Craigslist is about to cost actual money to list a car

I just paid to post my Corvette.  Facebook Marketplace in South Florida is the WORST.  Spammy dealers, shady sellers, I listed furniture for sale that the messenger messages were ridiculous.

Brian said:

if you renew an ad every 2 days (most frequently available) you show up as new when people sort by newest post.  

I renew

Ok.  That makes sense.  You gotta pay to stay out in front.  I imagine other services are the same way, correct?

In reply to ProDarwin :

TBH I don't typically use pay services.  Can't afford them right now.

There are 2095 cars for sale on the Raleigh Craigslist at any price. That's about half of what there used to be.

There are 211 items priced $2000 and under, with a percentage of those being the old $1 price for something that isn't $1.

I'm pretty shocked at how many people are leaving Craigslist. We've gotten so addicted to free stuff that 5 bucks is going to break us? Either this country is in worse shape than I thought, or we've come a nation of cheap bastards. Probably both.

People seem to always go for the gloom and doom opinion on these things.  There's around 3000 cars and trucks listed on the Minneapolis Craigslist right now, which I think is about the same amount there was before.

Brett_Murphy said:

There are 2095 cars for sale on the Raleigh Craigslist at any price. That's about half of what there used to be.

There are 211 items priced $2000 and under, with a percentage of those being the old $1 price for something that isn't $1.

Yes, but probably fully half of what was listed before was spam, duplicates, or other shady nonsense...so its probably about even.   2095 local cars that paid to be there is quite good, I think.  

The ads only lasting for a week now means 2,095 listings a week, times 52 = 108,940 listings a year! Just in Raleigh! That's a half million dollars and there are 40 cities larger than Raleigh in the US. Wow. If that's an average amount, they might book $22 million just from the top 41 US cities auto listings by owner.

Columbus, which is a good bit bigger than Raleigh, only has 1698 listings right now. So my quick math there doesn't hold up, but it's still a pretty impressive new revenue stream. Good for them, honestly. They've been a boon to people like us looking to buy and sell things without paying the ridiculous rates the newspapers used to charge. I remember paying ~$40 around 1998 to list my Neon for sale, two tiny lines of text with no picture and just my phone number. Amazingly enough, it did sell, but still. It had to cost the newspaper next to nothing to run that ad. Adjusted for inflation, that's over $60. $5 to list a full ad with photos and as much text as I want seems like a bargain.

Put my car up on Craigslist. $2.50 for a wash and $5.00 for a listing, lets see if it was worth it for a <$1000 car.

dculberson said:

The ads only lasting for a week

I was corrected on this shortly after posting. My personal CL selling experience is limited to non-car items. Cars are actually 30 days, so not toooo bad. Depending on the car you'll probably only have to post it once or twice. 

Just sold one of the 3 cars I have listed on CL- got full asking price for it, too.  

I listed two cars this week, will report back with results. $5 isn’t anything in the grand scheme of things.

Powar said:

I just spent the money to list my old C10 on the local CraigsList. I'll report back either way.

Checking back in as promised. The truck sold yesterday to someone who saw it sitting in my front yard with a sign.

Looks like scammers are paying the $5 for their obvious scam listings: https://kansascity.craigslist.org/cto/d/kansas-city-2006-grand-cherokee-delay/6900484989.html

I've noticed more and more popping back up

Not sure if it was already mentioned. That $5 ad is good for 30 days. If you sold one car and have another to sell. Just change your ad for the 1st car you sold to a new car ad. Edit your info and pictures to change everything. It worked for me. 

I spent the $5 and my car sold the same day to someone from CL. (The 2008 Taurus X)

@old_: I wonder how they got that ad posted. I really doubt they’re paying the $5 maybe they hacked the CL system? Maybe they hacked someone’s ad that was already up and change it to their content? Ohh my best guess: credit card fraud. 

So far, two cars sold via CL, total out of pocket $10, total take on the two cars, $3900.

One car didn't sell (the '66 Town and Country) so I relented and put it up on eBay.  

Maybe the scammers are using someone else's (OK, stolen) credit card to pay for the listing? You'd think they won't be that daft to use their own.

Also, keep in mind that even if they pay a few hundred bucks for ads, their return is still pretty stellar even if they only get one person who falls for their tricks.

I'm still debating if I should put my E34 on CL or on FB. At least on the FB apps on phones and tablets I suddenly can't see the description for vehicles anymore, which makes the ad somewhat pointless IMHO.

We've got a flood of these ads now

My default craigslist search is simply "price min 100 max 2019"

This is Pittsburgh, where area codes are 724, 814, and 412

In reply to RevRico :

Ads like that make me weep for humanity.  

In reply to RevRico :

I think I can figure out where she got the $500 down payment...

volvoclearinghouse said:

So far, two cars sold via CL, total out of pocket $10, total take on the two cars, $3900.

One car didn't sell (the '66 Town and Country) so I relented and put it up on eBay.  

 

You should promote that car on "barn finds" .com  It'll get a lot of traffic.

RevRico said:

We've got a flood of these ads now

 

My default craigslist search is simply "price min 100 max 2019"

This is Pittsburgh, where area codes are 724, 814, and 412

It's....unique, but probably not good taste. Looks like they kept them restricted to the dealer section though,

How do those prepaid debit cards you get at the market work ?

Could you use one of those to pay for Craigslist and not use your regular debit card ?

I posted my e30 up about a week after they started the $5 fee. I decided to post the car up on both FB and CL to cast a wider net.

The CL ad won the battle. I sold the car for full asking price in 24 hours, and all 3 major interested parties were from the CL ad. Not one single person on FB was capable of paying and mostly were terrible trade options. I'm still baffled by it.