Where Do I Post Ad?

[tamara]

I am looking for a rental in sierra county that would serve as art gallery/studio/workspace/living space.

Am I able to post an inquiry for such a rental in Steppin Out?

How?

Thank You
Tamara

[webmaster]

Dear Tamara,

What an excellent question... It took me 20 minutes to even figure out how to answer it. But it's late at night and I'm a bit slow here. I hope you don't mind that I'm also posting it back to the help section of our site so others can read and learn from it.

There are actually several options open to you in terms of where you can post such a request. The best place for such ads is in our classifieds section. But as an individual, you can also post messages about your search in our forums.

But perhaps the most important thing is that I see you are not registered yet. In order to gain access to the capabilities you need, you must be a registered member of our site. The good news is, registration is free and you can do it without our help. More about this later...

First, you're welcome to post messages about your search in our community forums. The T or C Community Forum would probably be the best place to post your request. The only requirement is that you must be a registered user to post in our forums EXCEPT in our help categories. This keeps spammers from filling up our forums with ads for watches, sex toys, typing jobs working for businesses in India, etc. But registration in our site is free. Just look for the "Register" link in the menu that appears at the top of most site pages. If you are not registered you'll find many new features become available to you once you register... and as I said, there's no charge for registration.

We never allow business ads to be posted in our forums as a way to avoid paying for advertising. And normally, we do NOT allow such ads to be posted by individuals either. But in cases like yours we're able to be a little more flexible.

You'll be able to post freely in our forums and most other parts of our site once you're registered. However, please note that in some of our forums your message may not actually be visible to anyone but you and our staff until we review and approve it. We do this to keep spammers from attacking our site in the middle of the night and posting offensive jokes, ads for watches and purses, etc. Believe it or not, this happened to us several times in the first month we were open. In a quick survey, I found three forums that may be appropriate for your message. The first and best is our T or C Community forum. The second and third are in the General Interest Forums section near the bottom of our main forums page. If you register, you'll be able to post in any or all of these forums. However, in the last two categories your message won't appear until we review, edit and approve it first.

After you post your forums message and it has become visible on the site, look in the right hand column on our front page You'll see it's listed in the "Active Threads" section there. Notice that the titles shown in Active Threads are very short (40 characters or so). So, if you post your ad in the forums, keep your title short and sweet. Something like "Need Rental in Sierra County" should work great. This way new visitors can easily see your ad on our front page and just click on its title to read it. It will continue to appear in that section until more recent postings replace it.

Second, we also have a personal ads category (we call it "The Personales") in our classifieds section. In a traditional newspaper, that's where ads like yours would appear. But even there we don't really have a category that's strictly for those "seeking places to rent". The other dilemma is that access to most categories in our personals section was deliberately limited when we setup our personals section so that ONLY registered users can see most of our personal ads. This was done to avoid situations where we feared we might get complaints from parents about their kids reading, "Hot, lonely & sexy gal seeks lonely cowpokes for 1 night stands" ads in our personals section. To make the personals work better for you in this instance, I've changed the visibility rules of our "Desperately Seeking" personals category to make it visible to all visitors -- even unregistered ones. So, everyone who visits our site can now see ads placed in the "Desperately Seeking" category.

The way our classifieds work, ads that include photos get featured randomly on our front page in the classifieds section that appears there. Ads without photos DON'T get featured on the front page at all. So, if you want your ad to get noticed, be sure to post a photo with it!

To attract some attention to that newly visible section, I placed two sample ads there... One for "Room With View Wanted" and one for "Lady Giraffe Seeks Boyfriend". Each ad contains two photos. You'll see them featured now on the front page of our site in our "featured classifieds" section. You'll also see them featured in our classifieds section. Look near the bottom of the main classifieds page. Finally, you'll also see them in "The Personales" section of our Classifieds which appears near the bottom of our main classifieds page.

Our personals are very cheap at only $10 for 2 months. And they will also get printed in our paper edition too. As I said, if your ad also includes a photo, it will be featured on our front page in the classifieds section that appears there. You should see the ads I've place there now.

I hope this helps.

Best Professional Regards,
Greg Platt
WebMaster & Publisher

[webmaster]

One more detail... You asked HOW to post your ad. Here is a step-by-step procedure...

Go to the classifieds section. You'll find a link to it on the sitewide main menu . Look for that on the top left corner of most site pages.
Find the section where you want to post your ad. ("Desperately Seeking" is in 'The Personales' section near the bottom of the page.)
Click the section's title to open it and display the ads inside.
Once you have the section open, click the "Place An Ad" link on the right side of the gray bar near the top of the classifieds page.
Choose the ad type of "Personals"
On the next screen choose the ad category where you want your ad to appear (Desperately Seeking).
On the next screen provide an ad title, a link to a single image, provide the content of your ad, the zip code where you are located and a few keywords you believe others might use to find your ad. Be sure to include a phone number and email address in your ad if appropriate.
When you submit the ad, you will be invited to pay for it using your Paypal account (if you have one). If you do NOT already have a PayPal account, you can either set one up or PayPal provides a way for you to pay by giving your credit card information to PayPal online. Paypal is used every day by thousands of Ebay users. It is by FAR the most popular and reliable credit card payment system on the net.
We're also working on getting our Classifieds changed so you can pay us directly using either a credit card or an electronic check through our electronic shopping cart. But, we're not quite there yet. So, if paying by credit card is not an option for you, you can send us a check to PenGwen Productions, 616 Nicholas, Socorro, NM 87801.

If you encounter any problems placing your ad, just call our help desk at 505-838-0784. We'll be glad to help you.

Please note we do not run accounts receivable for our classifieds. So, your ad will not appear on our site until after we receive your payment.

If you are an individual who is posting a message about your search in one of our forums, go to the Forums section, choose the appropriate community forum and open it by clicking on its name. Inside the forum look for the "New Thread" button and click it. On the next screen you can provide a title and the content of your message. Each forum posting also lets you attach up to 6 photos to the message. WHen you're done entering your ad, just click the submit button near the bottom of the page.

I trust this answers your questions.

Good Luck!

Best Professional Regards,
Greg Platt
WebMaster & Publisher