Newspaper classified ad sales might be floundering, but that hasn’t stopped people from buying and selling their junk. The adage “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” couldn’t be truer in the world of cyber classified ads. Every lost ring, found wallet, and free couch has a hidden history. We scoured the OneStart classified ads to find creative sales pitches and the people behind them. Our stuff tells a story.
Bassil’s Boat
Geography graduate student Bassil El-Masri keeps his inflatable boat in a 26-inch TV box in a corner of his apartment. Since the first — and only — time he inflated the boat, he hasn’t been able to fit it in the original box.
“You get something in the store and it’s never the same,” he says about the packaging.
Bassil purchased the boat when he was attending Texas Tech University. He needed to get to the middle of a lake to take water quality samples. But he had a problem.
“I didn’t know how to swim.”
A boat seemed like the logical answer to his problems. He bought the inflatable vessel, two paddles, and a life vest. Then he inflated the boat and slowly paddled out onto the lake. Heading back to land, Bassil passed some boaters who offered him the use of their vessel. From then on, instead of spending time inflating, paddling around in, and deflating his own boat, he just hopped in his borrowed one.
When Bassil moved to Bloomington, the boat moved with him. Now it’s taking up room in his apartment. He posted ads on OneStart and Craigslist, not knowing what to expect.
Sevylor Super Caravelle inflatable boat that has 4 patented Delrin swivel oarlocks and patented motor support chamber. Comes with the DIN chamber and tunnel chambers. Maximum capacity is 1,100 lbs (6 person capacity). The boat comes with 12V motor with electrical charger and 12V battery, 3 paddles, Sevylor super turbo foot pump, and 2 life vests. The Boat is like new, I just used it once.
No bites on the ad.
Bassil has bought a bike and a small bookshelf on OneStart. Most of the ads, he explains, have photos and the items are still in good shape.
For now, Bassil just wants to be a successful seller. He says he doesn’t know what he’ll do if no one takes the boat.
“Maybe Outdoor Adventures,” he says, thinking about his next sales pitch.
Creme brulee and butter chicken
Biology graduate student Sugata Roy Chowdhury wants to make bread, cake, and maybe a creme brulee. She hopes someone can teach her how to transform heavy cream, vanilla bean, sugar, egg yolks, and hot water into the French dessert.
I am looking for someone who can teach me the basics of making bread and other confectionery items. In return, I can pay you or teach you Indian cooking. If interested, please contact me.
Sugata says she saw OneStart classified ads soliciting opportunities to meet new people and learn new skills. An ad for swapping cooking lessons, she says, seemed to fit in.
Butter chicken and a dish of sweet yellow rice are two of the recipes Sugata says she could share with her baking buddy. An amateur chef in her two-bedroom apartment, Sugata taught her roommate — who is from Romania — how to make several Indian dishes.
Sharing recipes and cooking tips, she says, is really just a way to meet new people. That’s why she’s disappointed that no one has replied to her ad. But she hasn’t given up yet. “Maybe one day they will respond.”
Wax off
Lisa Goerner knows “earwax is your friend.” But when she needed to find volunteers for an earwax-removal training exercise, she worried other people wouldn’t share her positive feelings.
Sitting in her office in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, the clinical assistant professor thought about the best way to pitch her unusual classified ad. She decided to put her own twist on a popular advertising slogan.
Got wax? Subjects needed for ear wax removal training. Thursday, March 4 from 1-4 pm at the IMU. No Charge. IU Audiology graduate students will be completing training under supervision.
Lisa turned to Craigslist, OneStart, paper flyers, Facebook, and word of mouth to find waxy volunteers for cerumen (a fancy word for earwax) management training. A group of 22 clinical doctoral students were meeting with licensed audiologists to learn the proper steps for removing earwax. With no advertising budget, Lisa turned to the Web to find participants.
On the day of the training, volunteers met in an Indiana Memorial Union conference room while students learned about irrigation, suction, and mechanical procedures for managing wax. Science, it seems, frowns on jamming a Q-tip in your ear. However, Lisa says, having some wax is good.
An operating room microscope peered into volunteers’ ear canals and a 17-inch monitor displayed the magnified wax.
Many of the 50 or so volunteers were students who participated in the training for class extra credit. The participants, she says, had mixed reactions to the training.
“People were standing, looking at the monitor,” Lisa says. “Some people’s jaws just dropped.”
Lisa says some volunteers attended with the hope that earwax removal would solve hearing problems. Some people had nothing to remove. And one individual had so much wax it took students two hours and all three procedures to remove everything.
This is the first time Lisa called for participants using online classified ads. While she ended up with enough volunteers, she says she was not sure if the ads were a success.
“It was probably the nature of the ad,” she says. “And maybe some fear factor was also involved.”
Choosing a chinchilla
For Jennifer Kissinger, chinchillas and Craigslist go hand-in-hand.
The junior neuroscience student bought her two chinchillas — Elizabeth (as in Queen Elizabeth) and Pantha — from an IU student breeding chinchillas in her off-campus apartment a few years ago. The student didn’t have time to take care of them, Jennifer says. Now she’s facing the same problem. So she decided to go back to online classified ads to find a new home for her furry friends.
I have two wonderful chinchillas who need a home. I am a current IU student and for several reasons I need to find a new person to provide them with a loving
environment and care. I have all the equipment to keep these two critters contained and I will provide the first months food for free.
Although the tiny creatures are relatively cheap to maintain, Jennifer says they need daily play time. The critters are also nocturnal, which means noisy nights.
Elizabeth and Pantha can also do tricks, Jennifer says. “They can climb and do running backflips off the wall.”
Jennifer says she wanted to adopt an animal when she moved to Bloomington. She wanted something unusual, something exotic.
“The best part,” she says, “is that they take dust baths.”
At first, Jennifer was skeptical about how many people would respond to her ad.
However, two people responded to the posting and word of mouth helped the information spread even further. While Jennifer originally paid $350 for the critters and the cage, she says she doesn’t need to profit from the sale.
“I will ask for a price for the cage,” she says, “but I really just want to find them a good home.”
