How to Start Selling on OLX

Do you need an additional source of targeted traffic for your services or products, or do you simply want to get your first orders before developing a full-fledged website? OLX is a great choice. For many Google search queries, this platform even ranks in the top two positions in the search results for specific queries. It’s easier to get your first reviews for the rating system here than on most marketplaces. And most importantly, the advertising services available on the platform are quite affordable.

Safety on OLX

Be sure to start by reviewing the safety guidelines so that scammers don’t ruin your experience— Safety on OLX. This applies not only to buyers—read carefully; sellers often fall for various phishing scams, but they should avoid them.

Choose a phone number for the platform where you’ll be registering your profile—the device must be locked (set a password on your phone/tablet/computer). There may be issues if you use the same phone for multiple profiles—if you’re going to manage multiple accounts, do so responsibly (use different passwords, keep contacts separate between accounts, different names, descriptions, and links to the website in your business profile). It’s advisable to have a lock on your number that prevents SIM card replacement without the owner’s passport (you can now also protect your SIM card via the “Diyu” app), because scammers will try to call you from three different numbers and wait for you to redial those three numbers—that way, when they restore the SIM card with your number, they’ll be able to provide the last three numbers you called.

There’s clearly no need to remind you to use a strong, unique password (I’m sure you already have a way to remember it or keep it safe—or I’ll write about that next time). When you register an account for someone else—they’ll receive a code (usually via Viber, not SMS)—for all other initial account setup steps, it’s not necessary for the manager who’ll be answering calls at that number to be involved.

When registering an account with your email address, it’s a good idea to enable two-factor authentication, and definitely don’t use the same password for OLX and your email. You can also log in (or sign up) to a personal account using your Google account or Facebook profile—it’s secure and, most importantly, faster, but in that case, managing and maintaining such a profile—which isn’t strictly for business—(or delegating it to a manager) won’t be as convenient as using a username and password.

OLX Profile Settings

In the dashboard, we’re interested in the Profile tab. Enter your real name or business name, the nearest neighborhood, and your phone number. If you’re logged in with a linked social media account, your photo may be automatically imported here—just save it and go to the Settings section.

There are many tabs in Settings; we’re interested in the following:

• Edit Contact Information – Here you can disable the display of photos from your social media profile (if you linked it previously), check your location and business name (don’t turn off autocomplete—if you’ve filled everything out correctly, it helps)
• Logo and Banner – You must upload a logo (this makes your profile more visible); the banner is optional, but if used correctly—with a call to action (text on the image) or a status image—ads with paid promotion will be more noticeable and effective. Attention! You won’t be able to upload the logo in the Ukrainian-language interface—this bug still hasn’t been fixed—so switch to the Russian-language interface, upload the logo (it usually scales your square image correctly (depending on your browser, you may encounter difficulties—in that case, save a copy of the logo and use a photo editor, such as Paint 3D, to resize it). The banner is very narrow ( 1180×180 px)—try to use the space effectively.
• We can skip the others for now.

The OLX Delivery section—if you offer this service (or even if you don’t, since it’s required in certain categories to prevent fraud)—make sure to set it up properly. Providing high-quality service through this delivery method encourages more positive reviews, and consequently, your profile will grow more effectively.

We won’t touch the business page settings for now; we’ll come back to them after the advertising service has been paid for.

It’s important to take into account and “count”

Let’s start by talking about businesses that sell a lot of products and want to list them on the platform—don’t rush to buy large ad packages, since they’re only valid for 30 days after purchase. A very common mistake is buying a package for 7,500 items but only managing to use 2,000–3,000 of them within a month. Listings posted from a listing package are also valid for 30 days from the moment they’re posted, but this doesn’t mean that if your package expires in 2 days, the listing posted at the end of that period will only be active on OLX for a couple of days—from the moment it’s published, the listing will remain active for its full 30 days. If you want to allocate a specific monthly budget for the platform, it’s better to simply top up your account, which makes it more convenient (so you don’t have to enter your card details or confirm via Google Pay every time) to quickly pay for advertising services or listings, or to purchase smaller batches of packages for a large number of items. The bottom line: don’t chase savings of 50 kopecks per ad just because of the quantity in a package—choose a package with a moderate number of ads that you’ll have time to work on thoroughly.

