Not long ago, when a person wanted to sell his own car, he had only a few options. He could place an ad in print classifieds; consign the vehicle to a dealer; sell it to a dealer; or trade it in. All of these options have some value, but one aspect that all area lacking: control.

Selling Your Car but Having Little Control

The dealer-related options have the least amount of control. Vehicle trade-ins have notoriously poor monetary returns. Essentially, you have to take what you are offered-no negotiating allowed. The consignment and sale options also place most of the control in the dealer’s hands.

Print classified ads remained the one, true way for vehicle owners to sell a car and retain some measure of control: the owner could write the ad, place it, and respond to it all by himself.

But even print classified ads were not quite good enough. Print ads typically had to be communicated to a clerk by telephone; ad “runs” took a number of days before they could start; photos were virtually non-existent; and “free” was rarely an option.

Enter Online Vehicle Selling

With the Internet came a healthy auto trading, buying, bartering, and selling industry. Now it was possible for owners to place ads without the intercession of a clerk; post images; see the ad start up in minutes rather than days, and even entertain the idea of having the ad run for free.

Simply put, it was so cheap for the online auto classifieds site to run ads, that the cost-savings got passed onto the auto seller. This was the power of the Web in action.

Q: “How to Sell My Car Online?” A: “Very Carefully…”

Most online vehicle sellers rush headfirst into their ads. They snap a quick photo in the garage, post the ad, and sit back greedily awaiting the rush of buyers.

But the rush never happens. They get a few calls, but the callers are mainly fishing for information. And a few of the buyers sound suspiciously like dealers. What did the online vehicle seller do wrong?

Here are a few possible reasons for the slow sale or even non-sale:

1. The seller mis-categorized the vehicle ad post.
2. The seller did not provide the correct keywords.
3. The seller did not confine the ad to the correct geographical area.

Let’s look at these problems in detail and offer some solutions.

Vehicle Ad in Wrong Category

Some free online classified sites are good about forcing selling into correctly categorizing their vehicles. Not only must a BMW be posted in the BMW section, but correct model numbers and years must be added. Yet other sites leave it up to the seller, and amazingly enough, many sellers post their vehicles in the wrong section.

Wrong Vehicle Keywords

One thing that you need to be aware of if you want to sell your car is that many buyers find your ads from direct searches on the search engines. So, rather than going straight to general classified sites like Craigslist, Oodle, OLX, Backpage, or to auto-specific sites like AutoTrader, the interested car buyers just make a general search on Google for something like “BMW five series for sale oklahoma city.”

Then, those classified and auto sites should come up in the Google listings. But if the vehicle seller hasn’t used correct keywords, the listings will not show up or will show up very low in the rankings. So, think very carefully about the search engine search terms (keywords) that people will use, and try to duplicate this thinking in your ad.

Vehicle Ad Not in Correct Geographical Area

Will a Seattle car buyer purchase a used Audi from a seller in Dallas, Texas? This question is debatable. More and more, car buyers are feeling comfortable with purchase vehicle sight-unseen. But generally, this is not yet the case.

So, confine your ad to no farther than the metro area or about 25 miles from the selling location.

For the do-it-yourselfer, repairing your own vehicle can save you $100. But don’t shell out $20 or $30 for a repair manual that you may only use once. You might be surprised to learn there are several sources where you can get free auto repair manuals.

Repair manuals online:

• One of the first places to try is AutoZone’s website. The site has a very comprehensive free auto repair guides covering most makes and models of vehicles from 1950 to the present.

• Napa auto parts website provides tutorials on basic auto maintenance such as oil changes, checking fluid levels and replacing air filters.

• Automoting.com has tons of information, is very user friendly and as a bonus, even has guides for repairing small engines and household repairs.

Message boards and forums:

Another useful resource is the 2carpros.com website. Here you can post questions and get answers from real mechanics. You can also search through lots of topics on auto repair, troubleshooting, and maintenance.

Edmunds web site also has a pretty good forum called car talk. It is peer based and has quite a few very knowledgeable members on board.

There are quite a few other forums and message boards available online, as well as peer based ones. Just type in auto repair forums or message boards in any search engine and you will see quite a few. Just watch out for ones that say they are free but try to sell you something, or say you can post questions, but must pay a fee to receive an answer. You will most likely find free auto repair guides and all the information that you need, so there is no need to pay for help.

Libraries:

Another often overlooked option for free auto repair manuals is your local library.

Most libraries have repair manuals in their reference sections, and although you can’t check them out and take them with you, you are welcome to make photo copies of any pages you need from the manuals.

A lot of local libraries also subscribe to online auto repair manuals such as Chilton’s or Haynes and offer free access if you have a library card.

Contact your local library and ask if this service is available.

If you really prefer to have a paper manual, check half.com, an eBay company that sells used books for a fraction of the price of new. Some of the manuals as low as $1.99. There are several other used book websites like Alibris books and Bookfinder.com to name a couple.

You can also check local used book stores.

And don’t forget to ask friends and family, who knows, someone may have just the manual you need collecting dust in the garage!