Hello OC friends,
The main reason for starting a classifieds website for most people is to make money out of it. Creating your website is the first step, then you have to put content on it, generate traffic and start making revenue. The last part might be the most difficult step in the whole process. Especially when you are new on the classifieds market. Therefore we at Open Classifieds want to share some ideas with our users on how to monetize your classifieds site.
Idea 1 – Specialize in a geographical or topical niche
If you have little resources for advertising and marketing it might be a good idea to specialize in a certain geographical or topical niche. Instead of trying to compete with the big classifieds sites which have a lot of money to promote themselves, you create a classifieds website which focuses on one product (group). This enables you to attract many advertisers with the same type of products. If you are able to bring all these together, you will have a very attractive site for your users. You can also make a classifieds site for a particular city. Many people prefer to have a look on a classifieds site which only displays local ads, because they can easily pass by to have a look at the product and eventually buy it.
Idea 2 – Bumping ads or premium listings
Another way of creating revenue from your classifieds site is asking money for better visibility on your website. This can be done several ways. For example by offering the possibility of bumping ads. These kind of ads go back to the top of the page after some time has passed by and therefore won’t get lost in long lists with advertisements. As many users will only visit the first page of a listing, putting the ad back on top of the list gives great benefits to the advertiser as his ads will get more views.
You can also offer premium listings to your users. With these listings the advertisements will get more visibility by showing them with different, more attracting colors, bold text, etc.
Idea 3 – Google Adsense
Google Adsense is a product from Google that lets you display targeted advertisements on your website. Based on the content that you offer, Google will show relevant and engaging ads on a place where would like the ads to appear. The highest bidders on the advertising space will be displayed and you will get payed by Google for offering this space. It is a very simple way to earn extra money (but not the best) and doesn’t come with a lot of administrative hassle, as Google is handling this part.
Idea 4 – Membership
In case you have a classifieds website with a very big amount of classifieds ads, then this collection of ads is your most valuable asset. People will be willing to pay if they then get access to all the advertisements displayed on your website. This can also be put the other way around that users with a paid membership have no limits to the amount of ads that they can post. You can offer free posts until 10 advertisements and if they want to post more, then a membership is needed.
Idea 5 – Get paid for extra info
The last idea we would like to share is especially applicable for certain product types. If you have a job website a good way to monetize your website is by asking a premium for showing the users all the information. Users can go through your complete database of vacancies that you have online, but if they want to contact the company in order to send their application, they need to pay to get the correct information.
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