So one of the things that has started and still pops up more now is dealers posting in the Cars and Trucks by owner more and more now. This was just kind of a problem before Craigslist.org started charging dealers, but has been ramping up the more I look at Craigslist. Also they never seem to get flagged down any more, like they used to as well. I know Craigslist says they are going to police this better and work on blocking/banning dealers that post in the owner section, but when is this going to start? They have been charging for over 3 months now and have seen the flow of dealers popping up in the owners more and more. I know that I am in Dallas, a really high traffic area and it might be hard to track it all, but they have the tools on their end to know the difference from an owner and a dealer, but they do not use them, or if they are, not in any way that shows to the users of the site. I am not saying they are not working on it, but stop working on how the site looks and work a bit more on making people post to the right areas and the right categories.
If some one is making a post in Dallas, and Craigslist is all about saying you have to be local, then why on the map do they show all over the US? And some people might try and say well the maps part is not 100% part of the site. Well, if it shows on the map, it has a lat and long, so they could easy block/filter/move the post to the right area for the poster. All I am getting at with this is if they are wanting it to be for your geo local area, then work on it a bit, because that is still not working right. But if you do not care, then just open the whole thing up and let me pick how far away I am willing to look like every other site does now days.
I am not saying that Craigslist.org is not a great site, and it does somethings way better then others do. I am just saying that some of the things they are putting time and effort into need a bit of a change so that the site can keep up and stop losing ground as well. When I first started using Craigslist, it was like 6th on Alexa now it is down to 11th. Ebay is not over Craigslist, and this traffic loss is mostly because people get tired of the BS on craigslist and leave it. This shows in the fact that they only had to charge for jobs and rentals in a few cities before, now they have to charge for cars and trucks by dealer all over the whole US. Why? In part dealers and their over posting, and in part not many people were posting as much because they would be flooded by people who were not qualified for the job just blanking every one to try and get a job. Now in part this is the market place that is out there and in part the user that use Craigslist as well.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Craigslist, are you going to start charging?
Saw this today a few hours ago, it has gone away now, but it is a worry... Is Craigslist.org going to start charging people to post in the for sale section, or was it some kind of holiday bug? With craigslist just adding the cars and trucks by dealer to the paying list, who will be next? Something to worry about.
"Due to the hoilday, new ($10) postings to cars & trucks - by owner are disabled until 12:01 AM PST,
Reposts (for$5) of exisiting ads are available as usual."
The message makes me think it was a short term bug but it is hard to tell with craigslist now days.
Just saying keep an eye out you might not be able to list that gift you just do not want on craigslist this year...
"Due to the hoilday, new ($10) postings to cars & trucks - by owner are disabled until 12:01 AM PST,
Reposts (for$5) of exisiting ads are available as usual."
The message makes me think it was a short term bug but it is hard to tell with craigslist now days.
Just saying keep an eye out you might not be able to list that gift you just do not want on craigslist this year...
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Used Car shopping online made easy
AutoGlance.com – Compare Used Cars
If you want to buy a used car online, you could complain about many things but you could never say there are few sites where you could find such vehicles. Autotrader.com, UsedCars.com, CarDomain.com, Cars.com… the list can run for as long as you want. If you’ve got the time, you’ll find a car in the shape you want, and for the right price. But what happens when you don’t have the time?
Easy. You head to a site like AutoGlance.com, and search for what you need there. Not only does this new site aggregate results from all of the services listed above, it’s also got a way to show them which is a lot easier on the eye. It can display any car’s most important features like price, mileage, year and color in a more visual way. This has the advantage of letting you compare cars a lot faster, as what matters more will be noticed much faster. You won’t have to dig deep into listings to realize whether a car’s for you or not, all the information you need will be found at a glance.
A search can be launched really fast, you just have to select the make, the model, the price and the area you live in to get started. Do it now, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy AutoGlance.com makes looking for a used car online.
Also check you About.com who talked about the site as well, at http://usedcars.about.com/od/research/a/Autoglance-Makes-Used-Car-Buying-Simpler.htm
Monday, November 25, 2013
More for the sabi than the car, A note about Carsabi
Car-buying service Carsabi has been acquired by Facebook, sort of. Just not for the car part, that part went to ark.com.
