Puppies for Sale

So far I have looked at several of the major websites for listing puppies, and they all use the same model.  They tell you,  you can list your puppies for free, but the buyers will have to pay for contact information.  Now who the hell is going to bother with your ad if they have to pay for it?

That is just deceptive and petty business practice.  If you want to pay for insertion you can by becoming a subscribing member, either by the month or in blocks or by the year, whatever.  Unfortunately, they wait to tell you that after you have submitted a listing.

Of course you want to pay for the listing, because the buyers should not and will not pay to view your ad.  If they were at all reputable they would state that it is a paid insertion site right from the beginning, and state their fees even before you sign up for anything.

I have to sell my puppies, and I don't even mind paying for insertion, that is the cost of doing business.  Back in the days of newspaper and magazine publishing you were quoted a price before you submitted the ad based on various factors, all of which they described up front, before you submitted the ad.  They did not say hey yea, we will print the ad, but if you want the reader to see it you will have to pay a subscription fee.  That borders on extortion, though not quite, it is certainly pretty close.

Paying for ad insertion, even paying for ad performance, and such things is the cost of selling, it is to be expected.  What you do not expect, or should not expect is that the people I am listing with will utilize bait and switch tactics to extort a subscription fee from me, and that does not even include any special services like bold titles, which are costed per ad.

It would be better if they charged a per ad insertion fee, plus any extras, and offered discounts for frequency, number of ads submitted at the same time, and premium listing for search ranking.  They should post these cost up front, before you sign up with them, before you submit an ad, and definitely not make buyers pay to see the contact information or details of the ad.  That is just bad business practice.

If I had the time right now I would do it right, build my own listing service, website, mobile app, and integrate it with the social sites and search services.  I know it takes time to build up such things, but doing right is better for everyone.  The cost up front model has worked well for many years, and it instills a level of honesty and integrity that is not present in the model these listing sites use.

To top it all off, they also run ads on their site, so they are making the bulk of their revenue from ads that the buyer and seller are subjected to without their consent, or even interest in their service.

Though I can not fault them for running ads on the site, this is the way with the internet, there is a right way and a wrong way to do that as well.  Specify an area, above the fold, in the right column, above the footer, and run the ads there, not inline, especially for subscribed members.  Their integrity is suspect at best, they feel cheap and very used car salesman like, and I will not subscribe to them.  I will also post this blog, share it to my social network, and though it will have no effect on them at all, I will feel better for it.

Maybe I will build a better website, anyone interested in such a thing, or have you submitted to this model of doing business?  Am I just a dinosaur for thinking that integrity, honesty, and good business practice is still the best course of action.

Peace
JD