Classified ads section

viable revenue source for content sites?

[monsterhead]

Do you still consider classified ads section as viable alternative revenue stream for your website?

Recently PPC and PPM got all the attention. What about classifieds? Any success stories with this much neglected ad format?

[monsterhead]

is this the proper place to ask this?

[Frequent]

I think that really depends on your niche and how heavily your site is used.

I use a free classifieds section on one of my sites to generate traffic more than anything else (spider food). If it ever starts to be heavily used I may try to offer "premier" listings as a way to monetize but I'm not banking on that being a significant revenue stream.

Freq---

[luckychucky]

My gut feeling in that nobody ever looks at classifieds. I've posted a few free ads for nothing-to-lose backlinkage here and there (dunno if spiders take them seriously either, though) but...who's going to slog throughs hundreds of pages of tiny font about online casinos, making money stuffing envelopes and taking surveys, losing weight while you sleep, etc.? Classified ads are all riddled with spam.
Perhaps they might work if:
• moderated
• free of charge
• by qualified registration
• specific to a certain trade or interest

[trillianjedi]

Perhaps they might work if:
• moderated
• free of charge
• by qualified registration
• specific to a certain trade or interest

Funny you should say that as those are pretty much the four criteria I have on two sites with a classifieds section ;-)

Viable source of content

I've never considered it as such, I have free classified sections (which get used quite a bit actually) combined with regular advertising. They are another source of added value for your user, and a useful means of getting other people to generate content for you.

TJ

[dickbaker]

In my niche there are three auction/classifieds sites that are dominant.

When I started my site, I thought that having a classifieds section for free would be a nice added bonus.

The problem was that very few people took advantage of it. And I noticed that the number of page views for my site was lower than that for other sites I have. I suspected that the disappointing number of items in the classifieds section was making visitors leave early.

So, I eliminated the classifieds section, and the number of page views increased by roughly 25%, and the average length of the visits also increased.

[ken_b]

My gut feeling in that nobody ever looks at classifieds

I don't have a classified section on my site. And I don't sell the widgets my site is about.

But I do have a page with a list of places (websites) where people can buy those widgets, and another page that lists related classified ad sites where people can find those widgets for sale.

1 of 6 people who go to my "places to buy" page click thru to the classified ad sites list page.