I'm completely new to all of this and usually see things from the other side of the fence, however as a private purchaser it would depend on what I'm looking to buy and what budget I have. You guys will have vastly more experience than me but as an example, i wanted a mini, so looked mainly at the mini cherished website, I did look at autotrader too but the actually car I found was mini direct. I also searched for mini specialists I found the best cars were usually in the dealer network and were not always advertised on autotrader. bangers, in the past 5 years I've had 4, all have come via eBay in the form of classified adds, all were less than £600 and were in the good days of having tax and mot. Gumtree was the other source for cheapies. Our Audi TT came from pistonheads as I found that this kind of car was more common on there, it was a private sale too. Currently I'm toying with the idea of a mk1 focus rs, for this I will search eBay, pistonheads and owners forums. There are plenty of mk2 rs's on autotrader but very few mk1's. how do you guys find the other advertising streams ? I can honestly say that I have searched Motors probably once in my lifetime.