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To my mind, the problem that the RAC faces is not one of volume of cars advertised, but of brand. Whilst I accept that the RAC is a well known 'household brand', it is not known for advertising cars for sale. Whilst a high number of vehicles listed for sale will undoubtedly help its organic Google rankings, it would need to spend millions on TV advertising over (at least) a 3 year period to enter the public's consciousness. Just look at what motors.co.uk has spent. That said, Auto Trader's biggest enemy is itself - it has a lethal combination of complacency and greed. Its business model surely relies on people ONLY looking at the Auto Trader website for their next car. As the number of cars advertised by Auto Trader starts to fall and the number advertised by their competitors increase, more and more consumers will look at other sites to find the car they want. I firmly believe that only a small number of customers would look only on the Auto Trader website for their next car. I know if I am looking to make a major purchase, be it a fridge or a house, I would not look only at Curry's or the Rightmove website. So the task in hand for any competitor to Auto Trader is that of awareness.

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, but have you more experienced traders got any advice with regards to sale or return vehicles. We have sold a couple for friends and we have had some come back. Obviously we cannot sell them as a sold as seen sale but if we marketed them on behalf of a private customer, got the private customer to issue a receipt but we were responsible for the marketing and insurance for test drives could we cover ourselves enough ? Any monies paid would go direct into the customers account and we would charge them a set fee upon completion of sale. thanks steve

Auto Trader recorded £133.1 million operating profit from £255.9m turnover in the 12 months to March 29.That's 52%. If that doesn't make you choke on your Hobnobs, I don't know what will.

Hi Steve, I'm currently on holiday but happy to share on email once I get back Jim

For payment of the appropriate diagnostic fee, I hope?

Hi Jim, thanks for the reply, so regardless of whether it's your stock or not you are liable for it. As it stands we have had someone contact regarding an Audi a1 that they would like to sell, they don't want to have issues with insurance and test drives etc which we can understand. We would charge them a fee for this + vat. They would set the sales price and be paid direct by the actual purchaser. But if we are still liable for the car then what we are charging for the service potentially wouldn't cover the problems further down the line. In this instance i wonder if it's actuall worth going ahead with ? We have never retailed an Audi a1 so it was a chance to do this with little financial liability. if you could email a copy of the contract you use that would be very much appreciated. steve

I advertise my vans on Ebay and do quite well from it and it cost's a fraction of the price of AT but I never engage in an email conversation with someone who emails me after ten o'clock at night because in my experience these people have just come in from the pub after having a few and by the time they read the email in the morning they've forgotten what they did the night before, so all I do is simply reply Thanks for your inquiry please call me on (my phone number) to discuss, that way it filters out the serious customers from the time wasters. Another tip is don't let your advert auto renew end it yourself leave it an hour or so then relist it and it appears in the search results as newly listed. Another thing I do quite often is Use the Headline " 1 Week only WAS (price) NOW ONLY (price) SAVE (saving) and it creates the urgency. These tips are simple to do but I find quite effective. Hope this advice works for you all.

I'll be keeping an eye on your sites now :-)