Again, this is what I sent to my clients. It has some pricing on what we are going to charge. I think this will help a lot of people figure out what things may cost with the local tools that you use or if posting by yourself offsets the cost of the postings systems.
Are you ready?
The change is finally here, today is the first day of CraigsList charging for postings in the automotive by dealer section.
You have several choices for posting;
Post one car at a time; build the template, add the car, pay the $5. For this you don't need one of the new accounts with Craigslist, you can post with the old accounts. The only change is that at the end of the process [FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]you need to pay the $5 fee.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]PGI Auto offers a tool that will automate the ad creation and data pushing making the manual process as easy as possible. Our tool is $200/month and you can post as many cars as you want (still have to pay CL the $5 per car).[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]Your second option is [/FONT]to have a posting account with CraigsList.[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif] For this you will need to set up a credit card with them, add your tax ID number, address, etc and buy a bulk group of ads (lets say 100 ads for $500).[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]With this type of account we can semi-automate the process so for $395 PGI Auto will post your inventory and delete the vehicles as they get sold.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]Recommendations:[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]I have seen several companies claim that they can post an ad for $5 and then use that ad as a car gets sold to update the photos and content therefore having a second car advertised without paying another fee to CraigsList.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]I don't know how much money you can save if this is possible (a couple hundred dollars) but at this point in time when CraigsList is identifying who post, how much, etc I wouldn't risk getting my dealership blocked.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]If there is one thing I can tell you about CraigsList is that they will not care that you are blocked, as a matter of fact there will be no one to talk to about it.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]If budget allows, post your new cars too. 100 ads for $500 is cheap. We don't intend to charge more for more ads, your $395 fee covers everything (counting that CL is not IP sensitive anymore).[/FONT]
