Why are so few cars advertised on pistonheads?

[rotaryjam]

Bit of a random one, but something I've had in mind for a while..

Whenever I'm looking for a new car, I always find that pistonheads has the least cars available and I almost never favourite any of them. This is in comparison to Autotrader, gumtree, facebook, carandclassic where I find most.

I just seems a shame that a site with such a good car community has so few cars for sale!

I should qualify this by saying I generally look for 90's/00' enthusiast cars which I thought was meant to be the very heart of what pistonheads was about (enthusiast rather than 90's/00's)

Anyone else find the same? I'm curious to understand why

Edited by rotaryjam on Saturday 30th October 08:01

[John Laverick]

Because regardless of what you have for sale you'll get more exposure on ebay/autotrader.

[rotaryjam]

John Laverick said:

Because regardless of what you have for sale you'll get more exposure on ebay/autotrader.

Your raise a good point and on a related note, I seem to recall the one time I advertised a car on pistonheads they offered no indication of how much exposure my ad had, whereas all the others give you things like pageviews, contacts, saves so even if you don't sell the car you get a sense that people have seen it

[InfamousK]

Back in the day it never used to be this bad, I'd spend hours on the classifieds I don't know why it's not as populated as it once was circa 2010ish.

[MDMA .]

Carandclassics is free to advertise a car for 2 months. PH is £29.99 (or an extra £10, depending on car) for 1 month. What would you choose first?

[anonymous-user]

Plus PH want 40 fking quid for the pleasure on a minute audience and zero marketing except to existing members of PH who already know that it exists.

Plus the whole PH classifieds format is woeful.

Any more questions?

[John Laverick]

I've been here long enough that it's free for me to advertise here and I still don't bother.

[EddieFelson]

It used to be free to post an advert. Over time with the fee itself and increases in the fee the adverts have dropped off.

[Xcore]

Turned crap when they started charging for it.

[ghost83]

I’ve been here that long that it’s free for me to post an advert!

And in all fairness I do use it

[2 GKC]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This. It’s hopeless. Can’t beat the AT app

[Pit Pony]

Xcore said:

Turned crap when they started charging for it.

But at least you knew that people actually wanted to sell the vehicles.

There used to be prices thst were clearly an optimistic try on, and not at all realistic.

I did sell 1988 mini mayfair on PH in 2011, and had loads of genuinely desperate people ringing up about it. I priced it very carefully.

[jamieduff1981]

The only good thing about PH classifieds is that the filters better suit petrolheads seeking something specific. It's much too expensive though and as above it's not marketed. To be honest I don't even browse very often because those who advertise on PH often correlate with those who expect premium money for their car because they think they're in a premium market.

For the types of cars I look for though, Autotrader isn't much better to be honest, and both of them are substantially filled with trade adverts where the asking price is inversely proportional to the level of knowledge about the car evident in the advert.

Oh, and trade plates hiding the registration number - I immediately eliminate those from any further consideration. The first thing I do with any potential purchase is an online MOT history check. Hide the plates and you wasted your advertising fees as far as I'm concerned.

[AKA PABS]

Iv advertised in the past on here, but my sales have come through autotrader, suggesting to me that pistonheads lacks penetration. Cars and classics is very good value at the moment and you can dip your toe into the market free of charge. My conclusions are pistonheads penetration per £ isn’t quite adding up.

[blueg33]

Since being a pH member, every car that I have sold, I have sold via ph classifieds. From a Skoda to an Evora.

All sold to the first or second person to view.

I also use it as my first port of call when looking to buy.

Edited by blueg33 on Saturday 30th October 10:01

[sawman]

As a long term resident it is free for me - i have sold 3or 4 cars via ph

[JulietRomeo]

Won’t gain significant traction without a dedicated PH mobile/tablet App ala ebay/AT.

[anonymous-user]

What I find annoying with Pistonheads is that you can scroll through a few pages, click on a car you are interested in then when you go back you end up at page 1 again. I tend to have no idea what is beyond page 3 or 4 as I can't be arsed to keep going back through the pages. As a seller this would really put me off, if your car is a few pages in I suspect many wouldn't ever see it.

[Doofus]

I never use PH classifieds when buying or selling. I find the search really clunky, and cars are often advertised in the wrong categories. As a result, many of the results are irrelevant.

[jimPH]

Useless search function.

I'm surprised any buyers are willing to spend time trawling through such a terrible user interface.

PH classifieds needs a massive overhaul.