Although most headlines these days are geared towards the topic of the big “R” word, most purvey the impacts of the downturn on businesses. Given the fact that for the first time in history, online sales outstripped high street retail sales over the Christmas period in 2008, this clearly shows an attitude change in not only the way people are shopping for their goods, but also how they go about finding more information on their purchases.

This is all good news for the consumer based on the fact that it means as a whole, consumers are getting wiser with their money. Ironically though, the average consumer on a regular basis would have their own items to sell, yet make decisions to advertise them in costly print media. If armed with the right information, would the average man or woman try and sell their, used sofa for example, in a local paper when they could open up their target market across an entire country or even the world?

Let’s base this on a time saving mechanism alone, realistically, it would take several days to have the item listed and printed in a local paper, but to put it online would take several minutes. For potential customers to find the sofa, they would then need to buy the paper, and then flick to the relevant page. Online, search engines will show this within seconds as the typical consumer will type in exactly what they want. Targeted marketing? Technically, yes!

Many classified ads based papers have suffered significant decreases in sales and readership and this is again based on the fact that the consumer is getting wiser to their own form of marketing. Another direct correlation between online sales and high street retail sales.

There are a lot of classified ads websites out there, but the consumer has to make sure they find the right websites to use as some charge, however, many are free. Any time a website is looking to charge someone for their services, there has to be a distinct benefit for doing so, traffic plays a major part in this as it clearly increases your potential audience.

If the decision is to pay for an advert, it also makes sense to find other websites who will offer the same services free of charge as this way you are getting more for your money, and again, the more potential customers to see your ad, the more likely you will sell your item.

MySell.ie is one of the newest and most rapidly growing free classified ads websites on the internet: http://www.mysell.ie