How to create a pet ad that actually gets attention

You wrote the listing, you posted it, and then nothing. It happens to good animals from good homes all the time, and it is almost never about the animal.

A listing has about two seconds to earn a tap. Here is what to spend those two seconds on.

Your photo is the listing

People scroll a grid of photos and tap the ones they can see properly. The words come second, and for a lot of buyers the words never come at all.

Three things fix most photos, and you already own the equipment:

• Get down to their eye level. A photo taken from standing height shows the top of an animal's head and a lot of floor. Kneel, or put the phone on the ground.
• Use daylight, not the ceiling light. Near a window, blinds open, flash off. Indoor lighting turns white fur yellow and green feathers grey.
• One animal per photo. A shot of the whole litter is lovely and tells a buyer nothing about the one they would be taking home.

On the free plan you get one photo per listing, so it has to be the right one. Take fifteen and pick the best. It costs you five minutes.

Write the first line like somebody asked you a question

The title and the first line are what people read before deciding. Most listings waste both.

This tells a buyer nothing:

Puppies for sale. Ready soon. Serious enquiries only.

This answers half their questions already:

Four Pomeranian puppies, ready to go August 30. Raised in the kitchen with two kids and a cat, so they are used to noise.

The second one is not better writing. It is just more specific. Specific is what makes somebody feel like they are talking to a real person instead of an advert.

Answer the questions before they get asked

You already know what people ask you, because they ask you the same things every time. Put the answers in the listing and you will get fewer messages, but far more of them from people who actually want the animal.

For almost anything, cover these:

• Age, or date of birth, or date of hatch.
• What it weighs now, and roughly what it will weigh grown.
• What it is eating at the moment, and how often.
• Anything a vet has done, and anything a vet still needs to do.
• What comes with it. Cage, tank, paperwork, food it is already used to.
• Why you are rehoming it, if you are. People are far more comfortable with an honest reason than with no reason.

Then add the ones specific to what you keep. A bird buyer wants to know hand fed or parent raised. A snake buyer wants the last shed and whether it is feeding reliably. A goat buyer wants to know whether she has kidded before.

Fill in every field, even the ones that feel obvious

This is the one that costs people the most and gets noticed the least.

Buyers do not scroll the whole site. They narrow it down first, by category, breed, city or state, size, gender and price. If you leave a field blank, you are not at the bottom of that search. You are not in it.

It takes about a minute. It is the highest paid minute in the whole process.

Put the price on it

Writing message me for price feels like it starts a conversation. Mostly it ends one. People filtering by price never see the listing, and people who do see it assume the number is bad news.

If you are not sure what to ask, look at what similar animals near you are listed at, pick a number, and say whether there is any movement in it. A price with a reason attached is much easier to hold than a price on its own.

Reply quickly, and keep it in the messages

The first person to reply usually gets the sale. Not the cheapest one, and not the best written listing. The first one.

Keep the conversation in PetListings messages rather than moving straight to a phone number. It keeps the whole thread in one place if anything goes wrong later, and anybody pushing hard to move you off the site before you have even agreed anything is telling you something useful about themselves.

If it goes quiet, change one thing at a time

Your listing shows you a view count, and that number tells you which problem you have.

• Plenty of views, no messages. People are seeing it and deciding against it. That is the photo or the missing detail. Change the photo first.
• Barely any views. People are not finding it at all. That is the title and the empty filter fields. Go back and fill them in.

Change one thing, then give it a few days before changing anything else. If you change four things at once and it works, you have learned nothing you can use on the next one.