When a product becomes old, we may want to buy a newer item in exchange for the older one. eCommerce websites such as Amazon support exchanges. These online companies will accept your old product only if it is in good condition. If the product is in bad shape, they’ll either reject it or offer a lower price. Instead of throwing away the item or selling it at a dirt-cheap rate, why not sell it on a classified website such as Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. These two sites are popular. Where should you list your item? Go through my comparison of FB Marketplace and Craigslist to get the answer.
Getting started
FB is a full-fledged social media portal. One of its many features is the “Marketplace” where you can discover things for sale or sell items. If you create a Facebook profile, you can chat with friends, see their posts, sell things or discover items for sale, and more. Craigslist allows you to sell and buy all types of services, products, etc. You cannot explore the FB marketplace unless you have an account. Craigslist, on the other hand, can be explored by any user. However, to create a listing or negotiate with the seller, you should have an account.
User interface
The user interface of Craigslist is very simple. There are hyperlinks all over the homepage. The links are grouped into rows and columns, and it isn’t difficult to locate a specific thing on the site.
When you click any URL, Craigslist will open a page that shows all listings available in the chosen category. The official page of the listing looks ordinary but it may have the information you may want to know. The category page of the classified site shows items arranged in a grid. It flaunts the following things of a listing:
- Image.
- Title.
- Place
- Option to favorite a listing.
FB has an attractive interface. Every page you visit on the site looks good. The option to open the marketplace is on the menu bar (the house icon). If you click this icon, the social media site will show images of the products on sale, the title of the listing, and the city in which the item was listed.
Category
Facebook Marketplace accepts new listings in these categories – items, vehicles, and home. You cannot list a retail shop, pets, or any other things unrelated to these three categories. Facebook doesn’t let users post services in the marketplace yet. There are communities aka groups dedicated to all types of items. For example, you will find groups related to pets, real estate, etc on Facebook. You can join one such group and post your shop, pet, etc. A community on FB can have hundreds of thousands of users. It can have moderators as well. What moderators do? They will review your post before it is published.
Userbase
Although FB is not as popular as it used to be a few years back, it is still the world’s largest social media website. When you post some item on Facebook, your listing may be viewed by many people. When a lot of people see your product, property, etc, the better the chances of it being sold. Craigslist had millions of users prior to 2012. The site lost a lot of visitors from search engines in the last decade. Many categories on Craigslist of various places across the world have zero listings. You won’t this until you click on the category. The classified site doesn’t display the number of listings in a category on the homepage. This is a big drawback.
Discussion forums
Craigslist and its counterpart Facebook support forum. The former’s interface is very old fashioned. It shows the topics on the left side and its full content on the right side. The site allows users to rate a thread and report the same to the company if it has content which violates the company’s terms and conditions.
As on FB, you can reply to topics. Facebook offers the same functionality as Craigslist but its interface is very good. At first glance, you may feel that the threads in the forum of the classified site were created by people in your country or neighborhood but this isn’t. The threads are created by people across the world. The users don’t use their real name as on FB.
You may think that you will hardly come across a fake buyer/seller on the website as FB is very strict on fake profiles. FB doesn’t ask users to submit their government ID while creating an account or does its counterpart. A lot of people are scammed on social media sites. You should be careful while dealing with money related matters not only on Facebook but also on Craigslist.
Facebook vs Craigslist? Where to post your item? Unless people see your item, they won’t buy it. As the social media site has several hundred times more users than its counterpart, your list will be viewed by more people on FB than on Craigslist. Thus, FB is a better choice.
