Posting websites and... craigslist

So, some people may think our "ads" for our adoptable pets are only on our website.  They're not, we actually use several different places to list the animals.  Some places have limits on the number of ads -- several allow only 5 ads, so on those we only have five ads.  But on others, we can have as many as we want. 

To name some of these places off the top of my head, there is petfinder.com, adopt-a-pet.com, hoobly.com, chicago.craigslist.org, domesticsale.com, petclassifieds.us, and others. 

I used to use backpage.... until they start throwing a fit.  I had always posted my ads the same way on all of these sites -- the ads are mostly similar (see previous posting from a day or two ago), but the difference is the top of the ad which talks about the specific animal the ad is about.

So, on the instance in question, I had several guinea pig ads up, two chin ads up, and a rat ad up.  And one day I go and log on to backpage, and I see that all the ads have been "community removed."  So, I go to another ad and look.....there is no place that a person can flag an ad, or anything like that.  So I emailed support and said, hey, I'm a rescue, I post these ads, each ad is for a different animal, so on and so forth.  I asked why they were taken down.  I got a response back saying I was overposting the same ad.  I emailed back asking how it was overposting when each ad was for different animals, and I only had like 5 ads or so at the time.  They didn't bother to respond to me. 

I posted again, and they were up for about a week and then "community removed" again.  Fine, I no longer post there.

But then sometimes I get backlash against these ads.  Like today... got an email from someone on craigslist:

Him:  NOBODY WANTS YOUR STUPID CHINCHILLAS. STOP OVERPOSTING.

Me:  I'm just refreshing the ad when the refresh button pops up.  That's not overposting.  Over posting would be like that one person who had the same chinchilla ad up every day several times a day last week.  I'm just doing what Craigslist allows.

And I should ask, why do you care so much?  If you're not interested, move on to the next ad.

Him:  The reason I care so much is because I see the smae ad all the time.  Nobody wants them, Get over it.

Me:  Someone will eventually come along that wants them.  I've been running a chinchilla rescue for 10 years, eventually someone comes along and sees that ad (or an ad on some other website) and adopts the chinchillas.  Has happened several hundred times, will happen again.  Just a matter of time and a matter of keeping the ads up until the critters find homes.

Him:  You shouldn't keep them if its gonna take that long to find them a home..

Me:  I work at a rescue. Its similar to a humane society.  That's how it works - the animals come in and stay here until they find a home.

If we only took in animals that could find a home really quickly, that'd be like an animal flipper. 

Rescues take in healthy, sick, young, old, whatever needs to come in. Some take longer to adopt than others, as clearly the young and healthy ones usually find homes quicker than the older sickly ones. But they all do eventually.

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I haven't heard back.  But the question remains -- what does it matter to him, or to anyone on any of these sites, if they keep seeing the same ad?  Like, so what?  I see ads for the same animals all the time, move along if you're not interested. 

I actually have not had ads on craigslist flagged for a long time.  Which I suppose I should be thankful for. 

But... does this guy have nothing better to do than to email people who have ads up repeatedly and tell them that their pets aren't going to find homes, get over it?  I mean, why such negativity?  I just don't understand. 

But regardless... the other websites I will continue to post on until I have issues with those.  Now, there's one that has given me an extra step in the ads because words are posted too often.  For example, a rat ad contains the word "rat" too often.  I just copied that ad that I pasted into this blog a few posts ago into Word.  There are 428 words in that ad.  22 of those words are "rat" or "rats."  That's roughly 5% of the total words.  Guess what?  That's spamming.  So I have to take extra time to reword the ads on that website.  I end up changing some of the "rats" to "them," but its just an extra step I really don't need.  So, that website may be eliminated as posting potential soon.

In reality, I think the ones that help the most are petfinder and adopt-a-pet anyway.  So, it probably doesn't matter.