ve had a few successes with Craigslist, but unfortunately the flakiest people on the planet respond to their advertisements. If you do make a deal with a stranger that contacts you through Craigslist, be very careful when you meet them. Do not give them your address, and meet them in a public place that YOU are familiar with. There are a lot of crooks and crazy people out there.

If you fail to sell it locally, it might be time to toss your guitar onto the steaming pile of crap that many people call the “internet”. Keep in mind that there are many alternative to eBay on the internet too. For basses, you cannot go wrong with Talkbass, and I am astounded at the number of basses that sell through that site. You might also consider going to an internet forum that specializes in your specific guitar, as many of them have a classified ads. Examples of this would be TDPRI (Telecasters), Ernie Ball (MusicMan), Steinbergerworld, Tokai Registry, etc. In any of these cases, you can post a link to the photos you put on your Photobucket site.

In all of these cases, PayPal is your friend. They do provide buyer and seller protections. Just make sure that you carefully pack, ship and insure the guitar. We will cover this later on in the series.

If you decide the go the eBay route, do not feel like you have failed. There is a reason they are such a huge site, as it is easier to buy and sell items there than anywhere else on the internet. We will catch up with selling on eBay next time.

Mahalo!

Selling Your Guitar, Part 1: descriptions and photos

Buenos Dias!

Today I am kicking off a series about selling your guitar on the internet, from listing it to getting it shipped out. I have bought and sold hundreds of guitars and basses on the internet over the past 13 years, so I think I have it figured out by now.

The first thing to do is: figure out what you have. This sounds pretty basic, but there is more than just knowing that you have a Fender Stratocaster. Where was it made, and when? What kind of wood is it made of? Is there any history of repairs or modifications? Are the frets in good shape, and does the truss rod work? These are all questions that your buyers may have, and if you do not know the answers do not make something up. This is where a lot of misunderstandings occur.

If you get a chance, weigh it on a decent scale. Buyers get cranky if you get the weight wrong, because some of them are really persnickety about even ½ pound of extra weight. And, most importantly, play the thing and make sure that it plays well and sounds ok. Get it fixed if something is wrong. You cannot assume that everything is ok just because it was fine when you put it in the case years ago. The battery may have leaked or the neck could have warped, or the top cracked all by itself.

Write up a description that includes all of the stuff I was just writing about. Try to use real sentences with verbs and put capital letters in the correct places.

Now for the pictures. Do not use your cel phone unless it has a really good camera in it. Borrow a decent camera if you need to, but put out some extra effort here. Good pictures do a great job of selling your guitar, and can save you headaches in the future if you can accurately show the condition of the guitar up front.

Before your photo shoot, clean up the guitar. Get the fingerprints off the paint and the smutz off the fretboard. Wipe down the tuners and bridge. Show some pride in your instrument, and show your customers that this was a beloved instrument, and not a tool that you neglected.

Pick a spot where you can use natural light, which will help you avoid flash reflections in your photos. Pay attention to your background. Nobody wants to see your trashed house or garage, or junk-strewn backyard. If you living conditions are so horrible that you have no place nice to take the picture, take your photo shoot down to your local park.

Shoot photos of the front and back, the pickups, the bridge and tuners, the condition of the frets, the neck joints, around the strap pins, the front of the headstock, the back of the neck and any notable damage or repair work. If there is worming or rash on the back, try to capture that too.

After you down load the photos onto your computer, crop them so they look nice, and so the guitar is the focus of the picture, not stuff in the background.

You will want to have copies of the pictures on the internet so they are easier to view, and the best way I have found to do this is with Photobucket. Starting a Photobucket account is easy (and free) and will also come in handy for posting pictures to internet forums and whatnot.

Ok, that is enough for today. We will pick up with actually trying to sell the guitar next time. Stay tuned!

Mahalo!