People can get creative sometimes, especially when it comes to great classifieds ideas! With classifieds websites you have a couple of standard simple ways to earn money and get to change your website into a cash cow. We had before mentioned how to integrate some of those ways in Open Classifieds software which you can find here
In this article we will be explaining those ways mentioning the benefits you and your users can get out of each tool:
1. Featured Ads
This is one of the simplest ways to monetize a classifieds website. Normally, a classifieds website will have an enormous number of users each posting many ads. Some of them might want to stand out and highlight their ads and they would be willing to pay a fee to get their ads distinguished from the rest.
Classifieds owners consider featured ads as one of the most effective ways to grab the reader’s attention. Thus, it makes complete sense to include that possibility in your website. Although you have to take into consideration the number of users you have on your classifieds website. Normally, users would like their ad to reach an interested user, and they prefer featuring their ads at a high traffic website. So, to get the classifieds website started you need a good SEO campaign, unless you already have a large client base or a unique idea!
2. Move Ads to Top (Special Placing)
Another way to stand out is special placing ads, and in this case users will have their ads in a better position than similar ones. This way they would have a great advantage in reaching another interested user. Again, this is a good way to monetize your free classifieds website. But remember that you need a good base of users before starting to do that, or a good SEO campaign.
3. Advertising Banners
To improve your SEO and get money at the same time consider using advertising banners. Advertisers usually take good care of content; they tend to write unique product descriptions. Also, classifieds websites are attractive to advertisers. Targeting a specific group of people interests sellers.
Finally, having new ads appearing regularly would keep your page look fresh and up to date. There are many tools with which you could include ads in your website.
4. Pay to Post
With many free classifieds websites out there, it can be strange to ask a user to pay for something he could do for free somewhere else. But! you could charge for posting in the following cases:
– You are targeting a specific niche which no one else has access to.
– You already have a huge database of users coming regularly to your website.
– You have a category that you know will give a great benefit to your clients.
– And any creative reason you could think of.
We added the possibility of specifying a category in which you could charge on posting as explained in our previous “How to” post.
5. Affiliates Links
If your classifieds website is specific to a certain niche, you can sign an agreement with interested sellers. Then you can have a certain page on your website and sell their products. And you could can agree on certain terms, for example:
- Pay per traffic conversion.
- A monthly fee just to have their link there.
- Getting a commission by offering coupons for their products.
6. Premium Membership
You can give some features to your users for a monthly fee. And here you can be as creative as you want, there are no limits except for development time :) . Some simple ideas I found for premium memberships offered features:
– Give some featured/move to top ads
– Give a credit for posting in pay-to-post categories
– Simply be able to post in your website
– Monthly/yearly subscriptions
– Discounts on any feature
I hope this article was helpful. Feel free to share your opinions in the comment section below or post a suggestion on how to make money with a classifieds website.
Regards from Kinan and Open Classifieds team
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