How would you turn a free classifieds website into a business? | Hacker News Reader

How would you turn a free classifieds website into a business?

1 pointimechura4 comments

All, I inherited an antiquated classifieds website from a friend last year and have been in the process of rewriting the UI in a more flexible and cheaper to host technology. I have a designer lined up to help created and updated look in March because I’ll admit that the design is very 1.0 and the usability is less than awesome. I am on the front page of google for the term “yard sale” and am in the #1 or #2 spot for the terms “online yard sale and “online garage sale” I get a couple hundred users per day and have a 38% bounce rate. The user base tends to produce pretty high click rates so it more than covers the hosting fees. I want to take this website to the next level of being a business and I have some ideas but I wanted to solicit ideas and advice from the Hacker community at large. I am not looking for advice regarding technical changes or look and feel because that is all in the works. You can see the original 1.0 version here www.frimp.net

I work for a well established classifieds company.

This market has very low barriers to entry & this has resulted in many people setting up classified apps, only to fail to gain traction. I've seen literally hundreds of people attempt this over the last 5 years and fail.

Advertisers won't place ads with you unless they see many listings on your website and / or have heard of you from some credible source, they will place ads where the most amount of people are likely to see them and these days that still means craigslist or ebay for most people.

What is going to be unique about your app?

Why would I place an ad with you vs craigslist? Esp when they are free and drive good response rates for most people.

Asking someone to actually pay for a classified ad is a big ask these days when there are so many free & popular options out there.

If this was me, I'd forget about running my own classifieds app and instead provide a platform that will allow other people to start & run their own classified apps - kind of like a shopify solution except for the classifieds space.

How are you actually making money? Take that model and expand.

For example:

1. Use targeted advertising (Facebook Ads, etc) to attract more of your best customers.

2. Use tools like visualwebsiteoptimizer.com to test and optimize

3. Find ways to sell your by products [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1620-sell-your-by-products]

I wouldn't worry too much about the "1.0-ness" of the site. Most users (especially in your niche!) don't care about bleeding edge technology and are even sometimes turned off by it. I know dozens of people that love freecycle and none of them ever said "I wish this had more AJAX and shiny tables!"

Allow users to pay to upgrade to a "featured" listing or something like that.

This is a bit outside of the present scope of the site, but how about offering pre-printed yard sales sign for sale online? Possibly you could partner with a site that already provides this and you would make revenue on a referral basis.

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