Since returning from traveling last year, all my thoughts have been on packing up to leave again. This of course requires money.
Whilst I’m currently working full-time and saving as much as I can, it won’t be enough to sustain my next 9-12 months of travel. So my solution for this lack of funds is to sell some furniture and my car.
Unfortunately, this hasn’t been as simple as it sounds.
The furniture was the easy part. I own a house that is currently being leased fully furnished, and this has been fantastic decision for me. Not needing to remove, sell or store my furniture and knowing that if things go awry, I can move back and live in my house without needing to refurnish is great.
A few weeks ago a new tenant moved into the property. Along with the stress of the previous tenants leaving, the new tenant did not want the refrigerator or sofa bed.
Luckily for me, my parents have a large garage in their backyard where I can store the fridge. But the sofa bed needed to be sold and thankfully this happened quickly. Word of mouth around my work-place along with some quality photos, a very good quality item and a low selling price of $200 had the sofa bed sold within a week.
Luckily the sofa bed sold very quickly.
Selling my car has not gone as smoothly.
Carsales.com.au is a hugely popular website in Australia for car purchases. With a large amount of visitor traffic, both private sellers and dealerships use the site to attract serious buyers.
I have a nice car. Mitsubishi ASX, low kms, fantastic condition, fitted with bluetooth connectivity, reverse parking sensors and airbags galore. I expected that once I put the car up for sale, calls would start coming in immediately.
I have a good car to sell, I just need one person who wants it.
My first stumbling block was the advertising cost. Carsales.com.au charges $65 for a standard advertisement plus an additional $60 to bump the ad to premium. What?!?! $130 for a website ad? Seriously?
After some complaining about the cost I decided to place a standard $65 ad and rate my success at the end of the week.
I had zero enquiries. My standard ad had been buried on page 4 of the search results and was competing with the flood of dealer ads that dominate 75% of the site.
So on Tuesday last week after speaking with a friend of mine about his success with carsales.com.au I bumped the ad to premium. Now appearing on the first page of search results, the only private sale vehicle visible and listed at a competitive price, I had high hopes of receiving a mid-week enquiry. Fast-forward 4 days to the weekend – still nothing. What is going on??
I can see that the ad is receiving views and bumping to premium has improved the traffic. But with continual doubts in my mind, yesterday I reduced the price. I know I am probably being ridiculously impatient. The car has only been up for sale a total of 2 weeks, the first of which it received no views at all.
Now sitting at an extremely good price point and with others telling me that it’s an attractive ad with a fantastic offer, surely over the next week I will start to receive some interest. Right?
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