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Newsgroups, the World-Wide-Web, e-mail, CU-SeeMe, IRC, ... -- with such a long list of available services, in which should I advertise? As an individual, you effectively have three choices. In order of preference, the newsgroups, the World-Wide-Web, and e-mail all offer ways of helping you sell your unwanted merchandise.
The misc.forsale.* newsgroups, and the hundreds of specialty groups which accept advertising, are tailored to the individual trying to buy or sell.
Several ad servers on the Web will accept your advertisement for free, or for a nominal charge.
A number of specialized-topic mailing lists are available which accept advertising similar to the specialized newsgroups. These generally have smaller audiences, but those audiences are much more focused on the topic than in the typical newsgroup.
With some 26 generalized for-sale newsgroups for individuals, a dozen generalized groups for commercial entities, hundreds of specialized groups which accept ads, and scores of local for-sale newsgroups, the most daunting task ahead of you is choosing which newsgroup(s) to post to. If you choose wisely, you may well find a buyer for your items. Choose poorly, and you may receive large quantities of hate mail, or 3 a.m. telephone calls from unhappy netizens.
To make group selection easy, we have compiled an indexed list of many Usenet, Biznet, and Altnet newsgroups which accept a reasonable amount of advertising. Each listing provides details about what kinds of merchandise and services can be posted there. The listings for all misc.forsale.* and biz.marketplace.* groups are comprehensive. The listings for other specialized *.marketplace groups and other topical groups have been researched, but are not guaranteed. You should read these groups for a few days in order to understand how they work before you post. For that matter, you may want to follow the misc.forsale.* and biz.marketplace.* groups for a little while before posting as well. Invariably, the experience you gain from seeing what is and is not effective in others' ads will help you when writing yours.
The rule of thumb is to crosspost to one misc.forsale.* group, to one specialized group if a specialized group exists, and to the group of local for-sale newsgroups in your "circle of influence".
This system will allow you to reach all of your audience while maximizing the value of these newsgroups to the readers. Crossposting to too many newsgroups, or making your subject too broad (like mixing Macintosh and PC items in one article) leads to reader confusion, and will cause most people to ignore your ad. The misc.forsale.* newsgroups in particular have been specifically designed to eliminate crossposting--please don't counter this by posting to multiple misc.forsale.* groups.
If your web browser is set up properly and supports news, all you need do to post your ad is click on a highlighted newsgroup from the group lists in the section on The Advertising Newgroups. Read some of the articles in that group for examples, then you can write your ad and post it from there.
On another note, if you do choose to post the same ad to more than one newsgroup, then please learn to crosspost properly. Crossposting will send your article only once, but it will still appear for everyone who reads any of the desired groups. Multiple posts of the same ad will send multiple articles, wasting bandwidth and disk space. Because we want to discourage posting to multiple newsgroups (except in certain cases in the specialized newsgroups), you will need to seek help locally for information on how to crosspost.
Also, if any local *.forsale groups exist for your area, you may choose to post there as well. Try not to post to local groups for other areas. People in Houston, Texas don't want to see your ad in houston.forsale if you live in California or France. If you live in Houston, and post to tamu.forsale (for Texas A&M University, 2 hours away), then it's debateably appropriate. If you are willing to drive your merchandise there on very short notice, then go for it. If your job takes you there less frequently than every three weeks, then don't post to that group. You can recognize local newsgroups from the group name. If it doesn't start with one of the following, then it's probably a local group: misc, alt, biz, soc, rec, news, bio, sci, comp, clari.
Be careful about some of the local newsgroup names. A group name like phoenix.forsale may seem like it would be for Phoenix, Arizona. It's not; the phoenix newsgroups are for an Internet Service Provider in Houston, Texas. Likewise for ca.*, which is California, not Canada (can.*). You need to ask your system administrator what local groups you have access to before you post.
Often, a poster will have items for sale which belong in different groups. If you want your ad to catch readers' interest, and if you actually want to sell all of your items, then please tailor your posts to the target newsgroup. A printer will be ignored by readers in misc.forsale.non-computer, and will cause most people to skip the rest of your ad, regardless of the remaining contents. Also, PC users hate to sort through a mash of Macintosh, Apple II, Commodore 64, and workstation equipment in order to find what they are looking for. Again, most readers will look for an ad with better organization and ignore yours. If you have a myriad of items, target the appropriate audiences with separate posts to separate groups.
We recommend that you don't. In this case, your audience would be best served by a separate article to each of the three groups. Post an ad for your bicycle in the specialized bicycle group, a different ad for your movie in its specialized group, and an ad which combines both items in misc.forsale.non-computer.
If you aren't willing to ship your item overseas, please try to limit the distribution of your article with a Distribution: header at the top. Some posting software will ask you for a distribution automatically. Typical limited distributions include usa for the United States, fr for France, de for Germany; postal abbreviations for states like in, tx, ca, ny; and the first few letters of local newsgroup names for schools and cities like purdue for Purdue University and houston for Houston, TX. Please ask your system administrator for information on what local distributions affect your area. For more information on including distribution headers, please read How to cancel articles and limit distribution in Part VI.
Finally, once your item has sold, please cancel your article. This simple, easy gesture will save the time of thousands of people who won't have to read your article anymore. It will also save you from having to respond to messages from people who don't know your item has sold. In many newsreaders, you can cancel an article by pressing a capital "C" while reading the article. However, this varies from site to site. For more information, again read How to cancel articles and limit distribution in Part VI.
Because of the time and expense involved in developing a good web presence, one might expect that individuals would not be able to use this method of advertising very effectively. Quite the opposite is the case. Many newspapers and other groups have set up classified-ad servers on the World-Wide-Web. In many cases, ads are free for individuals.
Yahoo has a nice index of classified-ad servers. When writing your ad, we recommend you follow the same guidelines as in previous sections -- it is a tried and true way of getting the best response. Be sure to read and follow the on-line tips provided by these organizations; they may have additional requirements.
Also, if you have a long, long list of items like compact discs, or a particularly expensive item like a house or car that you expect may take some time to sell, then an HTML-proficient individual may want to make a small web page to list his offerings in detail. This allows you to put a picture of your offering in your ad -- something you can't (or at least shouldn't) do in newsgroups or by e-mail. Then, you can write a much shorter ad for the newsgroups which mentions the highlights of your offering, and include a pointer to your web page.
This form of advertising is severely limited for both individuals and commercial entities. Much like telephone solicitation, a lot of people don't want to be bothered by junk mail, particularly since newsgroups and the Web serve the advertising purpose so well. But, a few opportunities for you to advertise by e-mail are still available.
Much like specialized newsgroups, topical mailing lists serve much smaller, much more dedicated followings than newsgroups. Not all accept advertising; you'll have to find out which ones do on your own. To find out more, check out the list of available mailing lists at tile.net
They exist, but beware. Some of these lists may be legitimate, but in our opinion, some of them continue to use unethical tactics to acquire their audience. Often, they grab random names from certain newsgroups and automatically subscribe people who never asked. This kind of activity is highly unethical on the Internet, and if you use an unethical service, you may receive the brunt of the hate mail. If you choose to go this route, make sure you find out through impartial channels how they obtained their list of readers.
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