How to advertise stuff for sale

You have something to sell and you have heard that "Toytown Germany" is a good place to advertise? Well, the way to make an advert is to post to an area called the chat forum.

Note that before posting you must first register an account and then log in to that account.

After registering and logging in, find the correct area of the chat forum. I.e., if you are posting an item for sale then navigate your way to the items for sale forum. If you are posting an item which you wish to give away for free, navigate your way to the items for free section.

Once in the correct area of the chat forum, you should then click the "new topic" button. The button looks like this...

This button is to be found towards the top right-hand side of the window. After clicking this topic, enter your message title, the message body, and then click submit. And Bob's your uncle.

Some further tips

Choose an effective title and subtitle. "Assorted furniture" isn't that great. "Table, four chairs, wardrobe" is much better. Including "for sale" at the end is good because it makes it more obvious to people scanning the "view new posts" list.

Post pictures. If you don't post pictures, you will nearly always get at least three people asking you for pictures. Don't offer to send them by email, just include them in your post. Instructions are here: Uploading pictures to the forum - How? And what to do if your pics are too big Here's an article explaining how even people on internet dating sites get only 1/4 to 1/6 as much response if they don't include a picture (from Steven Levitt's Freakanomics.

Describe your items in intimate detail. If anyone wants to buy it, they'll want to know all about it, and if you post it once you don't have to email it to everyone who asks about it. This is especially important for hi-tech equipment like computers.

Include why you're selling it. If you don't, then suspicious people like me will assume there's something wrong with it that you're not telling us.

For computers: please go to an online computer shop, configure a computer that has all the stuff yours has (including the power supply and keyboard and mouse and monitor!), and then list all those prices added up so that the users have a fair basis for comparison. Otherwise our very tech-savvy crowd will eagerly tell you how your computer is overpriced and why. Don't bait them, they're hungry and bored at work.

Don't forget, if you have installation cds for your software, that's an important plus.

Think of your ad here as if it were an Ebay ad: their tips here!

Don't put your email address in your ad -- spam robots will get it. People can PM you or use the TT Email button which doesn't display your email address.

Close your advert when your things are sold, the job is taken, whatever. Prevents people from asking about it later, calling you, etc. Just post again to your topic with a post which includes the phrase "advert closed". Note that the phrase "advert closed" must be spelt exactly as given here. The capitalisation doesn't matter. "Advert Closed" works just as well as "Advert closed". But writing "Advert now closed" or "Ad closed" will not work.

Following these steps will save you trouble and repeated checking back. People should then only post to the thread or pm or call you if they're really interested in the item. That makes our classifieds more efficient and more useful for buyers and sellers.

This topic isn't closed -- if you have more concrete tips, please post them and I'll condense them into the first post.

The TT Gallery is intended for your personal photos of Munich or around Munich. I.e. photos from TT events, or stuff you've seen in and around Munich.

The TT gallery is not for classified advert photos. Advertising photos should be posted to the advert in the forum topic.

What to do if your pics are too big.

Advertising photos posted to the gallery may be removed without warning!

Incidently, the short form of the word "advert" is "ad". The word "add", although frequently used, is wholly incorrect.

info originally taken from Tips on selling stuff and closing adverts: Include pics, full description, etc... where there are more links.

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