If you’re an audiophile who plays a lot of instruments, you might decide to sell some of your old gear, whether because you don’t use them anymore or upgrading to a higher-end model.
Of course, you can always try to sell it to a used music gear store or locally in your community. However, we all know how inconvenient these options can be, especially if you want to make good money from the sale.
The best route, in that case, would be selling your gear on an online store for goods. The problem is, should you go for a general online store like eBay or a music-related one like Reverb?
In today’s article, we’ll put Reverb vs eBay in a head to head comparison in order to help you pick the ideal one for your needs. Let’s dive right in!
About Reverb
Reverb.com is one of the most popular e-commerce websites that specialize in the sale of music gear, whether new or used. The company was launched back in 2013 by David S. Kalt. The company’s headquarters is in Chicago, Illinois.
The company has become a booming success since its launch because it took the online sales of music equipment to the next level. Today, the website has tens of millions of visitors every month.
The website also offers various features that help musicians choose the right product, such as offering a pricing guide for all kinds of music instruments as well as smartphone apps that made selling on the go a lot easier and streamlined.
In late 2019, the online e-commerce giant Etsy has acquired Reverb.com for about $275,000,000 in cash. This helped in expanding the logistic network of the website without affecting the quality of the website.
About eBay
eBay is also one of the largest e-commerce websites on the market that specify in the consumer to consumer sales.
This means that you can easily list just about any product on its marketplace, whether it’s used or new, with very few exceptions, such as illicit and illegal products.
Due to its huge popularity, eBay has been known for years to be one of the easiest places to buy and sell used music gear as well as a special edition and vintage items.
The most popular feature of eBay is the ability to create auctions where customers bid on a starting price, a feature that doesn’t exist in Reverb.com.
eBay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar in San Jose, California and the headquarters has stayed there ever since.
A Head to Head Comparison Between Reverb and eBay
While choosing a platform to sell your music gear, there are some essential aspects that you need to consider.
Let’s have a look at what Reverb and eBay have to offer in terms of those points to find a winner:
Selling Fees
Both websites don’t charge buying fees on customers. However, for the seller, there are selling fees in the form of a commission or a percentage of the sale’s price.
The less the selling fees, the more money you can keep in your pocket. In that case, reverb is a better option because it has 5% (increased from 3.5%) with a cap of $500 selling fees while eBay is 10% with a cap of $750.
If you’re selling internationally, there might be an extra fee based on the location in which the product is supposed to be shipped, which is usually about 3%
Community and Audience
Comparing the numbers without context here can be extremely misleading. For example, eBay has a monthly rate of about 200 million visitors. On the other hand, Reverb has a much smaller monthly rate of about 8 to 10 million visitors.
Despite that, not all the 200 million visitors of eBay are buying music related gear. On the other hand, the smaller community of Reverb is almost exclusively looking for music gear, so it ends up with almost the same number of buyers seeing your product, if not more.
Both companies offer the same fees on PayPal, which are 2.9% of the sale + a constant $0.3. However, the buyer is the one charged for these fees and not the seller. But since they’re the same, it shouldn’t be a factor on the audience.
Ease of Shipping
As previously mentioned, in both cases, the buyer is the one who pays for the shipping fees. However, when it comes to the ease of shipping, things are quite different between the two.
Reverb offers a shipping guide as well as the ability to create a shipping method template. This means that you have to enter the product’s shipping information once. Moreover, you can add a flat rate of shipping that is not affected by the buyer’s location.
On the other hand, eBay changes the shipping fees according to the location of the buyer, which makes things a bit more confusing and difficult to estimate when compared to Reverb. This makes Reverb a bit less of a hassle when it comes to shipping.
Safety and Security
When it comes to cybersecurity and safety, both sites are reputable e-Commerce platforms that have various measures that prevent cyberattacks and data leaks.
They both use the same forms of safe online payments, so users regard both websites as equal in those aspects.
Despite that, scams are much more likely to occur in eBay than Reverb due to their relatively higher popularity.
That’s why musicians would expect a slightly more trustworthy experience when surfing Reverb than eBay.
Final Verdict: Which Platform Is Better for Selling Music Gear?
There you have it! A brief guide that puts Reverb and eBay under the radar to help you choose the suitable platform to sell your music gear.
As you can see, both websites are great for selling your musical instruments. However, we believe that Reverb has a slight edge when it comes to selling because it’ll cost you less in terms of fees.Although eBay has a generally larger audience, Reverb has equal chances of sales because all the site’s community are music enthusiasts who want to buy music gear. Click here to create an account on Reverb and start selling your music gear!