BEFORE You Sell A Car....
How To Write A Classified Ad!

Click here to start at the beginning of this section on how to sell a used car for more money.

If your car is looking pretty tired and beat then you might want to wait until after you clean it up before you set its final selling price and place your ads.

The reason is that you might be amazed to see how great it looks AFTER you do a thorough clean up. I've had many used cars that never looked their best until it was time to sell them!

I've been pleasantly shocked to see how great a car can look after I've done just half of what I tell you here. If I had placed my classified ads before I got it ready then I know I would have lost hundreds of dollars because I would have priced it too low.

Some people put "best offer" in their ads after the price. I think its a waste of valuable space.

When you sell a car, there is nothing complicated or mysterious about writing a classfied ad that pulls. Find out in advance how many spaces and/or lines you're allowed for a given price from the publication you plan on advertising in.

Lets look at the actual process of writing an effective ad.

This example is for a publication that allows thirty four spaces per line and four lines per ad.

This is how I started out. I put it all in and then modified it to fit:

83 Nissan Stanza. Runs great! Four door hatchback. Automatic transmission. Everything on it works great! Clean in & out! Current registration. New tires. Many new parts. All maintenance records. Priced way below low Blue Book! Only $850.00 867-5309

Now lets make it fit the four line 34 spaces per line ad:

83 Nissan Runs great! 4 dr Auto. Clean in & out! New tires & reg. Many new parts. Have all records. A steal at only $850 867-5309

Lets take that same ad and make it work for a paid two line 26 spaces per line ad:

83 Nissan Runs great! 4 dr Super clean! $850 867-5309

Sometimes its worth it to spend the extra few bucks and pay for a three line ad because you can say so much more.

If you're going to sell a car and are placing your ad in a publication with millions of classified ads that all look the same, then you might want to do something to make it stand out from the crowd.

Some publications offer you to put your ad in a box or to frame it. If what you're going to advertise in doesn't offer that then you could just make your ad much bigger than the rest of the ads.

If there's room left over then feel free to be as descriptive as possible with your ad.

When you sell a car, you want to make things as easy as possible for the potential buyers of your car so they don't look somewhere else.

You could even mention in your used car ad that you have a vehicle history report. Doing that is one more way of streamlining the process and getting a potential buyer to act NOW by buying your car right away instead of wasting your time by having "to think about it" and then going off and buying a car elsewhere.

Only put the mileage of your car in your ad if its a positive. Obviously low mileage is a positive - so blab about that in your ad.

NEXT: Where to advertise when you want to sell a car.