Chapter 8. Going Shopping
As part of its quest to be the only Web site you’ll ever need to visit, Facebook offers its very own online classified ads: Facebook Marketplace. The Marketplace ads you can see depend on the networks you belong to. And—unlike the classifieds in your local paper or ads on Craigslist.org—you can use Facebook to learn about the person who placed the ad before you contact him. As you’ll see in this chapter, you can use Facebook Marketplace to buy or sell just about anything.
Note
Marketplace is a relatively new Facebook feature, so it’s not quite the seller-packed, go-to shopping haunt that Craigslist is—yet. (Some pundits predict it never will be.) What it is spectacularly useful for is facilitating local sales: those Chihuahua puppies you want to get rid of, those textbooks gathering dust in the corner, that on-campus job you want to fill. Anything of special interest to your friends or fellow network members is a prime candidate for Marketplace.
The Facebook Marketplace
Facebook’s Marketplace is a built-in Facebook application (Facebook Applications: An Overview) that lets you post and answer want ads. You can use Marketplace to advertise that you want to rent a house or sell a sofa—anything you’re either looking for or looking to get rid of.
Because you get to choose which networks to advertise in when you place a Marketplace ad (Facebook calls them listings), the ads you see are ones you’re most likely to want to respond to. In other words, if you browse through all the Marketplace ads associated with the San Francisco network, you won’t see ads for garage sales in New York.
Note
Marketplace doesn’t accept ads for illegal or distasteful stuff like illegal drugs, explosives, or hate-group paraphernalia. You can see the list of banned items by heading to the Applications menu, clicking Marketplace, clicking the Help link that appears on the Marketplace Home page, and then clicking the “here” link in “Click here to view the Marketplace guidelines.” (You get a chance to peruse the guidelines when you create a listing—see Want Ads.)
The Friend Filter: Ads from Network Connections
Thanks to the social networking information it tracks (who’s friends with whom), Facebook takes the concept of personal ads a step further than your average classifieds section or even the uber-popular free listing site Craigslist.org. On Facebook Marketplace you can:
Search through just your friends’ listings. Given a choice, most people would rather do business with friends than strangers. Facebook gives you two ways of doing just that: the Marketplace page’s My Friends’ Listings link (Answering an Ad), and the Marketplace section of your friends’ profile pages (Creating Your Profile).
Feel out a seller by seeing the friends you have in common. Sure, the “roommate wanted” ad sounds good, but before you contact the guy, wouldn’t it be nice to contact a couple of mutual friends and find out what he’s really like? (Answering an Ad.)
Tip
Because its strength is putting a friendly face on ads, Facebook Marketplace is a great place to post ads you wouldn’t want to put in the newspaper; for example, “Wanted: Help Moving” or “Wanted: Someone to feed my parrot while I’m on vacation.”
Cost: Free, Risk: Yours
For now, Marketplace is fee free: There’s no charge for placing a regular ad or answering one. (But you can pay for special attention-getting placement of your ads; see Want Ads.) When you answer an ad, it’s your responsibility to contact the seller and work out payment arrangements—Facebook isn’t involved. So be careful: If you pay someone for his beer stein collection but he takes the money and runs, Facebook won’t help get your money back.
Placing an Ad
How you place an ad depends on whether you’re listing something you have and want to sell, rent, or otherwise get rid of, or something you want. This section shows you how to do both.
Getting Rid of Something
To place an ad for something you want to sell, rent, or give away:
On the Applications menu, click Marketplace.
On the Marketplace Home page that appears, click the “Add a new listing” button. Up pops the Marketplace Listing page.
Select the category that best describes what you have to offer. Your options are For Sale, Housing, Jobs, Free Stuff, and Other. When you click one of those categories, you’ll see subcategories pop up. (For example, if you click For Sale, you’ll see the subcategories Books, Furniture, Tickets, Electronics, Cars, and Other.) If you’re not sure what kind of listing belongs in a certain category or subcategory, click the “sample” link for an example. Keep clicking, narrowing down your item until a listing form appears with fields for the name of your item, a description, and other details.
Fill out the listing form, and then click Create Listing. The fields you see depend on what you’re listing. For example, you don’t see a price field if you’re listing Free Stuff, and you don’t see Hours or Compensation unless you’re listing a job.
Note
Privacy-wise, Facebook doesn’t treat Marketplace listings the same way it treats your profile information. If you’ve blocked certain Facebook members from sending you messages (see Fighting Back), they can still contact you by responding to your listing. Bottom line? Assume everybody on the Internet can see your Marketplace listing and be careful about including sensitive info such as your phone number or home address.
There are five fields that you want to pay particular attention to (they appear on every listing form):
Profile. Leave this checkbox turned on unless you don’t want your listing displayed on your profile page (say you’re a 300-pound bodybuilder selling a Barbie doll collection). Leaving this checkbox turned on doesn’t compromise your profile information; people who can’t otherwise see your profile information still won’t be able to see it.
Tip
One good reason for leaving the profile checkbox turned on: impulse buying. Someone who found your profile because you share an affinity for ice hockey may well be interested in the skates you have for sale—even if he wasn’t officially in the market for skates and so never would have found your listing in the Marketplace.
