Buying and Selling Outdoor Gear with ReelTrail

in #camping6 years ago (edited)

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Recently a good buddy of mine called me about a website I'm going to share with you here. Now, like any of your buddies that you know and trust, when you get a call that is a bit over the top and hyper-excited, and they wanna send you a link, you might get a little standoffish. And that's cool, I know I am in the same circumstances. But when it was about outdoor gear, and buying and selling outdoor gear, I got more than a little curious.

In the past, I've been an avid eBayer and bought and sold a lot of outdoor gear over the years, everything from hiking boots, snowboards, skiing accessories, fishing reels and rods, tents, and even the odd boat. The biggest struggle for me with this approach to business has been in a couple of areas, one, in particular, is the fees.

It's always felt like the big names like Amazon and eBay are too heavy on their fees to me. I mean, when you're being slugged between 10% and 12% for selling an item listed in the outdoor gear category, it becomes a bit difficult to run a business in the space that you love. And that doesn't include the 2.9% share that PayPal wants. Funny how eBay owns PayPal - does anyone else get the feeling they're double dipping here?

So, my buddy tells me about ReelTrail, and tells me that it has all this amazing outdoor gear for sale at very reasonable prices. What got my attention was that he mentioned that he was selling outdoor gear here and had listed some items for sale and the fee was only 4%.

Now that might not sound like much, but when the average outdoor gear order I was doing on eBay and Amazon was around $600.00, that's in the ballpark of $15 to $27 that I would normally lose to eBay or Amazon in fees.

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On the surface this amount doesn't appear to be tacked on the price that the Buyer pays, it's something the Seller has to factor in, and just suck it up. But, from where I stand on this, the Buyer ultimately pays that fee anyway. I mean, it's factored into the price by the Seller, so the price of the item is inflated to compensate. So who really wins?

Later that afternoon I was browsing a selection of new and used outdoor gear on ReelTrail, along with the fishing trips and hunts, and found myself thinking about getting back into the online selling game. I still have a substantial amount of items in storage that I know will move easily, and the reach that ReelTrail has developed going by the word of mouth in my camping circles, it only makes sense to me to list them here.

My wife called me out on what she affectionately refers to as 'my hoarding' with the gear that I've still got. She wants the garage cleared out so there is room for her to park her car inside. This was a trade-off while I was selling on the aforementioned overcharging websites; I got to use the garage for storing and dispatching items, she got a shiny new hatchback. Given my foot has been off the gas for about six months, she's said that if I don't move it, I'll lose it, and she'll take the garage back. Guess I found my muse!

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The 'move it or lose it' comment was one I hadn't heard with regard to collecting camping and outdoor gear since I was in my early teens. My Grandfather, the source of my inspiration in the outdoors, couldn't bring himself to selling outdoor gear he had collected over the years. He had all manner of things tucked away in boxes, and cupboards. Old antique fishing rods and reels, handmade skis, rabbit traps, rusty only knives that looked like they carried the most lethal strain of tetanus, right through to his own homemade, purpose-built gear that you couldn't even buy back then.

I found out when I was older that when my Grandfather and I would go away on a weekend camping or fishing trip, his wife would find a dozen or so things that she thought he wouldn't miss in his shed, and conveniently toss them out. A bit sly of the old biddy she was, but I guess she got tired of him coming back each weekend with just as much stuff as she threw out while we were away.

Not wanting to see inventory, and high quality outdoor and camping gear left on the front lawn for anyone to pick up and take, I found that with the platform that ReelTrail has brought to the table it is really intuitive and beautifully designed. The only trouble is that I'm finding myself buying almost as much as I'm selling outdoor gear, but that's just the way it is when you've got the outdoors in your blood. You can blame my Grandfather for teaching me the good ways off the outdoors. Check out the ReelTrail promo video below...

This was originally posted on my blog at Buying and Selling Outdoor Gear with ReelTrail and shared here to add value to the Steemit Community.

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If you want to sell some stuff for SBD check out my project. There are no fees! Post all the tetanus laced survival knives you want!

Tetanus laced knives, lol - thanks @sbd-bay

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