Founders Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner were acqui-hired by Facebook. Terms with Facebook where not disclosed, but it has come out that the site was bought for around $32,000. What is clear is that Facebook is not getting into the business of helping you buy and sell cars. At least, not anymore than it already has via the Facebook Marketplace app, powered by Oodle.
The founders announced their new jobs on the Carsabi blog:
A Y Combinator grad with attitude, Carsabi launched at Demo Day in March of 2012. The goal was to index every vehicle for sale and connect the right user to the right car. That goal became a tougher job when, in its crusade to shut down competition, Craigslist blocked Carsabi from indexing its car listings.
This was the start of a major drop in traffic for them. That turned around for a short time after the purchase, when the founders where on the TV show Start-Ups Silicon Valley. The front page of Carsabi was redone to bring in that extra traffic from people watching the show.
Crow and Berner found Ark.com to take over the Carsabi service, since Facebook will not be taking that over, but it’s was unclear what Ark was going to do with a scraping service that is blocked from one of the key scraping sources … and, as a Y Combinator company doesn’t have a ton of investment.
And now that they site is returning Application Errors:
I have been told that Ark is rebuilding the site, but this was months ago at this point, and with how long before that they site did not load right as talked about on many other blogs and such. The talk is that they are just shelving the project being that it was making them nothing, and had a large over head for nothing coming in. Most people asked where Carsabi could have made it's money, being that it was mostly an indexing service more then anything else. Having been around car marketing now for some time, I see many options as to where it could have made its money, but with the site not running guess it is just another good idea that has come on gone.
Founders Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner were acqui-hired by Facebook. Terms with Facebook where not disclosed, but it has come out that the site was bought for around $32,000. What is clear is that Facebook is not getting into the business of helping you buy and sell cars. At least, not anymore than it already has via the Facebook Marketplace app, powered by Oodle.
The founders announced their new jobs on the Carsabi blog:
We created Carsabi back in Oct 2011 with the goal of easing the process of purchasing a used car and providing a service that aims to index every automotive vehicle and connect more users to their car of choice each day.
But now it’s time for us to take a different turn. We want to take this impact to the next level – and help Facebook users connect and share. Because Facebook is not acquiring Carsabi.com, we’re looking for someone to buy the Carsabi service, so the two of us can focus on our new jobs. We can’t thank all of you that have used Carsabi enough – developing Carsabi has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and we hope we helped you think differently about how to find the perfect used car!
We want to give special thanks to our partners, customers, and investors for helping us fulfill our dream.
Christopher & Dwight
A Y Combinator grad with attitude, Carsabi launched at Demo Day in March of 2012. The goal was to index every vehicle for sale and connect the right user to the right car. That goal became a tougher job when, in its crusade to shut down competition, Craigslist blocked Carsabi from indexing its car listings.
This was the start of a major drop in traffic for them. That turned around for a short time after the purchase, when the founders where on the TV show Start-Ups Silicon Valley. The front page of Carsabi was redone to bring in that extra traffic from people watching the show.
Crow and Berner found Ark.com to take over the Carsabi service, since Facebook will not be taking that over, but it’s was unclear what Ark was going to do with a scraping service that is blocked from one of the key scraping sources … and, as a Y Combinator company doesn’t have a ton of investment.
And now that they site is returning Application Errors:
I have been told that Ark is rebuilding the site, but this was months ago at this point, and with how long before that they site did not load right as talked about on many other blogs and such. The talk is that they are just shelving the project being that it was making them nothing, and had a large over head for nothing coming in. Most people asked where Carsabi could have made it's money, being that it was mostly an indexing service more then anything else. Having been around car marketing now for some time, I see many options as to where it could have made its money, but with the site not running guess it is just another good idea that has come on gone.
Looking for a used car?
