12 min
007 - A New Way to Buy and Sell Camera Gear Image Maker
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- Education
I’ve been buying and selling camera equipment for my entire adult life. Like most people, I’ve gone the eBay or Craigslist route. While I have had successful transactions on both I was starting to get really, really frustrated.
On craigslist, I had several bad experiences. I remember selling a Nikon body once and a guy contacted me interested in the camera. He told me that he for sure wanted to buy the camera. He told me he wanted to meet about 30 minutes away from my house. I wasn’t getting a lot of interest on craigslist with this camera so I decided to go. When I met him and showed him the camera he was very excited, but then started looking for every little flaw on the camera body. He told me he couldn’t pay what I was asking because of the small scuff on the back of the body. I was irritated but I was already invested in this transaction. I had given up an hour of driving that day to meet this guy. Long story short he ended up getting me to go down significantly on my price in person and I sold him the camera. Afterward, I felt taken. It felt like I had been conned even though I agreed to the price. Maybe I’m not the best negotiator in person, but this guy definitely had a plan to get me in person and then lowball me.
The problem I found with Craigslist is that you don’t have a lot of potential buyers since all your buyers have to live in the area. Photo and video gear is many times a niche product depending on what brand you are selling so Craigslist is not ideal. Some Canon gear can sell fine on Craigslist but when you are selling a more niche brand like Zeiss or Sigma it becomes much harder to have leverage as a seller.
eBay is another way of selling gear. The great thing about eBay is the number of potential buyers go way up. Now your gear is available to everyone in the US and even more if you choose. You don’t have to drive to meet some unethical person to begin a negotiation behind a gas station. But there is a huge flaw in eBays business model. They allow people to purchase an item without paying for it first. Over the last five years, this has become a problem for me more and more. I’ve spent time listing a camera body or lens and then someone purchases it. Great! Well, not exactly. Many times, the “buyer” messages me after purchases my item encouraging me to ship the item before he pays. Anyone who does this on eBay is trying to scam you and get your camera without paying. They get away with it on eBay all the time. If you are new to selling on eBay you don’t realize sometimes that you need to wait before someone pays you before you ship the item. The irritating part is that you have to go through the process of relisting your item to try to find a legitimate buyer. I’ve had to relist the same item 3-4 times before a legitimate person buys it.
About a year ago, I had the lightbulb moment of building my own marketplace just for us, the photographers and filmmakers of the world. A fresh and clean new pool of honest and ethical users where the prince of Nigeria isn’t trying to mug you online. So I made it happen. We created GearUp.
It took me and my business partner Caleb a whole year to design and build the iPhone and Android app but we did it. This app has been built by photographers and filmmakers for photographers and filmmakers. In this episode I'm going to tell you about the app we've built and why we are so excited about it!
Gearup for iPhone
Gearup for Android
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/image-maker/message
I’ve been buying and selling camera equipment for my entire adult life. Like most people, I’ve gone the eBay or Craigslist route. While I have had successful transactions on both I was starting to get really, really frustrated.
On craigslist, I had several bad experiences. I remember selling a Nikon body once and a guy contacted me interested in the camera. He told me that he for sure wanted to buy the camera. He told me he wanted to meet about 30 minutes away from my house. I wasn’t getting a lot of interest on craigslist with this camera so I decided to go. When I met him and showed him the camera he was very excited, but then started looking for every little flaw on the camera body. He told me he couldn’t pay what I was asking because of the small scuff on the back of the body. I was irritated but I was already invested in this transaction. I had given up an hour of driving that day to meet this guy. Long story short he ended up getting me to go down significantly on my price in person and I sold him the camera. Afterward, I felt taken. It felt like I had been conned even though I agreed to the price. Maybe I’m not the best negotiator in person, but this guy definitely had a plan to get me in person and then lowball me.
The problem I found with Craigslist is that you don’t have a lot of potential buyers since all your buyers have to live in the area. Photo and video gear is many times a niche product depending on what brand you are selling so Craigslist is not ideal. Some Canon gear can sell fine on Craigslist but when you are selling a more niche brand like Zeiss or Sigma it becomes much harder to have leverage as a seller.
eBay is another way of selling gear. The great thing about eBay is the number of potential buyers go way up. Now your gear is available to everyone in the US and even more if you choose. You don’t have to drive to meet some unethical person to begin a negotiation behind a gas station. But there is a huge flaw in eBays business model. They allow people to purchase an item without paying for it first. Over the last five years, this has become a problem for me more and more. I’ve spent time listing a camera body or lens and then someone purchases it. Great! Well, not exactly. Many times, the “buyer” messages me after purchases my item encouraging me to ship the item before he pays. Anyone who does this on eBay is trying to scam you and get your camera without paying. They get away with it on eBay all the time. If you are new to selling on eBay you don’t realize sometimes that you need to wait before someone pays you before you ship the item. The irritating part is that you have to go through the process of relisting your item to try to find a legitimate buyer. I’ve had to relist the same item 3-4 times before a legitimate person buys it.
About a year ago, I had the lightbulb moment of building my own marketplace just for us, the photographers and filmmakers of the world. A fresh and clean new pool of honest and ethical users where the prince of Nigeria isn’t trying to mug you online. So I made it happen. We created GearUp.
It took me and my business partner Caleb a whole year to design and build the iPhone and Android app but we did it. This app has been built by photographers and filmmakers for photographers and filmmakers. In this episode I'm going to tell you about the app we've built and why we are so excited about it!
Gearup for iPhone
Gearup for Android
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/image-maker/message
12 min