Listia is a service that allows you to post items that you want to give away and then allows other users to bid on the item using a type of point system.

The idea is, that instead of using the ‘free’ section on a site like craigslist to get rid of stuff you don’t need,  you can post them to listia as to avoid numerous phone calls, email exchanges, and inevitable no-shows.  For example, let’s say I wanted to get rid of a bunch of old National Geographic Magazines.  I could post them on craigslist and give out my address to every person who said they’d be right over to pick them up, or I could post them on listia and have people bid on the magazines and only give my info out to the person who spent the time and the credits to win the auction.

When I say bid, I don’t mean with money.  You bid with credits, which you earn every time you post an item yourself.  You also earn credits by having people use your sign-up link when registering for the site.  If you run out of credits, and there’s something that you simply must have, then you can purchase additional credits for about 10 cents a piece.

When you sign up for your listia account, which is free, you’ll be given 500 free credits that you can use to bid on items that other users are giving away.  There is a slight catch here though – you get 50 credits right away but you need to post an item yourself in order to get the additional 450 credits.  Not a huge deal; I posted a dirty litter box that I didn’t want to clean and received my sign-up credits that way.

One slightly confusing aspect of the site, however, is that when you post an item you have to add how the exchange of the item will take place in the description.  There is no set place for this on the form and I found that most people didn’t have any description of how they would get you the item that they were getting rid of.  If I bid on an item I want to know if I’m supposed to pay for shipping, pick it up on a certain day, or if they’ll be shipping the item for free.  I really think there needs to be a set (and mandatory) form field for this information.  Getting whatever I used all of my precious credits on is a pretty huge aspect of this site running correctly.

To see listia in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):