Not counting the option to post one ad for free in certain categories (there are non-commercial sections where the options are more extensive, but they’re unlikely to be relevant to us)—the platform’s pricing for posting ads consists of a fee for posting the ad itself and a fee for promoting it (and both can vary). If you ask, “How much does it cost to advertise my product in this section?” and you’re told that the listing fee is, say, 99 UAH, and that promoting it to the top for a month costs 749 UAH—this doesn’t mean you need to multiply 749 by the number of listings you need; it means that the platform itself, excluding the work of the person who posts your listing (free if you do it yourself), charges 99 UAH for placing an ad in the category shown in the example for 30 days, plus 749 UAH for the specific “Top” advertising service for 30 days — so, in this case, you need to multiply the number of items you want to list and advertise by 848 UAH.

Keep an eye on the deadlines—if you’re interested in the offer of 99 UAH to post an ad in the category shown in the example and the opportunity to get a significant discount by placing your ad in the TOP for 30 days for 749 UAH (since placing it in the TOP for a week over the course of a month would end up being significantly more expensive) and you decide to post the ad now but pay for the 30-day TOP placement in two weeks—it will only remain in the TOP for two weeks, because the placement period is only 30 days —this means that for an ad in this category, you’ll need to pay an additional 99 UAH (the category price from the example) when the placement period expires so that it remains published and to extend those two weeks in the TOP section from the previous month that you’ve already paid for. These are the rules of math, the calendar, and OLX. At the same time, for posting in the new month—if you’re not doing it yourself but a manager is managing your profile and posting the ad—they’ll charge their own, albeit small, fee for posting in the new month; for you, it’s simply a matter of “Repost,” but for them (if they’re a serious professional), it involves reviewing and improving the description text, and possibly changing the photos—it’s a full-fledged job.

One more note about purchasing ad packages: When you buy an ad package, you’re ordering it for a specific GEO, and you won’t be able to change it. There is a universal ad package available, but it costs so much more that it’s better to simply place ads in the regions you need without purchasing a package. Don’t be tempted by small savings—it’s better to buy a few more ads than to purchase a large number of placements in a non-target region or in a region where there’s already more than enough ads.

Sales Strategy on OLX

Please note that the review-based rating system is currently in effect—try to provide services or sell products in a way that makes people want to leave you a good review on their own. But don’t hesitate to gently remind customers to leave a review—it will help other buyers make their decision. Even if your product is high-quality but not particularly attractive or is used—it may still perfectly meet buyers’ needs—so encourage them to write reviews. Here’s how to protect yourself from negative reviews: ask the customer in your correspondence, “Are you satisfied with your purchase? If so, please leave a review. If you have any comments, please let us know so we can address any issues within our control.”

The recommendation system (additional suggestions next to a listing) works properly when you have at least 5 listings in a specific category. It’s simpler with products—you can have 5 or more—but with services, consider whether you have something to offer in a category that’s important to you. Four listings per category would be enough, but based on experience with constant rotation and the ability to add eye-catching featured photos, this number of listings per category works most effectively—because those who want to place an order will call right away, the more indecisive ones will message you, and the rest can be directed to YOUR other listings rather than your competitors’ listings in that category.

How to effectively place this minimum of 5 ads in a single category so you don’t overpay and get the most out of them:

First, write your first ad—try to analyze the search suggestions for your target query on OLX itself ahead of time—which categories are most commonly listed for the queries you’re interested in. Look at effective headlines in those categories—feel free to come up with your own if nothing inspires you, but don’t cram everything into a single headline or include unrelated services. It’s clear you want to attract every potential customer, but the strength lies in a narrow focus and solving a specific customer problem (like it or not—you can’t get away with just one ad, because it looks like trying to hit a fleeing deer with the last bullet from a rusty rifle — don’t try to cram everything you do into a single ad—I’ll say this again because people don’t listen; they’ll try everything that doesn’t work and then proudly announce that I was right when I gave my recommendations). We’ve settled on the headline—the main “meat” of the message goes at the beginning of an already short 70-character headline, and we include the solution to the problem or the main focus (promotion, bonus, packaging, delivery, service, warranty—depending on the context).