List Where. Facebook automatically selects all the networks you belong to. If you don’t want your ad to run in a particular network, turn off the checkbox next to it. In most cases, you want to run your listing in all the networks you belong to, to improve your chances of selling your item. (The number after the network’s name is the number of network members.)
Privacy. If what you’re selling isn’t tied to a specific network—you’re not selling a textbook used only in your school, for example—you want to keep this checkbox turned on.
Photos. Pictures help sell stuff, so add at least one if you can. (Facebook lets you add several.)
Note
If you don’t add a picture, people will see the generic placeholder graphic Facebook gives you and probably assume your stuff is in such bad shape you’re ashamed to show it.
Marketplace Guidelines. Okay, technically, this isn’t a field—it’s a link. Click it if you have any questions about Facebook’s policies for accepting ads. In a nutshell, you have to own the stuff you’re trying to sell; you can’t hawk illegal, hazardous, or otherwise unsavory items; and you can’t sue Facebook if you buy a lemon. Read through the guidelines at least once just so you know what you’re agreeing to when you click that Create Listing button.
Decide how (or if) you want to call extra attention to your listing. After you click Create Listing, Facebook adds your listing to the Marketplace, and anyone in any of the networks you chose (and outside of those networks, too, if you left the Privacy checkbox shown Getting Rid of Something turned on) can view your listing.
In addition, Facebook displays a “Promote your listing with a Facebook ad” link. Clicking it lets you drive traffic to your listing either by creating a social ad (think display ad that’s targeted to a specific group of Facebook members) or a Page (a special kind of profile for bands, celebrities, businesses, and nonprofits). Check out Chapter 13 for the scoop on both of these options.
Want Ads
Here’s how to place an ad for an item, job, or situation that you’d like to find (like rideshare or a roommate):
In the Applications menu, click Marketplace.
On the Marketplace Home page that appears, click the “List what you want” button. Up pops the Marketplace Wanted page.
Select the category that best describes what you’re looking for. Your choices are Item Wanted, Housing Wanted, Looking for Work, and Other Wanted. When you click one of those categories, you’ll see subcategories pop up. Keep clicking the appropriate subcategories until a form appears with fields for the name of what you’re looking for, a description, and other details.
Follow steps 4–5 Getting Rid of Something. The rest of the process is identical to placing an ad for something you want to get rid of.
Changing Your Ad
You place a Marketplace ad and then it hits you: You forgot to add an important detail. No problem! Facebook makes it easy to:
See your own listing. To see a listing you’ve created, in the Applications menu, click Marketplace; then, on the Marketplace Home page, click My Listings. To see all the details of a listing, scroll down the My Listings page and click the listing’s name.
Edit your listing. You can change your ad any time: On the My Listings page (click Marketplace in the Applications menu, and then click the My Listings link), scroll down to the ad you want to change and click Edit. On the Edit Listing page that appears, make your changes, and then click the Update Listing button when you’re done.
Delete your listing. To delete your ad, on the My Listings page (click Marketplace in the Applications menu, and then click the My Listings link), scroll down to the ad you want to delete and click Remove. Then, in the confirmation box that appears, turn on either the Yes radio button (if you’re removing the ad because you sold the item) or the No radio button (if you’re deleting the ad for some other reason), and then click Remove.
Finding Stuff
Facebook gives you several ways to find what you’re looking for in the Market place. From the Marketplace Home page (get there by heading to the Applications menu and clicking Marketplace), you can:
Browse listings by network. Facebook assumes you want to see listings associated with your primary network, but you can see the listings for additional networks by clicking the Other tab. In the box that appears, type the name of a city or network, and then click Browse Network.
Browse listings by category. There’s no point in seeing ads for homes for sale if you need a job. To see all the job listings associated with a network, click the Jobs link; to see all the free-to-good-home listings, click the Free Stuff link; and so on.
Search for an item within a category. To search a category, in the Search field, type the item you’re looking for (such as “kitten” or “duplex”), and then choose a category (such as For Sale or Housing) from the drop-down menu. Depending on the category you choose, you see additional subcategories, along with boxes you can use to narrow your search by entering minimum and maximum prices and condition.
See ads your friends have placed. On the Marketplace Home page, click the My Friends’ Listings link.
Note
Facebook encourages its members to be their brothers’ keepers. If you run across an ad that rubs you the wrong way—whether it’s for Nazi memorabilia or is just in the wrong category—click the Report link that appears next to every listing to send the Facebook team a heads-up.
Answering an Ad
For privacy reasons, Marketplace listings rarely include direct contact info, such as a phone number. Instead, you answer an ad by sending a Facebook message. Here’s how:
From the Marketplace Home page (to get there, click Marketplace in the Applications menu), click the name of the listing you want to respond to. Facebook displays the full ad, complete with pictures (if the person who placed it supplied pictures).
Do a quick reality check. See how many times this ad has been viewed (the number is below the poster’s name), which gives you an idea of whether the item is still available. Then click the name of the person who listed the ad; this sends you to his profile, which you can browse to get a feel for whether you want to conduct business with this person.
To answer the ad, click the “Send a Message to [Name]” link. Then fill out the Subject and Message fields and click Send.
