I had a nice conversation with a guy named Ash I met yesterday who bought four black chairs I’d wanted to sell. We were talking as we carried the chairs out of the garage to his grey sedan. He said he wished Fb Mktplace’d been around when he was a student and I agreed that you can find amazing bargains.
The chairs had come to me when I bought a table for the front room. The table and four chairs cost $50 and I sold the chairs for $30. The guy who sold them to me was moving to Melbourne and wanted to empty out his apartment so he also gave me four outdoor chairs for free, which I listed for $20. Ash said he’d think about buying these as well. The table is made of steel and glass and suits the entryway to my house – it’s on the tiles just inside the front door – offering a modern, contemporary aspect to visitors. It also gives me a place to put things.
Like books I’ve been selling that I want to show to buyers who come into the house. I listed books the other day in a way I’d not contemplated before. In the past I’d just put up one book at a time with a price and title. This time I shot a photo of just over a dozen history books on a shelf and offered them all for $50 (or $5 each). As a result I got over ten responses and in the same day sold 23 books to two different buyers (one left some behind and promised to come back later to pick them up). In the past this kind of reaction would have been even more remarkable. But community interest stopped after a couple of days.
With the chairs I’d had them up for about a week or ten days. But the slackening off in engagement for the books makes me think of another feature of the site, where they give you the opportunity to boost your listing by paying a fee. They also contact you for some listings after they’ve been up for a week or so, asking if you want to renew the listing. Normally I decline this offer but I think in future I’ll take them up on it. With this feature you only get a limited number of renewals (though I haven’t seen what happens when you reach the limit) and that’s why I normally don’t accept these messages that come through driven by an AI.
Facebook relies on artificial intelligence. I like Fb Mktplace because, unlike eBay, they don’t charge you for listing. But they probably might offer to boost listed items at no charge. If I put up a book to sell for $5 I don’t want to pay $2.50 to boost it. Facebook anyway has enough money and doesn’t really need my $2.50 to be profitable.
So far I’ve sold hundreds of dollars’ worth of goods online using this interface and will continue to use it in future. I particularly want to get rid of books as I already have 13 bookcases and they’re mostly all full. If I want to buy more physical books – and this is more than likely, as I’m an inveterate reader – I’ll need free space to store them. In the past I’ve bought many books that’ve just sat unread for years waiting for inclination to strike so I take them off the shelf to spend time with, and recently I’ve been scooping up old books that catch my attention. Fb Mktplace helps me to rationalise my library but my loyalty – I’d used the platform since 2007 and spend a good deal of time on it each day – should be better rewarded. Maybe the company could use its algorithms to convert time spent on the site into booster vouchers that can be reclaimed when a seller wants to promote a listing.
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