Choosing a category—pay close attention! Based on the title you entered, OLX will try to recommend 1–3 categories, and often these aren’t even the right ones for you. From the previous paragraph, you’ve identified your target categories—choose the one with the most activity. It’s simpler with products—everything is clear—but services sometimes have two options. Be careful not to make a mistake if you’re doing this yourself rather than delegating the task to a listing manager, because once the ad is published, you won’t be able to change its category. You might think that you can simply delete the ad and create as many new ones as you want—there’s some truth to that, but there’s another pitfall here, and I’ll highlight it in a separate paragraph below—because this is something you can’t afford to overlook.

The number of views on a listing directly affects its visibility (i.e., its ranking)—so never delete old listings; let them remain in the “Listings—Inactive” section, but when you have new information to add to that ad in a specific section, you’ll publish it with a view count already on the counter—for example, 10,720 views. Even visually, this will look better than a listing with 16 views, which will drop to zero anyway once the OLX algorithm detects that you personally refreshed the page that many times without even logging out (they’ve been fighting against fake views for a long time, but they respect honest metrics).

Fill out the description in the following order: repeat the title in the first line, but feel free to tweak the ending slightly. Add a high-quality, informative description, and don’t forget to include the keyword or keywords a sufficient number of times throughout the text, but avoid over-spamming (you can always supplement the ad with useful, topic-related content—Q&As that your customers value, ways to use what you’re offering in the ad, etc.). Encourage users to call or chat at the beginning and end—whatever works best for you (don’t include your phone number here—if not the algorithms, then a moderator will remove it, and you’ll end up with a poorly written ad from the same “hunter” who’s trying every trick in the book but failing to bag the deer). Double line breaks (Enter-Enter) aren’t allowed—when saved, they’ll become a single blank line; try to use them to separate paragraphs of text, but when adding text to the available space in your ad, include a translation in another language below—insert a space or some character to prevent the text from merging, followed by another line break—this will create more space between the languages and make it more pleasant to read. For example, an ad in Ukrainian with a Russian translation below (after all, people here are still used to the idea that search results in Ukrainian are of poor quality or irrelevant, so they search in Russian, and Google doesn’t want to improve its results in Cyrillic languages— and do you remember how well OLX shows up in Google search?).

We don’t enable auto-renewal—it’s better to manage it manually, as it will only disrupt the posting order in certain categories where free posting is available, and you’ll then have to keep a closer eye on the dates for ads.
There may be additional options and subcategories here—depending on the main category—so choose carefully and avoid overdoing it: there’s no need to check every single subcategory if the service doesn’t fall under them—it won’t do much good. Check that the location, name, phone number, and email address are correct. Go back to the description you spent so much time crafting, select the entire text—you can use Ctrl+A—and copy it —you can use Ctrl+C—and only then click “Publish” at the bottom. Sometimes OLX glitches: if something gets stuck and the page refreshes, you’ll see a message saying, “Please fill everything out again…”

Here’s something interesting:

For a listing (unless it’s the first free ad for certain categories), OLX will ask you to pay for the placement – It’s not just a random ad package they’re offering you—and we don’t just need any ad package; we need the Premium package—we’ll take a minimum of 3 ads (smaller packages aren’t available). You can’t activate this feature with individual ads—only with a package, and specifically the Premium package. The difference lies in the activation of the “Updated Business Page” feature. A standard ad package will also include a business page, but without the perks—very important perks. And with the logo ad in the advanced version, people will be able to click through to your business profile (this is a link to it on the internet), and the banner at the top will be attractive (if you add one), and at least 5 ads (which will appear below your ad in this package—as I mentioned above) to make the profile look professional, along with contact information, a map, and the holy of holies—the business profile description with a link to your main website.