Are you looking at site after site for a used car? Or have you found the used care that you are looking for and want to know if it is a good deal in your area or not? You should check at AutoGlance.com then. They can show you hundreds of cars quick and easy from your local area all at a glance. They make it easy for you to find the car you are looking for and make sure you are not paying to much more it. I think that this was a great find, I had been looking for something to replace carsabi.com (link might not work any more), after Ark.com bought it and said they were going to re work the site. I know Carsabi being on the TV show, Start-Ups <silicon.valley> had to be a reason that Ark bought them, and as soon as they did plastered the front page of the site with info all about the show and such. Soon after the show was off the air the site started not working well, and searches seem to stop working as well. I am sure Dwight, and Chris would have liked for the site to stay up and running and have had it take off, but I get it they got a better deal that I know they could not pass up.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Trying to sell your car online
If you are trying to sell your car online? Every one goes to some of the big names right out of the gate, and just list their car. This works out fine more of the time, you will have to work threw some of the scams and such people that try to contact you, and you may get some SPAM as well. But most of the time you can get it sold with out any problem. But what if you do not want to drop your price, or haggle with people about it, then more classified sites are not the place you want to list on. So you start looking at pages like cars.com and autotrader.com as another place to list your vehicle. Again great sties, but here they want your money more then they way to help you sell your vehicle.
I have found another site, classifiedride.com they give you free options as well as some paid options, but this site tries and helps you find a buyer for your car at a price you are happy with. It might be a dealer it might be other people on the site looking for a car in your area. They put in the time and work with you to try and get your vehicle sold fast. You might want to give them a look at next time you are trying to sell a vehicle so that you can sell it for what you are looking for rather then taking what you can.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
A change to Craigslist Car and Trucks by Dealer
So Craigslist, is going to start charging dealers for posting on the site. There are many ways to look at this and over all with the way Craigslist was going in the dealer section something was going to have to change. So starting 12/3 (So Craigslist says) they will start to charge dealers $5 per post. A good chunk of dealers are all upset about this, and I get why they would be. With how Craigslist is right now a post at $5 for a car listing is way to much. What most are over looking is that Craigslist a few years ago, was way fewer post and a few days a day went a really long way. Then every one started posting more and more ads so every one else had to start posting more and more on top of them to try and get the most leads.
Now, with all the changes Craigslist has put in place before this change tho, I am not sure on the value of each lead now. They have taking putting images in the ad using the <IMG> tag out, they then took out the <table>, <font>, <div>, and <span> tags as well. The one they took out that they do not list any where, is they also took out links as well. So the <a> tag is gone as well. So the leaves you with uploading images to Craigslist (Mind you they give you up to 12 images now), using their e-mail system, putting in your own email address in the ad, and putting in a phone number. Mind you putting in a phone number is what most of them do at this point any ways so no big change there, but taking the links out makes it where they user has to contact the dealer rather then letting them do more information digging on their own before reaching out to the dealer about the vehicle.
Also the fact that Craigslist in their own Q&A page about this, talks about dealer who want to put up more then 500 ads per month, we can guess they are wanting the traffic to stay about the same, not many dealers have 500 cars on the lot they would want to put on Craigslist in the first place, and if they want the dealers to stick with the TOS of the site and not post the same thing every day ( like they are all doing right now ) then this seems like a odd thing to be in the Q&A.
December 3rd will be a day, to watch and see what happens on the cars and trucks by dealer section on Craigslist that is for sure.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/ctd
Now, with all the changes Craigslist has put in place before this change tho, I am not sure on the value of each lead now. They have taking putting images in the ad using the <IMG> tag out, they then took out the <table>, <font>, <div>, and <span> tags as well. The one they took out that they do not list any where, is they also took out links as well. So the <a> tag is gone as well. So the leaves you with uploading images to Craigslist (Mind you they give you up to 12 images now), using their e-mail system, putting in your own email address in the ad, and putting in a phone number. Mind you putting in a phone number is what most of them do at this point any ways so no big change there, but taking the links out makes it where they user has to contact the dealer rather then letting them do more information digging on their own before reaching out to the dealer about the vehicle.
Also the fact that Craigslist in their own Q&A page about this, talks about dealer who want to put up more then 500 ads per month, we can guess they are wanting the traffic to stay about the same, not many dealers have 500 cars on the lot they would want to put on Craigslist in the first place, and if they want the dealers to stick with the TOS of the site and not post the same thing every day ( like they are all doing right now ) then this seems like a odd thing to be in the Q&A.
December 3rd will be a day, to watch and see what happens on the cars and trucks by dealer section on Craigslist that is for sure.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/ctd
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