Selling your used guitar or mandolin online is much easier than many expect. Here are some tips on how to increase the chance that your instrument will sell, along with tips on how to protect yourself from fraud.
First, determine your asking price. The best place to do this is via TeraPeak.com, which offers a free trial at:
http://www.terapeak.com/ebay_research/
You may do a search for your guitar or mandolin’s builder and model to determine whether any similar instruments have sold on eBay. If so, you’ll get a good idea for the market value of your instrument and can set your price accordingly. Don’t do “best offer” or similar wording. Prospective buyers want to know how much you’re asking and are much more likely to contact you if they know you’re asking price. Also, I advise stating “firm” next to your price so that you don’t get into haggling. If your item does not sell within two weeks, reduce the price by a bit and post again.
Next, find avenues to list your instrument. The first thought that comes to mind for many is eBay, and, certainly eBay is a great way to connect with many prospective buyers. However, eBay does take a percentage of the sale. As such, you should first try some of the free venues, such as craigslist.org and local online classified ads. You should also check into some of the forums online, many of which feature a classified section. Some of these forums include acousticguitarforum.com, breedloveforum.yuku.com, larriveeforum.com, and carbonguitar.com. You might also want to try contacting some bloggers and ask whether they’ll post your listing on their blog. Try doing a search for blogs at blogsearch.google.com
At this point you’ll want to create your actual listing. There are three parts to your listing - the title, the description, and the pictures. Let’s start with the title. You should use a capital letter for the first letter of each word, and include about forty to fifty total characters. Here’s a sample title:
“Breedlove Guitars Pro Series Concert Body C25/CR, Herringbone”
Make sure you think of potential keywords that people may search for as this will help people find your listing. For example, contrast the above title with this title:
“Breedlove Pro C25/CR”
The first title will appear for many more search phrases, including “breedlove guitars”, “breedlove concert body”, “breedlove pro c25″, “breedlove herringbone”, whereas the second title will appear less often and is also less likely to attract the attention of potential buyers.
Next, the description. Write about two to three paragraphs describing the instrument, the condition, and why you are parting with it. When describing the instrument, you must distinguish between benefits and features. Benefits describe how an item is going to improve a person’s life, whereas features list the components but do not explicitly state why those components are a plus. Contrast these two sentences:
“This CA Guitars GX model comes with Gotohs (18:1).”
“This CA Guitars GX model comes with Gotoh Tuners, considered by many the best of all guitar tuners, with an 18:1 ratio, which allows for finer tuning than the standard 15:1 ratio tuners.”
The first sentence describes the features only. However, imagine you are an intermediate guitar player looking to upgrade to a higher quality guitar, and do not know much about tuning machines. If so, then you may not know what Gotohs are, why they’re a benefit, or what 18:1 means and why that’s a benefit. The second sentence details this information and increases the likelihood that someone will purchase your guitar or mandolin.
However, don’t spend too much space discussing the instrument itself. Most likely, potential buyers already know about the model and have decided to purchase that model. What they’re concerned about is the condition of your instrument and why you’re parting with it. This will help alleviate their concerns that something is wrong with the instrument that you’re not telling them about. If something is wrong with the instrument, even something minor such as a scratch or a ding, then let this be known. People know that a truly perfect guitar or mandolin simply does not exist, and if you’re upfront about little things, they’re much more likely to trust you and make a purchase.
Finally, pictures. First, don’t use a stock image from the builder’s website. With used instruments, people want to see what kind of condition yours is in. Second, four pictures is optimum. People don’t want to look at fifteen pictures on their initial reading of your posting. So, post full view shots of the front and back, as well as close ups of the fretboard and top. Then, if someone wants to see more pictures, then s/he can contact you.
Now, let’s discuss payment. By far, your best bet for online transactions is via PayPal, which offers built-in security measures for both buyer and seller. Be very wary of any offers to send you a money order or check. In fact, you’re probably best off stating in your description that you will only accept PayPal. For people you can meet locally, be up front and let them know that you’ll only accept cash.
Buying and selling guitars and mandolins online is easier than you might imagine, and especially useful for specialty instruments for which you can not find a local buyer.