You need to optimize the business profile description for SEO—you can try doing it yourself; sometimes business owners manage to write something meaningful without overdoing the keywords, but it’s better to add a good, detailed description here that will help the page rank higher in search results on its own. Don’t worry about formatting and indentation here—they’ll be compressed anyway—but this description (at least the top part) will appear next to your ads (on the right on desktop, lower on mobile devices)—and effective text there (business-oriented, highlighting experience and expertise, status, and business capabilities)—can significantly boost behavioral factors by building trust with potential customers. Put some thought into it—don’t just slap something together.

Also, in the settings, when editing your business page, be sure to enter the address of your company’s personal page on the olx.ua domain—this is a subdomain, and it is this subdomain that can be used as a mini-site to boost links—this intermediary subdomain can collect links and effectively boost your main business website, which is specified in the corresponding field. Therefore, even if you’re boosting it with links from profiles or other low-cost methods, try to choose relevant websites so that the traffic from them is relevant and passes that same quality on to your site.

We don’t need to spend money on all 5 ads in the Premium package—the savings come from choosing the 3-ad package, while the other two will be standard ads—they’ll be automatically included in the recommendations alongside the main ones anyway, so just make sure to fill them out thoroughly, as described above. If your business operates in more than one category, create 5 listings for each category, with at least 3 of them in the Premium package (the others will be pulled up and suggested—that’s fine, but you need at least 3 full-fledged listings). Whether there are 50 or 500 products in a category (if your business is niche)—to unlock all the benefits of a business page, you’ll need at least one package with 3 Premium listings to have a fully functional business page and access other account perks. Because you could list as many as 5,000 items without the minimum Premium package and still miss out on the features that OLX offers at a very reasonable price.

That was just the post; next came the ad…

Boosting listings is an expensive and largely ineffective practice. You can play around with it, but the return on investment has to be good enough to justify boosting them frequently at the price OLX charges. What’s more, the ad feed on OLX hasn’t been chronological for a long time (it’s no longer first-come, first-served based on who posted or boosted their ad most recently). It’s ranked based on ad views, reviews, and the Premium package… Of course, they left a barely noticeable button—so you can see who’s recently posted something—but nobody uses it; there’s no chronological feed —forget about bumping posts (there are rarely cases where bumping has yielded anything other than traffic from bots, which only increase the view count, but those aren’t real users—they don’t write or call).

7-day and 30-day plans—it stands to reason that the weekly plan is more expensive than the monthly budget plan, there are categories where the price is steep for both options—but it’s always worth going with the 30-day plan if it’s not a one-time sale, such as an old water heater…

VIP ads are a pointless feature—they haven’t fixed it and don’t plan to. The funny thing is that it makes you the “king” of search results on the desktop version of OLX, showing you on the OLX homepage (but few people just browse the homepage of this classifieds site aimlessly —everyone knows which category they’re interested in), and in the mobile version, no one will see you at all, even though you’re supposed to be above the top listings—but there’s no ad space there, despite the fact that 90% of users access the site on mobile… it’s just so-so.

Advertising packages: “Easy Start” isn’t about building a sustainable business; “Turbo Sale” includes 7 days of VIP ad status out of its 30-day publication period, with the drawbacks I described above, so the best option is to focus solely on the “Fast Sale” package—but it only offers 7 days at the top—and the three ad boosts included seem like a good bonus for the price, though you already know that ad boosts on OLX don’t really mean much, so they’re of little use (unless you need to rack up more views from bots and scrapers searching for something that interests them, or if you’re really worried about low view counts during the first week). Bottom line: Bundles aren’t our friends—as professionals, we purchase services separately.

