The Irish Mitsubishi FTO Owners Club

I see that DONEDEAL has increased it's ad fee's to €5 for motor ads etc http://help.donedeal.ie/info/advertising-fees.
It is now €5 to place an ad in what I would consider the most lucrative revenue sections of the site. Pity really as I dont see why some ad's should cost more than others on there. I think it is a sign of the sucess of their site.

and here is the justification for the increase http://newsletter.donedeal.ie/t/ViewEma ... 6BEB5F1DD6

i think it's fair enough. €5 is nothing to get that many views. People can vote with their feet if they think they can find something better for less money.

Hopefully they spend the money monitoring the ads with stupid descriptions to manipulate the primitive search function.
To be fair to them, they're always fast to respond to reported ads, and I sold my Shogun in no time after advertising it, and had heaps of calls after it was sold seeing was it still available.

I also bought my Jag off donedeal too, If I was selling a car, €5 as opposed to €3 wouldn't put me off.

Not surprised by that move at all. While their justification is logical, but I don't believe that’s the reason they're doing it. Yes, cheaper items shouldn't cost the same as a high value item, BUT, I fully believe they are doing it to cash in on the success of their motor section. And it to be fair, I can't blame them. As Colm said, if they have the price point wrong, people will vote with their feet, as such.

It’s also clever in that it takes advantage of the fact a lot of people (myself included) refresh their ads regularly enough. And even with placing an ad 3/4 times, it’s still way cheaper than Carzone, and more productive.

One thing they do need to tighten is the ad descriptions. It’s ridiculous at the moment. I remember once searching for a DC5, 3 pages of results had 2 actual DC5’s! Although if they did tighted up on this, people wouldn't need to keep bumping up their DC5's to get up in the searches, ahead of other well know Jap sports cars like Bora's, Fiesta's, Crysler's, and E220's, so maybe they'll be cutting their revenue stream? (Just searched again, all theses appear on first page for "DC5")

TopCat wrote:I fully believe they are doing it to cash in on the success of their motor section. And it to be fair, I can't blame them.

Neither can I, its a good commercial move in terms of generating additional cash flow. They've established themselves as one (if not the) most popular online advertising firms in the country, this affords them a good deal of autonomy with respect to their pricing model now that they're established. The market will dictate if their prices are too high although I assume they did their research in terms analysing the risk associated with increasing costs to the consumer.

The company is run and owned by a husband and wife team, if I was in their shoes, I'd be looking to ramp up cashflow and then look for expressions of interest in terms of a buyout from the likes of (Auto) Trader Media Group and eBay (Gumtree). Ireland is a small market for online advertising and theres a limit to Donedeals growth pattern - unless they look to expand to the UK and further afield. If I were in their shoes, I'd be looking to get out in the next 2 years max.

I think its a mistake to complicate the pricing.

If their reasoning for changing the price was to facilitate people selling buggies etc then drop the price on this type of item but keep car pricing the same.

They have just left themselves open for some other competitor to come into the marketplace and take over the cheap ads car market - saw it before with cbg and carzone when they got greedy.

Does this mean that its another €5 to bump up an Ad? If so I can see this revenue stream taking a tumble and I'm pretty sure its a very large slice of their market.

Myfeckin FTO wrote:I think its a mistake to complicate the pricing.

If their reasoning for changing the price was to facilitate people selling buggies etc then drop the price on this type of item but keep car pricing the same.

They have just left themselves open for some other competitor to come into the marketplace and take over the cheap ads car market - saw it before with cbg and carzone when they got greedy.

Does this mean that its another €5 to bump up an Ad? If so I can see this revenue stream taking a tumble and I'm pretty sure its a very large slice of their market.

This was my thinking also, why not simply drop the pricing and leave motor section at €3. And yes they have even changed the "BUMP AD" to €5,
I predict a lot less "bumping of ad's in the future. Would it no be reasonable to have a reduced rate for the bump given they already have €5 for your original ad.

Of 190,517 adds on DOnedeal at 12am tonight, exactly 96,585 are in the motor (€5) section.

They will lose in the bump ad for sure. I would bump ad far less frequently, if at all at that price and for such a BS excuse too. Who writes in to complain that it's too expensive to advertise a buggy? Smell of sh1te is awful there. Shame on you DoneDeal