Free Classified Ads: The Basics

Free Classified Ads: The Basics of Placing a Free Classified

Classified ads have been around for a very long time. Even the cave men had them. Back in those days the ad may have looked like a stick figure with a bow and arrow and may meant “selling good bow with one arrow, cheap.” Now we have internet and free classified ads. Free classified ads are much more sophisticated than print version ads. They include pictures and have a decent amount of text to describe your product.

Placing a free classified ad is easy. There are just a few things to think about and a few things to do before making your ad visible to the entire civilized world. These are common sense starting points before writing your free classified ad.

• Who are you targeting with your ad? This is important. Is your target audience a man or woman, boy or girl, old or young?

• What you are selling. If you are selling multiple items be specific. Posting an ad for an estate sale is not going to do you any good if you don’t let your public know what you are selling. The what if the sale also goes back to the “who.” If you’re selling girls bikes you’ve got the who as well as the what.

• When are your items available? When is the best time for a customer to come and look at them and maybe buy them? Post the time in the ad. If you’re putting a telephone number in your free classified ad put the best time to call. It’s a good idea to ad a pm or am after the time.

• Where can your customer come and see your items. It’s not necessary to put an address in the ad. It’s probably not advisable to put an address in. But it’s easy to say something like “near the Wal-Mart on 5th St, in Any Town, call for instructions.”

• How much money are you expecting for your items? If you feel that you’re not going to budge on the price just ad the words “priced to sell” or “firmly priced” to let your customers know that there will be no negotiating.

When placing a free classified ad it is helpful if you type the ad in a word processor before submitting to the free classified ad site. Most free classified ads do not have spell check and a lot of credibility will be lost if you misspell a word. Just about all word-processing programs include spellcheck.

Don’t use text lingo in an ad. What works well on a phone as an instant message doesn’t look so hot when posted for weeks or months. If you post a professional looking and sounding free classified ad you’ll get professional results.

Always be truthful in your ad. There is nothing more frustrating for a buyer than driving a half an hour to look at an item that looks nothing like the description in the ad. By leaving important details out of your free classified ad you are wasting both your customer’s time and your time.