Writing an Effective Classified Ad

Include a picture if possible. It draws attention to your ad and it is worth 1,000 words.
Write a good title description that will draw the attention of the potential purchasers and the search engines. Our website is Search Engine friendly. Write your title using the terms you think a person searching the search engines would use.
Don’t shout. Don’t use all upper case letters (All caps). IT IS DIFFICULT TO READ TEXT THAT IS ALL IN UPPER CASE AND IT IS IRRITATING.
State a price. If your price is high for the item explain why it is worth it. If it is low price explain why buyers shouldn’t be wary of your item (i.e. moving out of city).
Use our map feature. Make it easy for the buyer to meet with you to pick up the item. Be flexible and try and work around their schedule rather than yours. Consider using our map and driving directions feature.
If you’re selling a well know brand use the brand name in your title and in the body of the ad.
Use a simple, easy to read layout for your post.
Effective use of white space: Many ads are cluttered with text. This detracts from the post. A simple, short post with an artistic use of white space will draw attention to your ad.
Bolding and highlighting key text will make your ad stand out from the crowd.
Don't use abbreviations. Abbreviations arose in print ads because people were charged by the column inch. Abbreviations saved them money. We recommend that you do not use abbreviations in your Found-4U ads. Abbreviations familiar to you may be meaningless to a potential buyer. This may lose you a sale.

Use good English.

Nothing is more annoying and harder to read than an ad that is rife with spelling errors and atrocious grammar. Write your ad in a word processing program and use the spell checker before cutting and pasting into your ad. Alternatively, use the spell checker that is built into your browser to spell check the text you write for your ad.

Here are our Top 10 English usage tips:

Affect and Effect:

This page will not affect you. Not “effect”.

This page will not have any effect. Not “affect”.

This page will effect change. Not “affect”.

Then and Than – Then pertains to time. Than is for comparisons:

Google is better than Yahoo. Not “then”.

If Yahoo fails then Google rules. Not “than”.

Its and It’s - “Its” is a possessive. "It’s" a contraction of “It is”;

What is its title? Not “it’s”.

It’s time to go. Not “its”.

Their - It is their car. (not “there” and not “they’re”)

They’re – This is a contraction of “They are” Don’t use “there” or “their”.

You’re – This is a contraction of “You are”. Don’t use “your”.

Too – This means also. Don’t use “to”.

Irregardless – There is no such word. Use “regardless”.

Ad and Add – “Ad” is short for advertisement. “Add” means to calculate the sum of a string of numbers.

**It’s alright to end a sentence with a preposition .... sometimes.** Winston Churchill illustrated this best when he said, "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."