IQ Check on Market Ads

There's a few things that are quite regularly seen on market ads, that seriously need an IQ Check.

Things that are tacked on to ads that, if the person thought about it for even one second, they'd slap their forehead (and hopefully knock themselves unconscious *evil grin*) at how wrong, and even downright dumb it makes them look.

Let's run an IQ Check on the most common ones...


1) PM Me

As opposed to what? Exactly what other way would a person respond to an ad? By PMing themself? By logging off? By dropping their pants and doing the Twist to polka music?

Even the bots have to be PMed, so they're not an excuse to use this phrase either.

Worse is the people who post their ad without it, realise they made the ad without it, and make a second message just to say "PM me".

End it, please. For the sake of common sense.


2) Not a Bot

Not as bad as the first, as this is a remnant of a time when people saw more bot ads than actual humans posting on market.

But that's what it is, a remnant. Anyone who's been on market more than 15 minutes knows or asked and found out about #ignore_bots .

The overwhelming majority of people have used this command, since market isn't even usable without it. So every ad they see is from "not a bot".

Kill the redundancy, don't use this anymore.

3) PM me fast

"PM me" was covered in (1) above, this is about that final word... fast, quick, or any other word with similar meaning.

IQ check here: Do you honestly think this is going to make any difference whatsoever in "how fast" people respond to you? Or if they choose to respond at all?

One of the seriously troubled advertisers I watched use this was doing it every 5 minutes for over 3 hours. Obviously it wasn't working... though he should have known that before he even typed the words.

All it does when I see "PM me fast" is make me want to PM the word "fast" to the person. It's honestly the best and only response they deserve. ;)

4) Selling (item) PM me for price (and location)

Yo, bonehead, you had the space to type that, so you had the space to just type the price (and location). Instead of wasting your own and other people's time making them PM you to get that info, post it. People will see you overprice things, and not respond, saving both you and them time.

Is the price negotiable? Just say so. The above just says you're hiding your attempt at greed.

Number of ads I respond to where the price isn't stated in the ad: none. And I'm not the only one. By not giving the price, or at least a ballpark negotiable figure, you've lost quite a few potential buyers. IQ Check: Losing potential customers is a BAD thing. Repeat that as a mantra.