There are plenty of ways to sell your goods without using eBay, many of them will cost you less and all of them provide you some advantages over eBay. For the most part, eBay is based on the premise that your customers want to find you, whereas almost every other business model is based on you finding your customers.

Google Base:

Amazon Marketplace:

Yahoo Stores:

Free Classified Sites:

There are many free classified sites, most of them are specialized to a specific industry or hobby but a few are general. Find these sites by searching online and reading sites that your customers would normally visit. These sites will range from a site that has a section of their forum that allows advertisements of a given type to full-blown sites like Craigslist which takes ads for just about everything and organizes them by location of seller. A little experimentation will tell you which sites produce and which ones don’t. When you find one that works, stick with it. Some examples of such sites to get you started can be found below.

Craigslist: The most popular free classified site by far, Craigslist, is owned by eBay. For some, eBay’s ownership makes this a less attractive site to sell on. However, there are no seller fees unless you become a commercial seller (you probably wont have to worry about this, I have had over 100 ads running simultaneously without being forced into this designation) so selling there does not generate any revenue for eBay.

Live Deal: Similar to Craigslist, but with a couple of differences. On Live Deal, basic listings are still free, but in order to have your listings show up to buyers outside your local area, you have spend $5 to verify your identity as part of their security plan. You can put listings up that will be locally available without doing this. The other key difference is you have the ability to purchase listing upgrades to enhance your listings. Live Deal, while having no ownership connection to eBay, was founded in 2003 by former eBay Staffer Rajesh Navar (Auction Bytes Interview). Live Deal is owned by YP Corp, which is currently traded under OTCBB:YPNT.

Your Own Website:

Setting up your own website is not hard at all. There are hundreds of utilities available for users who know nothing about setting up a site, many which require no knowledge of HTML to create. If you only sell a few items in quantity, you can make use of programs like WordPress (which powers this website) to create a small online store. Many web hosts offer “website in a box” solutions, check out Web Hosting Talk to learn about some of the things that members there offer.

Sellers with lots of items or those who want or need an advanced platform with lots of bells and whistles would be better off using a bona fide store solution like Miva Merchant (Not Free) or osCommerce (Free) or hiring a web consultant to create a customized solution from the bottom up. This latter option can be quite expensive and time consuming, so you should check for an out of the box solution first. Opening a Yahoo store is also an option, see above for more discussion on this.

Getting people to your site requires work, you’ll need to exchange links, submit to search engines or pay for ads through a program like Google’s Adwords. You can also use postcard marketing to advertise to customers by snail mail, drop business cards where your customers buy products from your competitiors, distribute leaflets or flyers where your customers are. Basically, figure out where your customers come together (trade shows, events, organizations) and then look to advertise to them somehow.

Newspaper Ads:

While this might seem old fashioned, newspaper ads are actually the best place to sell some items when you want a quick cash sale without the hassles of shipping, payments and so on. Some examples of items that lend themselves to sale by newspaper ads are: lawn and garden equipment, air conditioners, vehicles, tractors, trailers and other large items. Many newspapers now offer you a free ad for items under a certain dollar amount (usually $200) and while you are usually limited to one ad per person at any given time, these free ads are a great way to move items. Be sure to check into this.
Some items you might not expect to sell through classified ads go very well. I once aquired an entire skid of expired (but still perfectly functional) emergency flares from The State of Ohio at a surplus auction. I put an ad in the camping supplies section and sold every last box at $20/case (there were over 100 cases, I paid $160 for the skid) before the ad was done running for the 10 days. Most of them going to a volunteer fire department that responded and I later made a deal with for about half that price.

Garage Sales:

Having a garage sale is still one of the best ways to turn junk into some cash. Anyone can have a sale, through some are in a better position than others because of the location of their home. Having sales in some areas is a pain, due to permit requirements and local ordinances. Sellers in these areas may want to consider finding another venue to peddle their wares.