Therefore, you should uncheck the “Quick Sale” package (selected by default) and choose “TOP for 30 Days” (manually change the switch below from 7 to 30). Add it to your cart and pay for the listing and advertising. Tips: Set up a separate card (a virtual online card—for example, with PrivatBank—it’s free and safer to use on sites like this). Entering your card details every time takes a long time, and saving them in your browser isn’t very secure; authorization through PrivatBank is time-consuming, so either add your card to Google Pay—payments will take just a few clicks, and confirmation there is simple or even unnecessary— if you’re using a trusted device, or top up your account with a reasonable amount in your OLX dashboard so you can quickly pay for ads—or have a manager you’ve assigned to run the profile handle it for you.

We place this type of ad in the TOP for 30 days for 1 listing, or a maximum of 2–3 listings per group (and even then, only if there’s a promotion for the ad, or if you truly have three key services or products where your business excels or has a good profit margin). There’s no need to put all 5 ads in the TOP—the point is that they’ll be so spread out across the search results in their category that searchers will find them on almost every screen—but if you push them all into the TOP, it’s more expensive, and in highly competitive categories, they’ll get fewer impressions; whereas in less crowded categories (or when users search for specific queries), they’ll be visible even without being in the top positions. In an extreme case—if you notice that one of your ads, even without being in the TOP, is starting to stand out in the stats with a headline or photo that’s different from the others—then you need to boost it even more by putting it in the TOP.

There are sometimes promotions on OLX, but they’re either for some unpopular category, or the discount applies only to advertising services—meaning the actual ad placement will be charged at full price. Discounts are nice, but they encourage you to spend more on advertising than you planned in your strategy. Don’t stray from your strategy—it’s better to advertise a little bit all year long than to make a big splash and disappear after two months.

Other features on OLX

That’s a whole other story—it might be too early for that right now, but you should know that these options exist—use Google Ads—specifically, advertising on the Display Network (the Display Network includes forums, blogs, and websites that host Google ads)—displaying ads on OLX, across all sections at once for your offer is possible; you just need to set up the ads and exclude irrelevant sites—but depending on what you’re offering, you’ll need to think it through, and most importantly, know that this feature exists.

There are banner ads on OLX—you can brand the entire site with your ad; it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, but it’s more important to carefully consider the message you want to convey through the banner to the audience that will see it—there are some clumsy solutions where a potential customer simply doesn’t understand why they need the information they’ve seen… You need a partnership between a designer and a marketer, because a designer working without a marketer will create something beautiful but completely impractical.

Blog posts on OLX—you can actually publish your own article on OLX’s blog for free; what’s more, people actually read it! But writing something truly interesting is quite a challenge… Think about how you could showcase your expertise or help your target audience solve a problem, so that they’ll actually want to share this content.

I’ll add a little more here a bit later…

Good to Know

If a listing has one photo, it appears larger, more attractive, and clearer; if a listing has two or more photos (up to a maximum of eight), they will be slightly smaller, with a gallery slider below them—so sometimes less is better than more.

You cannot upload videos.
You can’t include a phone number in the ad text (sometimes you end up with awkward formatting where the number is separated by — and even if it’s not automatically filtered out, a moderator will still clean it up, and a partial number will just look sloppy). It’s better to include the phone number in the main photo or pique the buyer’s interest so that they’ll want to tap the phone icon and open your contact information themselves.
You cannot post links to websites (there is one exception: you can specify just the domain of your business website without the protocol, and anyone using a computer will be able to copy it and open it in a new tab, but the link itself will not be clickable, though it will still be useful as a brand mention for PR campaign purposes).
It’s best not to add emojis—sometimes something gets missed, and then the ad glitches so badly that it’s better to leave them out. The same goes for special characters. But no one is stopping you from adding standard symbols—like minus signs, equal signs, and exclamation points—with a space in between. Be creative.

Moderators don’t like text overlays on photos, but if they’re concise or relevant—sometimes even including a phone number on the main photo—they’ll let it slide (especially for paid listings with ads, rather than free or ad-free listings posted just to boost numbers). You can use a colored background under the phone number in the photo to make it easier to read—a simple version of Paint will be enough for this design solution.

