Make, model and vehicle details

Fill the vehicle fields in properly and buyers filtering for exactly your car will find it. Leave them empty and your listing is only findable by someone scrolling or typing your words into search, because the filters have nothing to match on.

Start with the VIN if you have it

There is an optional VIN field marked autofills the details. Enter the 17-character VIN and Jinu decodes it and fills in what it can: make, model and year, and often more. It saves typing and it stops the mismatches buyers notice, such as a title saying one model year and the description saying another.

The VIN is also the number a buyer will run a history check against, so including it makes your listing easier to trust.

Make and model

Both are pickers rather than free text. Jinu carries 44 makes and 929 models between them, and the model list is filtered by the make you chose, so picking Toyota gives you Toyota models only.

If yours is not listed, choose Other in either picker and type it. Use that for a rare marque, a kit car, or a model too new or too old to be in the list. The same three lists ship on the website, iPhone and Android, so a listing posted on one is filterable on the others.

Pick from the list wherever you can. A typed Chevy does not match a buyer filtering for Chevrolet.

The rest of the fields

• Year. Feeds the year range filter.
• Mileage. Feeds the maximum mileage filter, and is shown on the listing card, so leaving it out costs you visibility twice.
• Body style, transmission, fuel type, drivetrain. Each is its own filter.
• Doors, cylinders, city and highway mpg, interior color, size. Detail that answers questions before they are asked.
• Features. What it has.
• Clean title. Yes or no. Answer it, and answer it truthfully. Buyers filter on it, and it is the first thing a careful buyer checks against the paperwork.
• Condition. The shared field every category has.

Photographs that sell a vehicle

One is the minimum and ten is the maximum. Worth including: all four corners from outside, the interior from both front doors, the dashboard with the odometer readable, the engine bay, the tires, and honest close-ups of any damage. A listing that shows the dent gets fewer messages and better ones, and it prevents the argument in the parking lot.

Description

Write what the fields cannot: service history, how long you have owned it, why you are selling, what has been replaced recently, and what is wrong with it. Do not put a phone number or an email address in the description. Keep the conversation on Jinu, where messages are screened and blocking works.