Section 174. Use the CarAd Listing Tool

174. Use the CarAd Listing Tool

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

172 Use the "Sell Your Vehicle" Checklist

SEE ALSO

173 List Your Vehicle

A lot of money is at stake when you're selling a vehiclemany thousands of dollars. Because of that, you should use every tool you can to sell it and sell it at the best price. As you learned from 173 List Your Vehicle , creating a listing to sell a vehicle can be a tedious , time-consuming process.

To help make your listing go more smoothly, and to create the best-looking auction possible, consider using CarAd, a for-pay service owned by eBay that makes listing your vehicle as easy as filling in a series of forms. The service includes templates and layouts to make your auction as enticing as possible. It costs $9.95 per listing.

1.	Have Your Seller's Checklist Ready You're going to need all the information you normally would gather when selling a vehicle, so prepare your seller's checklist as detailed in 172 Use the "Sell Your Vehicle" Checklist .
2.	Register at CarAd Go to www.carad.com and click the Register Now button. You'll be asked information such as your name , address, and so on. You must also include your eBay ID and password, so if you haven't registered on eBay yet, you must do so before using CarAd. The registration screen also includes some basic information that will be included in your listing, such as the terms of the sale, how you'll accept payment, whether you'll accept escrow payments, shipping information, and so on. You can always change this later, but you'll save time if you enter the information correctly when you register. When you're done, click the Register button and then click Click Here to Continue . The Profile page appears. 174. Use the CarAd Listing Tool
3.	Start the Profile Page CarAd has been designed not only for people selling one vehicle, but for dealers and those who sell multiple vehicles. Because of that, it bases everything on a profile you create. The profile is, in essence, the layout for your auction page, so when you create a profile, you're creating a template for your auctions. The profile includes information such as which layout to use and the terms of the sale, but not individual details about the vehicle you're sellingthat you complete later. Start filling out the Profile page, including information such as shipping, payment methods , and so on. Much of this data is picked up from the registration page, but you have a chance to change it now, so review your information.
4.	Choose Templates and Complete the Profile One of the best features of CarAd is the multiple templates you can use for laying out your auction. To select your favorite template, click the Choose Listing and Photo Layouts link on the Profile page. On the left side of the Choose Your Listing Template page, review the layouts. Click a layout name to see a preview on the right. When you find a layout you want to use, click the Click Here to Select Template link beneath it. TIP If you have your own template or HTML code you want to use in your auction listing, you can do that in CarAd as well. From the list of templates, select User HTML to use your own HTML code in a listing. You then have a choice of several photo templates to use. Each template includes a different number of photos and arrangement of photos on the page. When you find the one you want to use, click the Click Here to Select Template link beneath the template preview. When you're done choosing your templates, complete the rest of the Profile page, including information about any fees and taxes, terms and conditions, and other basic information about your auction. There is also an About Us section you can use to provide more information about youespecially useful if you are a dealer . When you're done, click the Update Profile button at the bottom of the Profile page. NOTE The Showroom Layout section of the profile applies only to dealers, so you don't need to fill it out unless you're a dealer. It lets you include not only the vehicle you're selling on eBay, but also other inventory you have that's available for sale at your showroom but not online.
5.	Add Information About Your Vehicle After you've updated your profile, a mostly blank page appears with a series of icons along the bottom. Click an icon to add information about your vehicle to your auction page. There are icons for adding a car, a motorcycle, or another kind of vehicle (planes, boats, trucks , and so on). Keep in mind that the form is used by dealers as well as individuals, so there are icons that might not be useful to you (such as the Add to Inventory icon). Just ignore the icons you don't need to use. A page appears asking for the vehicle's VIN. Type the VIN to populate the auction with information about your vehicle. Then click Decode VIN . If you don't have a VIN, click Skip Decode instead. (If you don't have a VIN, no data will populate the form for you. You can still create your auction, but you have to enter information manually.) A page appears with the information about the specific car you're planning to sell, including the make and model, the category, what equipment it has, and so onthe same information you would include in a normal auction as detailed in 173 List Your Vehicle . Fill in the required information. (If you entered the VIN, some of this data is already entered.) TIP It's important to include pictures of the vehicle you want to sell. To upload them, use the Photo Management Tool . It lets you choose your pictures and arrange them based on the photo template you chose in step 4.
6.	Review and Post Your Auction Don't post your auction yet; you should first preview it to ensure that it's what you want to appear. In the Listing Preview section of the information page, click the Click Here button to preview your auction page. After you preview it, edit it until you're pleased with it. To post the auction, click Save & Send to eBay . To save the auction for later editing or posting, click Save . To work on the auction at a later date, log back in to CarAd and, from the page that appears, select the auction.