Buy & Sell For Free. Don't Pay Twice For The Same Item!

Welcome to the Easy Peddler blog. My name is John Pusti and I am the CEO of Easy Peddler, Inc. It's been a long road and we have come a long way from our conception back in 2005 by offering our members a complete customer- oriented experience when buying and selling merchandise. From an account messaging system to our full image listings, we will always offer our members a full variety of listing tools and we will always do it for free.

Why did we launch a classifieds Web site in an already flooded market? That answer is easy. Because of high-cost auction sites, overpriced, monopoly-controlled newspaper publications, and unfair “grandfathered” companies which started back even before the Internet.

Years ago when I was in college, I used to buy and sell merchandise to make money to pay my expenses. But during this process I had to deal with many different venues to peddle my stuff. I started with a local newspaper publication who charged by line to place an ad for three days. I believe it was something like $18.00 for a couple lines in a one- by one-inch block. Well by the time I was done listing my items, I was already in the hole a couple hundred dollars and I could only hope that my items would sell just to break even. I’m sure there are many of you out there who know exactly what I mean.

Another option I had was to try to sell with a privately-held, regional classifieds publication. You could list your items for free, but there was a commission-based fee once the item sold. Now just like you, I do not want to pay $30.00 to sell a $300.00 item. That is why our slogan is also the question we ask our potential customer, "Why should you pay twice for the same item?"
This regional company was also what drove me to strive for a better online experience. Their business tactics were--and still are--questionable. If you were trying to sell an item using their magazine, you were not allowed to sell with any other company at the same time. So if you were hard up for cash and needed to sell something to make a buck, you had to wait a week for it to be listed and another four weeks until it expired before you were allowed to sell it elsewhere. Also while your listing was active, their employees made random phone calls with fake questions to see if your item sold. If you sold your item somewhere else, such as in a competing newspaper, auction or other venue, you were still charged a ten percent commission. And this was supposed to be a “free” listing. That kind of experience could leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, which brought me to my last option: online auctions.

Online auctions are a great way to buy and sell merchandise. I have had great success with sites like eBay® and the former Yahoo!® Auctions, but as they grew, so did their listing fees and greed. I still remember when the “Buy It Now” feature was free. Now you will pay for each and every option, including: any additional image after the first one, bold lettering, and small icons to get your auction noticed, just to name a few. Now aside from the nickel and diming on options, let’s not forget the new “lower listing fees” but more inflated “final value fees,” which I’m sure you’re already aware of. I understand that they have salaries, stockholders (well, stockholders if they were actually paying dividends), and other business expenses to attend to, but the earnings of eBay® in 2007 were $7.67 billion dollars. That’s enough to pay salaries, business expenses and then some. They are a typical large company controlled by the almighty dollar. Do you remember them giving anything back? I don’t.

Ultimately our goal is to change the structure of what modern online and offline monopolies have become--we want to bring back the customer-first focus that made them what they are today, and at the same time allow Easy Peddler to evolve into a solid online marketplaces to do business. Yes, we have come a long way but we still have so far to go.

I’m sure I will receive a lot of positive and negative feedback on my portrayal of other venues, but what it boils down to is, what are they doing for you? Easy Peddler will always remain customer-first and will always remain free to all our visitors.

Visit our site and let us help you have a better online experience. http://www.easypeddler.com/
Sign up for an account an let us hear your suggestions.

John Pusti
CEO, Easy Peddler, Inc.