Selling; specifically: selling on eBay.
Pre-appologies for length.
My story starts off with me building, or rather collecting, my own drum kit.
I buy the drums seperately because it's cheaper that way and easier to get what you want.
I go about collecting myself a monster kit. Nine drums in total (the usual is 5 or even 4)

I am very impressed with this drum kit, however it's not of the best quality and I find myself not using all I bought frequently enough.
So I decide I want a new, better drum kit.
I go browsing to make sure I know exactly what I want, checking out different makes and models; and I set my sights on a beauty (in my eyes).
Then good old procrastination sets in and long-sub-story-short: I end up waiting half a year before I finally get about selling.

For starters I put an ad in the local Trade-it - I didn't expect much response here, but it was worth the price: zilch.
Low and behold after my ad had had it's turn in the paper I got zero response. Nothing for nothing; seems fair enough I suppose.
So now I have a change of plan: eBay! That wonderous site which sells thousands of items for thousands of pounds a day. How could I loose?
I start to design my auction page. I have massive ammounts of details and pictures, I double check and then triple check everything to make sure it's perfect before the pre-arranged start so that it'll sell peak time on a Sunday evening.
The auction starts and within hours I have my first 50 visits and my first watcher! Wonderful methinks to myself! A watcher is more likely to buy than a regular visiter right?
However, after 100 visits, nothing much seemed to be happening... This just built up tension towards the final end.
Within the last couple of days my visit counter had shot up to 200! Then 250! Then 300!
I had accumulated 3 watchers, which I thought was pretty good.
I found myself checking the auction more and more frequently just in case I had another watcher or if I had achieved a bid.
I found myself counting from days to hours to minutes before it ended. Still nothing - but only smart people bid at the end of the auction anyway.
Minutes left and still nothing.
Then just a single minute.
Then just seconds.
Only one second left - jeeze these people are leaving it tight!
One hit of F5 and...
Drat.

Time passes me by and I decide to prick up that last shimmer of hope and enter an ad into the trade-it again. As if to hit my hopes with an anvil, only to have it only just stand again and then hit it with a hammer the ad closed with nothing.

I'll keep trying, though. Someone will want it. Afterall, I did.

*runs off to put an ad in trade-it*
( xihpete A neutrino walks straight through a bar, with v>c., Fri 27 Jun 2008, 2:26, 3 replies)

price
it probably won't sell unless you are totally undercutting yourself.
everyone on ebay wants shit really cheap - like charity shop cheap.
Selling instruments, yer best bet is advertising it in yer local music shop etc...
(mrrenton is an inanimate fucking object, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 8:00, closed)

Strategy for Ebay
You didn't say what your starting price was but the best strategy appears to be to go in with a low one and then people will hop on and hopefully end up outbidding each other and pushing it up. Most ebay stuff seems to sell based on people competing against each other rather than deciding if what they want is worth the price.

That's why I mostly go for "Buy it Now" when I want something these days.
(Richy_T hundreds if not thousands of dollars, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 17:14, closed)

Could be worse
Could have happened what's just happened to me. Selling a laptop and the final bid turns out to be a scammer in Nigeria. I spot this doesn't look right, and inform E-Bay. They deal with it very well and promptly, and lock the account the scammers had stolen and return my payment fees. And then they delete the advert. I am now back to square one and have to re-advertise all over again.
( gareth_alien will be human again at, Tue 1 Jul 2008, 13:25, closed)