Lesson 26 Selling a Car Online,When you decide to sell your car, there are three traditional ways of selling it; either privately to another driver, to a dealer in sale or part-exchange, or through an auction. Private selling involves advertising the sale of the car yourself; this is usually carried out through newspaper listings, magazine listings, or through an advert in the window of the car.,One of the fastest growing ways of advertising a car is through online car listings. These are similar to (and sometimes run by) the listings in car magazines such as Auto Trader and Exchange and Mart. This article will look at the benefits and costs of advertising your car online.,How Online Listings Work Online listings are stored in a database within each site, and are displayed according to the criteria the potential buyer sets. They can search by make, model, age of car, features, and more depending on the individual site, although the most common way for cars to be listed is by model (e.g.: Ford Fiesta).,Details. The most important part of any car advert is the details of the car itself. These are usually written in the same shortened style as classified car adverts. For example: 2002 Ford Fiesta 1.4 ZETEC 5DR NEW SHAPE, 1 owner, 14,000 miles, air-conditioning, power assisted steering, electric windows, central locking, alloys, silver? 599 (Name of City) Tel: 01234 456789,These details are crucial, as any decisions to look further at the car will be made using this data. Photos. Along with the details of the car, many online adverts include one or more pictures of the car (or a similar spec/colour). This allows the person searching for a car to see what it looks like, as well as maybe allowing a brief look at the condition of the car.,Some sites allow more than one photo to be displayed, attracting more attention to the car than any text advert (however well written). Contact. Each online advert has on it the contact details of the seller or dealer. This allows them to be contacted in order to actually make the sale! Sometimes the contact details are just an email, although mostly a phone number is given, and occasionally an address.,Benefits of Selling a Car Online Large number of viewers. The key benefit of advertising your car online is that you can expose the offer to a large number of people across the whole of the country. The accessibility of the internet means that although you may be the opposite side of the country to your buyer, they can still view your car and decide if it is worth the traveling needed to buy it.,With an online advert you are not restricted to local areas as you would be with magazines and (particularly) newspapers. Cheaper than printed listings. An advert with an online car listing site is cheaper than an equivalent printed listing in a magazine or newspaper. The overhead costs of a website list are considerably lower than those of a printed list, meaning that lower (and occasionally free) prices are common.,Searching. Searching for a particular car is much easier online. Where as a car listings magazine may have to create pages dedicated to certain sizes of car, prices, or particular makes; an online list can be organized and categorized according to many different areas. Someone searching for your car online can simply enter the make, model, and approximate age or price of the car, and be given a specifically relevant list instantly.,However, someone searching for your type of car in a magazine or newspaper may struggle to find it quickly, as they may have to flick through pages for hours finding the right car in a pile of other irrelevant cars. The pictures in some magazines make it a bit easier, but they are still nowhere near as quick and effective as an online search.,Details and photos. An online advert means that you are much less constrained for space than with newspapers or magazines for which space is an expensive premium. Many printed listings will charge you by the word, whereas this almost never the case with online adverts.,Although there will be restrictions on the number of words you can use, and on the size of any photo(s), online listings are still much more open with the amount of space you can use than printed listings. This means that online adverts can include more of the details about the car and its specifications, making it more attractive to those that view the advert.,Disadvantages of Selling a Car Online The main disadvantage of online adverts is that you can receive lots of replies from people who are too far away to realistically want to buy the car. As the internet is accessible by people across the whole country, you may find that you receive more, but not necessarily relevant calls from those who are interested but not really interested in traveling to view and buy it.,This means some time there could be lost answering calls that are not going to lead to the car being sold. There are solutions to help this however. Most online listing sites requi