Online buy and sell options for Filipinos (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a series of articles on online buy and sell options for Filipinos. Click here for Part 1 of the series.

Today, we’ll look at two other buy and sell options online.

Sulit.com.phSulit is a thriving community with thousands of members logging on each day to sell or shop (as of this writing, it’s 5,000 plus). You can even create an ad if you’re looking for something in particular – a feature that Bidshot and eBay.ph don’t have. For example, if you want to buy an Asus EEE PC for a specific price, you create a listing about the item you want and how much you’re willing to pay for it.I posted an ad selling my old videocam in both eBay.ph and Sulit, and nobody contacted me on the eBay ad. As for the Sulit ad, I had at least 10 responses – although all of them preferred to contact me via text rather than the ad page itself. I don’t think this is an isolated case, since it’s obvious how active the Sulit community is.

Of course, the downside is that all transactions are done manually. If 10 people respond to your ad, it’s up to you to select the final buyer – whether it’s “first come first served” or you select the buyer with the highest offer.

Sulit also has a messageboard and a shoutbox. This probably helps in maintaining a strong community. The site also offers several means of contact – you can send a private message, or see a user’s Yahoo Messenger status. Since Sulit has a large community, it seems a bit chaotic at times, and interested parties will contact you for the slightest questions, even if you’ve written everything in your ad. The site itself doesn’t have the sleekest interface, because there are several banner ads at the top banner and sidebars. Still, it’s functional and I haven’t encountered any bugs.

Overall, I recommend Sulit, especially if you’re in a hurry to sell something. But like any Pinoy buy and sell site, expect people to negotiate lower than your asking price or even propose swaps.

TipidPC TipidPC’s niche is limited to computer and technology gadgets, but just because they offer limited categories of products, it doesn’t mean there’s less activity. As I write this article, there are 736 users online. Because of it’s popularity among the computer-using crowd, it’s definitely the go-to place to buy and sell those items.One thing I don’t like about TipidPC is the cluttered layout. There are many flash elements on the homepage, from the banner to some ads. This isn’t good news for those with dial-up connections. Also, the ads here seem more distracting than the ones in Sulit, mostly because they are animated and catch more attention. Plus, with hundreds of members online at a time, they don’t need to list the user names of online members.

Another downside to TipidPC is that you don’t see photographs of the product until you click on the ad itself. eBay, Bidshot, and Sulit let you view a preview pic when ads come up as searchr esults or you’re looking at products in a category.

Despite these weaknesses, TipidPC ads generate a lot of response if your offer is good enough. I’ve successfully bought products from TipidPC in the past, and I’ve never had a bad experience. Again, expect price negotiations and offers to swap.