- Don't just list (Town) as the location of your stuff. (Town) is inevitably a big place. People do not want to drive all the way across (Town) to buy your stuff, maybe. Or maybe they're right next door, and they'll be excited to learn you live in (Specific Neighborhood, Town), just like them, and they'll rush out and buy your stuff right away and for full price.
- Put up a good picture, or better, several. If there is no picture, a huge percentage of people will never even click on your ad. Seriously, they don't care how well you describe it. Your deathless prose? They will not read it. No one wants to drive somewhere to look at something they've never seen. If you don't put a photo, be prepared to have only the most annoying and/or crazy people respond to your ad.
- Take three seconds and type up your ad in a program with spell check. It is not a "dinning table." You do not own a "chest of draws" or worse, a "chester drawers." I assure you, an "armwar"? You do not have one. When you write this stuff, the buyer thinks that you're the kind of person who might not disclose that time the dog puked on the sofa. Also, you are contributing to the death spiral of our culture, so there's that to worry about.
- Don't list how much you paid for the item originally. No one cares, and if you list a high dollar figure, people will just assume you're lying.
- It doesn't matter if you've only had that Ikea couch for six months, no one is going to pay close to retail for it. Ikea furniture is made of termite chewings and Elmer's glue. Six months is practically the entire lifetime of many pieces of Ikea furniture. Accept that pieces of furniture, like cars, lose a huge chunk of their value the second you take them home.
- Don't lie. Don't call MDF furniture "solid wood," don't call your Eames knockoff an "Eames original," and don't call your antique reproduction "antique." When people see your item in person, they will be able to tell you were lying, and they are strangers from the internet who now know where you live. Think about that for a second. Yeah.
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