Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
I am trying to set up a classified ad site. Problem is many other sites out there are free, and seem to push banner ads. I can't belive they make anything out of this at all.
Am I wrong ?
There does seem to be something in it then..
In short yes there is money in it. When we started up we knew the competition was huge and many sites offered free ads. We knew already that banner advertising is old news and visitors see it as spam so we felt confident that these sites couldn't rely on that revenue. We were right they came and went and we make a good profit. Just make sure you get your design right and spend money to ensure you have a good image.
Thanks for the advise, it sounds encouraging. We are getting a few customers at the moment but wonder if we should invest in a higher level of automation so users have more control over their ads.
Do you think it would be worth the extra running costs??
The trouble with business nowadays is patience, not many seem to posess it. This should answer your question about whether you should upgrade your database to include online edits by customers now. Do what you can now with the tools you have and when you find your time is getting taken up then switch over. We are looking at adding this facility because we have earned enough revenue to do so. Never overstretch yourself its gonna take time so get ready and keep reading this fantastic site to get yourself some really good hits.
I am working on a property ad site.
What do you think is a fair price to charge for an ad with a photo. Most property site are £30/40 ?
Do you think I should make my site look like one of the big estate agent network sites or keep it simple ?
Do you do any off-web advertising for your website?
Many thanks
Paul
I think uk dokey has given you some really sound advice but the property market is going to be a real hard nut to crack, a friend of mine last year tried very hard and spent a lot of money with various forms of advertising/PPC SE's the lot and also had a very good looking site, but in the end he called it a day, as he couldn’t get enough properties to register, his fee was around £50 I think
Maybe if you concentrated on search engine rankings alone you may well succeed but it's not something I would like to take on, good luck
Also site would have to be very good
I agree with all your comments.
At the end of the day selling a property is just not like selling cars and other stuff.
Look how car trader mags make hugh money and yet house trader copy cats fail big time.
But why? considering some of the major players out there. I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that most UK homebuyers have this idea that it's all about hitting the high street and collecting the flyers.
How you re-educate home hunters is another problem
Do you remember how in the 1980's the Prudential bought hugh numbers of estate agents offices to the tune of total investment £560 million !! and then sold them for about £1 each after a few years.
At that time their chief said it had failed because estate agency is a 'cottage industy'
CGU are still in it, but last count were running at a £60 million a year loose.
Back to the web...
There seem to be two types of property site out there. One that hopes agents will pay a monthly subscription to show their properties and do not allow private ads, and 'for sale by owner' type sites that let owners post their ad for a fee or free, but have no agency properties.
There does seem to be a new player in the market that is offering to post private ads on their site and the big estate agents sites.
I think Ian you have the one I refer listed in your site.
It will be very interesting to see if this works and also if it does work if estate agents will still back the sites that show private ads..
Very true, they also keep a very tight lid on costs, it is extremely difficult to make money from estate agents
>estate agents will still back the sites that show private ads..
Not a chance.
All estate agents are interested in is attracting new vendors, they can sell all the properties they can get. All the advertising they do online or offline is almost just a smokescreen, it is not intended to sell properties but to convince potential vendors that they can sell their property. imho
