@brerrabbit585 wrote:
You don't have to do ANY of the social media stuff on fb. I have my profile set to private and nobody can see anything about me. I post 99.9999% of what I sell and about 80% is paid for with bank deposit. I only joined fb to sell. When something sells the person sends me a private message and I give them my bank account or pp details and they give me their address.
There's at least one group of know of for hand made craft goods - with 50,000 members. Anybody who turns up their nose at that obviously doesn't want to sell their goods.
Someone told me a few months ago that fb are now requiring proof of identity when you open an account so it may not be as easy to join under a false name as it used to be. If you want to sell I'd suggest using your real name so that you inspire trust in your buyers.
I set up a new account for a friend a few months ago to get around a group ban. I didn't require any proof of ID. If that has come in since then, you'd still be able to create with your real name, then you can change your name once every 30 days I think, so the name could be changed then.
I live in a town with 56,000 people. One of my local buy swap and sell groups and another local what's happening group, that doubles as a selling group, have 50,000+ members. Some of them would be out of towners and from neighbouring towns, but it's still not bad for rural groups.
My type of items aren't really geared for Facebook, but so much other stuff is. There's not just marketplace, but nearly everywhere has several local buy swap and sell groups. General ones, but also specialised ones, e.g cars and car parts or antiques, or collectables, or plants. You name it! If something is specialised, you often don't need to be local. People will join from all over the country, which opens up the audience.
The trouble with social media is, you only ever hear the bad stuff. Cyber bullying, stalking, etc. You don't hear of the thousands or millions of missing people around the world who've been found. Crimes have been solved. People finding long lost relatives, like adopted people finding birth families, or families who have become estranged.
Then there's the support groups. Any type of support you need, you can find groups for it on Facebook. Countless different cancer groups, epilepsy groups, food allergy or intolerance groups, gardening groups, religious groups. Absolutely any thing you can think of. If it wasn't for the Facebook support group that I joined after Mr Tippy got sick and had life altering surgery, I'd have probably committed a murder suicide. I am not joking one bit about that.
There's also the countless special interest groups. Car restorations, cake decorating, recipes, funny and not so funny jokes, pets, kids pulling faces, house renovating. Everything you could think of, someone has started a group for it. My town even has a local school uniform group, where people can sell uniforms that their kids have grown out of. That group has over 20,000 members apparently!
While there is the bad element that I mentioned, there is far more good than bad. As long as you keep your page private, with the strictest privacy settings, all anyone outside can see is your profile picture. You don't even have to have a profile picture, but it looks better if you do. It doesn't have to be a photo of you, it could be a pet, a flower, a rainbow, a car. Anything you want really.
The only way to know if it's going to work is give it a go. If it still turns out not to be for you, close your account, just like you would on eBay.
