I'm assuming that by 'successful' you meant 'safe'. Just use a trusted escrow and you'll be fine. But not every time escrows are available. If that is so, you should never go first no matter what the deal is. You can do 50% payment of buyer, then the seller sends the item, then after checking, the other 50% payment should be sent by the buyer.
So if the price of the Bitcoin keeps stable than there will be more people that is going to trade because there they can earn a little bit profit so that is nice for the.
And in few day price rised 100 $. What you say now?
I think for low amounts of money you can trade safe on many places. I send money to a friend in Russia, I find that easiest way is to send him money on his Yobit account, then he can easily sell it for rubles and withdraw on his card. So it takes about 30 minutes, last time i sent him 35 $, he received 33.5 so fee for all that was 1.5 $. For me its not much with WU it was much more expensive.
So you see its safe on Yobit also, but problems come when you have huge amounts.. for that is maybe better to pay 2 % extra and be safe.. if someone trying to be cheap on everything thatis no good.