Expats in Beijing and Shanghai now have two new options for buying/selling/trading their gear. SellShanghai.com and SellBeijing.com.
The two sites were created by the expat behind the Sinolicious and KalanStar blogs, and aim to provide foreigners living in or moving to China’s two largest expat hubs with a free and easy-to-use method of getting and getting rid of their stuff.
“As communities go, China’s expat ones are highly fluid and transient. This being the case, members come and go often and either need to get a bunch of dongxi for their homes or off-load a bunch of dongxi when they eventually move on,” explained the sites’ founder. “Unfortunately, the staple buy and sell sites that many expats are familiar with are not very useful within the middle kingdom. Some online communities, particularly forums, have added some buy and sell sections but the nature of forums is less than ideal for advertising and shopping.”
Features at a Glance:
- All basic ads are for 30 days and are free.
- Each listing can list all contact information, including street address and Google maps.
- Each ad can contain up to 5 photos of the item, service, or business you wish to promote.
- No membership required to contact the ad’s owner (buyer/seller).
Additionally, for businesses or people who wish to add a bit of extra promotion to their item or service, a $10 USD paid package allows ads to be placed for a period of 90 days and contains some additional display features.
As the sites have just launched, there is currently not much content on them. However, the sites’ founder expects this to change quickly as word spreads through the expat communities in Beijing and Shanghai of the new service.
Looks good!
That’s great…if you live in one of those two cities.
I feel your pain. There’s definitely a need for this type of site though, as I’ve noticed the 2nd-tier city FB page I administer blow up lately with requests for buying/selling things. Right time of year for it too, as people tend to leave China at the end of the school year.
I thought about launching a China wide site, but the execution would be much more complicated.Then I thought about just a Shanghai site… Then I thought, “Damn, there’s a lot of expats in Beijing… maybe more than Shanghai (??) what if someone steals my idea and launches there?” Then I thought, “I’ll do two.”
Really wish I could setup and run 30 or 40 and get China covered… but that’d be kinda expensive and also, some cities may only have 20 or 30 expats living in them. There’s only about a half million of us in China altogether… which might make it hard to even get enough action on just these two sites… even though most of that half million are in Shanghai and Beijing
need more promotion… nobody is selling anything 🙂