The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Buying or Selling a car on the Net

Toiletcake

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
11%
Nov 4, 2007
118
13
Through the years I have always counted on the web to list and sell my cars when I am ready to move to the next purchase. Sometimes the experiance is a quick and easy one and other times it can be difficult. So here are a few questions that I have been thinking about. I would appreciate some opinions on the topic..

What features/services would benefit the buyer/seller to expedite the experience?

How can this process be made better?

What are sites like these lacking?

1. Cars.com
2. Ebaymotors
3. Autotrader

Steve
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Toiletcake

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
11%
Nov 4, 2007
118
13
I feel that the big sites like autotrader and cars.com cover all these criteria already. I am looking for functions that would make an individual choose one website over another. Is market exposure to traffic the main factor when shopping for a place to put your car for sale?
 

Luke12321

Bronze Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
31%
Jul 27, 2007
662
206
North Carolina
Trust factor was a key for me. I located my car on autotrader.com but found what seemed to be a much better deal in on Ebay.com Autotrader the car was closer....I could drive and see it, test drive it, ect. I bought the car (He said I was the first one to even look at it!) I had done my research and got a good deal on the car. The better deal? It was on ebay.com but in Cali (I am in NC). I could never buy a car without test driving it, especially without any kind of warranty which mine did not include (private seller). Overall, my experience went great and I got a great deal on my car which I still have to this day!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

ositaability

PARKED
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
0% - New User
Jan 10, 2012
15
0
PORT HARCOURT
The best solution would be a site that has the ability to do the following four things:

- target local markets (like Craigslist)
- provide trust and protection models (like eBay)
- provide specific value-added auto services (like cars.com, autotrader.com)
- provide access to a large networked base of users (like all the sites you listed)

I actually have a lot of experience in these types of online markets; feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions...

my country just started having sites like craiglist of recent and i want to replicate what u guys are doing over there on cars.com ebay and the rest....please can i get some of ur tip, cos i think i ve got an idea on establishing in the virgin markets now.
 

GDevDir

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
23%
Nov 9, 2011
84
19
UK
i personally feel this is already an over saturated market, and looking for another car myself i have to take daily trips to ebay, gumtree, autotrader, carandclassic, pistonheads and ALL of the related modes I'm interested in's forums, clicking on each of their ****ing filters to search for cars... whats worse is I'm open to about 5 brands of cars and 8 different models... so 8 separate searches on every site is a real time killer...

its not that these sites "lack" anything, its the fact that the car I'm after could be on ANY one of them... (if not all of them!)

instead of jumping in the already full pool, why not make a site that takes listings from ALL of the above mentioned websites and allows you to filter results based on what your looking for, (please allow more than 1 search filter!)... even allowing users to sign up and "add" cars they are interested in and notifying them by email when a new car pops up they may be interested in, giving them a tailored search with results of all cars they are looking for, and links to the respective sites...

could then obviously allow people to advertise their cars for sale on your website, undercutting all of the above, assuming the website catches on of course.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

GDevDir

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
23%
Nov 9, 2011
84
19
UK
I feel that the big sites like autotrader and cars.com cover all these criteria already. I am looking for functions that would make an individual choose one website over another. Is market exposure to traffic the main factor when shopping for a place to put your car for sale?

exposure is by far the biggest thing in my books when i goto sell a car and one of the reasons i also post my adds on driftworks.com, not "exactly2 my target audience, but threads get ALOT of views and most users there have, or want a 2nd car. I've always found ebay to be the best place to sell my car, pistonheads next, then autotrader, gumtree barely gets any interest.
 

FastNAwesome

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
117%
May 23, 2011
1,116
1,301
Personally, I think for most people the "trust" factor is the largest component. If there were better protection models for large online purchases, all these sites would be making a *lot* more money.

By this, do you mean there are actually people who go ahead any buy cars unseen? Protection for them?

Or protection in sense that ads need to be more genuine, so that what you see will likely be what you get when you visit a seller?
 

awesom-o

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
45%
Aug 10, 2011
138
62
United Kingdom
I have brought two cars on autotrader recently and the one thing which pissed me off majorly while searching was this. So you enter your postcode/zipcode,distance,,make/model,price all good so far. Then once the list shows up it only shows the cars distance in miles away from your post code. No map or even area is shown!! Plus the miles is measured in the physical distance not via roads so often a car 30 miles away can be 1-2 hours drive! The other thing was the amount of times I called up to find the car had been sold ages ago even though it was still listed on the site. This was much to the sellers surprise. I feel the search parameters are average at best there are better sites out there in terms of user friendless but autotrader has by far the most traffic and adverts.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

yahdmon

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
42%
May 3, 2012
373
158
I live in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Carsguru.com satisfies my need of late as I shop for a Mercedes Ml350 or ML500.

I have brought two cars on autotrader recently and the one thing which pissed me off majorly while searching was this. So you enter your postcode/zipcode,distance,,make/model,price all good so far. Then once the list shows up it only shows the cars distance in miles away from your post code. No map or even area is shown!! Plus the miles is measured in the physical distance not via roads so often a car 30 miles away can be 1-2 hours drive! The other thing was the amount of times I called up to find the car had been sold ages ago even though it was still listed on the site. This was much to the sellers surprise. I feel the search parameters are average at best there are better sites out there in terms of user friendless but autotrader has by far the most traffic and adverts.

I like that they compare the market price with the listed price and tell you if it is a good deal or not. You can choose to search by this criteria, "Best Value", also and I like that. I will continue to use them and yes, Autotrader got this market cornered I think. They make the profit and the spend it in ads. I have never seen another car selling site (dealers not included) being advertised on national television.

Yes, there is room for improvement... with more advanced features like click to call or something like that. The user does not have to show their phone numbers, just click a button and the system rings them and puts both person in contact. They technology is available.
 

Ikke

Bronze Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Jul 20, 2012
226
218
Netherlands
I have bought a car abroad through ebay and payed with paypal last month. Only did it cause i knew i could get it back if it was a ringer.
Bit offI even got a pretty decent exchange rate from paypal, saving me about €500
 

awesom-o

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
45%
Aug 10, 2011
138
62
United Kingdom
I like that they compare the market price with the listed price and tell you if it is a good deal or not.

Interesting... the US version must have more features. Here in the UK there is no such thing as price comparison far as I'm aware.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top