Do we have a deal for people advertising garage sales in The Icon! In our second season of posting garage sales The Icon plans several new ways to promote your event.

Continuing our free garage sale policy, this year viewers may send one photo of an item or one photo showing several items to be sold at your garage sale. The Icon will post your photo with your garage sale ad. We hope that this increases your garage sale's attendance.

And, if we can get our act together, we'll create a weekly garage sale map* that readers can print and use for their garage sale cruising. (*This is provided that we get our act together, but we're certainly going to give it our best shot.)

Another feature of our free garage sales is that there is no deadline for submitting your ad. We will post garage sale ad the day we receive it. So, for those crazy enough to decided on Thursday night to have a garage sale the next day, it's a cinch. Simply e-mail your garage sale to the Icon before you open and we will post it.

Icon viewers will be interested to know that the most viewed page on the Icon (second on the home page) is the classified/display ad page. Viewers love our free classified ads.

As in the past, we have no word limits to our garage sale ads (or any classified ads), provided that you do not write an epic novel. To every garage sale ad we receive, we respond to the sender with the following message: "Thanks and a note." That tells you that we've received your ad. If you don't receive this confirmation, we didn't receive your ad.

In our response, we simply ask that you post a small sign that we send you, which states at your garage sale ad is posted in The Icon. This helps you promote the Icon.

A word about all other classifieds (you'll like this):

We encourage viewers to use our classified ads for any purpose. Since we began posting photos with our classifieds, we've noticed a much heavier use of this feature by viewers. Ads with photos appear to get much quicker results. We have several success stories with our ads. Many viewers sell their items the very day the ad is posted.

The only ads we ask for payment are:
1 - Vehicles for sale
2 - Houses or property for sale or for rent
3 - Businesses selling products

Here's why we charge for these ads: We have realtors and auto dealers who pay on a yearly contract basis to advertise on The Icon. We feel that it's only fair to our paid advertisers that we also ask for individuals selling vehicles or properties to also pay for their ads. When you see an established business with a classified ad, that business paid for the ad.

Our paid ad are very affordable. We'll publish a paid ad for a minimum of 10 days for only $10. After that, it's only $1 per day for as long as you wish to continue your ad.

You'll notice that we have lots of ads for "lost cats" or ads needing an immediate response. We are more than happy to publish all types of ads like this. Again, these are free.

Our classified ads automatically run for 10 days. Following 10 days, our computer program automatically deletes the ad. The exceptions to this 10-day rule are garage sales and ads paid to run for a longer period of time, or ads where the view notifies us that an item is sold.

We encourage viewers to use our classified ads for any purpose.

Send your ads to: [email protected].