OLX

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We will be heading back home in a few months’ time and as much as I am looking forward to returning home, I dread going through my long list of to-do-items. It is getting so long that it is freaking me out. There are the things that are really urgent and need to be sorted out.  I can’t wait and I want to get started as soon as possible, right away, even when I am stuck on the other side of the globe.

A few days ago I received an email from a lady from OLX asking me whether I am interested in sharing their business with readers of this site.

My first reaction after reading the email was, HOW DID THEY KNOW ?!

I am frantically trying to look for a place to stay when we go back and we need to urgently get a car as my husband’s workplace is tucked in the remotest, most rural corner of the island, away from the buzz, away from civilisation.

And just when I was fretting over these, over how to get things started, I received this email.
It is like an answer to my question, a solution to my problem.

For those who are as ignorant as ME, OLX is a global online classifieds community with more features than old school Craigslist and Ebay.  I was quite surprised to find out that OLX is available in 84 countries and 36 languages and it is based in New York and has offices in Buenos Aires.

Overall, I like their interface as it is simple, clean, uncluttered and user friendly.  I can’t tell you how many times I get turned off by sites that are not.  For the geek in me, I was also glad to find out that they allow rich text posting using their WYSIWYG interface.  What this means is that I can customise my ad like  how I customise my blog.

If you have yet to  renounce social networking sites , OLX allows you to display your listings on your Facebook or Myspace profile, which help to increase exposure for your ad.

And if you are one who surf the internet using phone, OLX allows you to do everything via your phone, from browsing, listing to replying messages to your ads. For me, this may have to wait till the day I own a really smart phone.

Currently, postings on OLX will appear for a maximum of 365 days unless users remove them from listing or mark them as sold. This means that we may be looking at ads that are outdated. Personally I think it will be good to make it mandatory for user to set the duration for the ads to be active like how ebay does for their listing.

OLX claims to have 50 million unique visitors worldwide. But I doubt it has much exposure in Singapore as I think in Singapore, the classified ads in the daily newspapers still command the greatest exposure considering our local habits. It will probably take OLX quite a bit of marketing and publicity to break into the local market.

I must confess though, as a typical housewife, what REALLY attracts me to OLX is that
IT IS TOTALLY FREE !
and they plan to remain so FOREVER !
You don’t even need to register an account with them to start listing!

I remember how I was lured to a local classified site, only to be charged a month later for my listing. I don’t blame them, that’s business.

Having said all these, we are going to try and sell our car here in Paris on this site among others and compare the number of responses we get.

At the end of the day, the invasion of OLX might not be good news for local internet classifieds, as they now face stiffer competition from this global giant. It is a cruel reality but survival of the fittest is a known fact.

As consumers, we shall sit back and reap the benefits of this competition.

For those who are interested in what OLX has to offer, check out their news release here.