When I first came to live in France just over 4 years ago there was a brilliant English small ads section one one of the ex-pat web sites that everyone used to use. It wasn’t that flashy but was dead easy to use and it worked. I bought and sold quite a few things using it and in its own way, it was also a good way to get to know other English speakers and ex-pats in your area.

But its owners were a business and it obviously wasn’t making them any money, so they changed it. With disastrous results – for its users anyway.

The number of users of the new system seems to have dropped dramatically and lots of people have been openly complaining how much more difficult it is to use in their ads, and especially to upload photographs. Certainly, I’ve found that whereas I used to be able to put items up for sale and sometimes sell them in hours, now they don’t sell at all, and when I do try to browse the new system, the photographs in the ads take an age to download and appear on screen.

And ease of use is important, of course, because the great majority of ex-pats are older, mostly retired people who quite frankly aren’t bothered whether a system is flashy or not and just want something that’s easy to use and works for them!

So rather than sit back and feel sorry about things, I decided to do something – and came up with a new FREE small ad system called AngloAds. It hasn’t cost me a penny, just my time, and will remain free just so long as it gets visitors and people make use of it. Here’s a shot of the main screen

And before anyone asks, no, it’s not supported by gimmicks or on-screen advertising. It has nothing like that – the web site is free, just like the system itself.

It’s very like the old system that people used to know and love and is just as easy to use. Except it’s better. Something that the old system lacked was a map showing where the things that were being sold were located and as France is a big country, it wasn’t unusual to find that something that had caught your eye was hundreds of kilometres away, even though it was in, or supposedly close to, your region.

AngloAds has a Google map so you can see instantly if it’s worth finding out if the knick-knack that you fancy is worth going after.

But enough to be going on with. Here’s the link to the web site.

The problem with any new internet idea is publicising it. What would be great would be if anyone reading this could share this My-Trike post and especially the above link. That way the search engines will get to know about it and people searching for an English small ad system will be able to find it, which will be a win-win for everyone. Except for the owners of the new system that people don’t like, of course 😉