Le Bon Coin: 6 Tips for Sellers

As you know, we had to empty our apartment by selling most of our properties. Our biggest fear is to be forced to throw our belongings on the sidewalk the day we leave, because we can’t find new buyers.

So, we took ourselves in advance to sell everything in our apartment on Le Bon Coin at the best price.

Years of accumulation of various objects (useful or useless) have been passed in only 2 and a half months. This allowed us to finance part of our trip, to please the buyers who made good deals and above all NOT to pay a storage space of 100€/m3 during our world tour. At the time of departure, here is what we had left: 2 backpacks. A feeling of total freedom that we had never felt before.

So if we can do it, so can you!

Here are our 6 tips to sell well on LE BON COIN :

1/ Include the most important information in the title

Example: Philips Wireless Headset SHD8600UG

1. The Brand: This has always been one of the most important elements of e-commerce. Le Bon Coin is no exception to this rule.
2. The model (if you remember): To pay less, many people find the product they want to buy on traditional sites and buy on Le Bon Coin. They can copy/paste the template. This is even more true for IKEA product names.
3. Nature of the object: What should be marked? hi-fi headphones, wireless headphones or wifi stereo headphones? What would you have typed on the search engine if you were looking for this product? Also take inspiration from the title used on Amazon and other The Right Corner ads.
4. Still under warranty? Brand new in blister pack? Never used? Say it!

2/ Add 3 beautiful photos in landscape mode

Up to 3 photos, the addition is free. Beyond that, it’s not free

I have a Canon reflex that allows me to have quality photos. The photos are taken during the day, with a white background (my wall) or a black background (my coffee table). I simply use Picasa to crop/straighten the photos.

Photos in landscape mode take up more space than photos in portrait mode. The proof is in the pudding

3/ Determining the right price

Benchmark: Search the Internet to see what your products are worth NOW (not when you bought them). Search eBay (selecting only Completed Sales) to see how much these items sold for. See if there are any such offers on Le Bon Coin right now or not, and if so, at what price and in what condition (new? damaged?)

Assessing the situation :

• Is your item new? still in blister pack? or second hand? is it still under warranty? is it rare to find it second hand on Le Bon Coin or eBay? All these questions should allow you to evaluate the potential of your object. When the object is rarely on sale on LBC and in perfect condition, 75% of the original price seems correct. Otherwise, start with 66% of the original price, to go down to 50% if you can’t sell it.
• Do you have to part with it right away? Or can you wait? If you can, match the rate charged by other vendors. If not, sell your items for a little bit (-5€ or -10€ for example) to have a chance to sell as soon as possible. If you have time, test different prices, start with a high price and then lower it by 5€ each time. If there are items you want to donate, ask for a symbolic 1-2€. This will avoid non-serious requests (like “I’ll take it. No, I won’t take it”).
• Do you live in the city center? or are you in no man’s land? I noticed that for the same object and same price, since I live in Paris, I can sell faster than a person living in zone 4. On the one hand because there are surely more buyers in Paris, but also because I’m right next to a metro (50% of my buyers come by metro).

Prices ending with 9: old marketing trick but still works. Personally, I don’t do it, but if it makes it easier to pass the price of 999€ instead of 1000€, why not.

4/ Place ads at the right time

There are so many ads on this site that after a few hours, your ad may be on page 5. To put them back at the top of the list, you have to pay. So if you place the ads at the right time, you are likely to appear on page 1 or 2, at the time when there are the most hits. We advise you to place the ads :

• During the week: before noon (so that people can consult your ads during the lunch break and make an appointment with you the same evening) – or before 7pm (for a delivery the next day before going to work).
• Friday & Saturday : Post ads starting Friday night so that Internet users can view them on weekends. The validation time is longer on weekends so it is better to upload them quickly.

5/ Encouraging Internet users to buy the other items you sell (cross-selling)

Indicate in the title of the ad a unique code (“TDM5C” for example) that will be found on all your ads. And then indicate in your ad that they can find all the items you are selling by typing TDM5C on Le Bon Coin. This way, they may be tempted to move once for two or more items and you will sell faster. This applies very well for appliances and furniture. It also happens that people contact you for an object that has just been sold. Do not hesitate to send them an email to encourage them to look at the other furniture/objects you are selling.

6/ Impose your conditions (for targetting serious buyers)

When you have to empty your house/apartment, there are a lot of things for sale so simplify your life by imposing your conditions

• Non-negotiable price: This will save you time and money.
• Payment in cash: This is the most common payment option on Le Con Boin as it limits frauds & scams. Most of them make up the difference before coming to the appointment, which is very pleasant. If they don’t have any, they usually let us know beforehand.
• Exchange by email only: Hide your phone number and prefer exchanges by email. We found email requests very serious and less constraining for us because we can answer a little later instead of being glued to our smartphone. We give the mobile number only after having fixed the appointment with the buyer.
• Hand delivery near you/your work: At the beginning, we offered 3 different delivery places but we quickly realized that for the low price, people were willing to travel so it is better to offer the place that suits us best (i.e. in front of our building). This avoids us (1) any useless displacement because some people have the class to cancel at the last minute. (2) to wait in the cold because some people are always late. (3) if the buyer tries to negotiate the price at the time of delivery, we are in a position of strength: he came all the way to pick up the object, he won’t cancel for 5€.

We wish you successful sales on Le Bon Coin! If we can do it, so can you!

Note: For the resale of perfumes (new or used) or shoes, prefer eBay with a starting bid of 1€ and a sale duration of 3 days (put the ad online on Thursday evening so that the sale ends on Sunday evening 8:30 pm, just before the Sunday movie). Or Vinted (new cosmetics only)

Note 2: Most of our experiences with Le Bon Coin have been great. The worst experiences we had were when someone stood us up 3 times; or when a family just negotiated the price by criticizing my smartphone while sitting comfortably in their car. On the other hand, we met some extremely nice people.