It’s best not to change the titles of listings that are performing well—not only in OLX search but also those that have already been indexed by Google—so that OLX keeps the same page URL for the listing (otherwise, it will rewrite and regenerate it) You can even boost it with links (the simplest, low-cost option that won’t cost you anything—share the listing page on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter (X.com)). This applies to a stable list of services or goods—but if you’re selling used parts or appliances and listing a specific model temporarily, then it’s better to find cheaper links and direct them specifically to your OLX business page, rather than to the individual listing – They can be inexpensive, but preferably anchor links (with text in the link), and definitely not from China or India; OLX won’t mind, and it won’t hurt them either – When promoting your own business website, you can’t just post anything; that’s only for classifieds boards.

There’s a lot of product importing going on here—I wouldn’t recommend it. Create listings using the method described above, and they’ll drive targeted traffic and orders. Uploading the same descriptions to yet another platform, though, is a bit of a mixed bag. And if that export file is from your own site, then you’ve essentially stolen the content you wrote for your site and handed it over to a fairly popular classifieds site to promote, thereby undermining your own site…

Some people see their view counts go up because of a low price—when they list the price of the most basic service or product in their ad. But then the customer gets disappointed when they find out that it’s just for a “little something” and not the whole product—don’t do that. Be honest about the price, or even use a strategy of offering the most comprehensive package to stand out from competitors on price — these will work better in your favor than a mini-scam right off the bat.

Product listings that people have bookmarked—when the price drops not by a small amount, but by a significant amount—trigger notifications for those interested in those products. With services—especially high-priced ones—such price games won’t come across as credible, unless, of course, it’s a cheap, mass-market service. Try to avoid discounts, because offering them suggests that you have nothing to offer the buyer besides the price.

OLX is an experience that can be applied to other classifieds sites, including niche (thematic) ones—practice here.

What You Can Order on Site 4 biz UA

• Create a square icon from your logo
• Order a banner from a designer (just write to us — we’ll assign a designer based on your project)
• Create a profile for you using your contact information (fill out the SEO description for the business profile, set everything up) – standard hourly rate; this task takes approximately 30 minutes if you can already provide all the business information in a file, and longer if I need to gather all the details from you to present your business effectively online.
• Posting individual listings for goods or services (basic photo editing for listings, writing effective listings and posting them, managing advertising features in your account using a prepaid budget) — monitoring and processing orders is your responsibility or that of your manager.
• Boost your key OLX profile pages with links (Just don’t edit the ad titles, so OLX doesn’t rewrite the ad’s HTML address.)
• Consultation on OLX, other classifieds sites, marketplaces, or related internet marketing topics.

Why Should Businesses List on OLX?

1. A wide audience

• OLX has a huge number of active users who regularly search for products and services. This provides access to a broad base of potential customers.

2. The ability to test the market

• The platform allows you to test demand for new products or services without significant marketing expenses.

3. Availability and low cost

• Posting classified ads is often cheaper than running ads on social media or search engines. Free or low-cost packages are available for many categories.

4. Direct communication with customers

• Through the OLX chat or phone calls, you can communicate directly with customers, clarify order details, or provide advice.

5. Local reference

• OLX is popular among local shoppers, making it ideal for businesses focused on local sales or services.

6. Ease of use

• The platform’s interface lets you quickly create listings, and convenient filters help your potential customers easily find your product or service.

7. Increasing brand visibility

• A regular presence on OLX allows you to consistently remind your audience of your brand and reinforce your brand image.

8. The ability to sell surplus or non-standard merchandise

• OLX is a great way to quickly sell leftover inventory or items that are hard to sell through other channels. Test out new ideas and get people interested in your new products.

9. Flexibility in Marketing

• OLX offers paid features, such as “Top Listings” and “VIP Listings,” which allow you to make your listing stand out from the competition.

10. Getting feedback quickly

• The platform makes it easy to find out what customers think about your products or services, collect feedback, and improve your offerings.

OLX is a great way to kick off sales while my team and I are building business website or online store

And then you can boost your new website with a link from your business profile on OLX—a win-win strategy.