Classified Sites Make Money

Just as the title says....

A good while ago I had the bright idea to set up a classified site and I'm glad I did.

A little background on this project first. I live in a military town. We have a large base at two locations. Because of the military schools we have ~500 families rotate in and out each year. The majority of them have never been to our area.

So my idea was to set up a site with paid advertising to help our troops know the best places to shop. Our local newspaper does a poll every year where readers vote of the "Best of Podunk, Albania". These places are considered the creme of the crop and get good coverage in the paper. However that glory only lasts a couple of days.

And... my site was born. I got permission from the newspaper to use their "Best of" logo in exchange for a link. Next I contacted these companies with my offer explaining the fact of all these new residents in our area. At first the response was not so good and I had to offer a free month to a few of them

As of now I have ~ 20 sites listed at an advertising rate of 50.00 per month. As the site grows this will increase (I hope).

As for offline advertising I'm running ads in the base newspaper which is published by the same newspaper as above. They have given me favorable rates for this. Down the road I may look into advertising on the rotating billboard outside the main gate.

There are many ways you could twist this idea and make a nice passive income that doesn't take a whole lot of work.

Repped for great outside of the box thinking.

I must be dense as granite cuz I'm not getting it. Maybe someone else could explain it from another perspective perhaps.

Would this work in a large metro area or is it only viable in a small town? Would your classified site be competing with the 600 pound gorilla Craigs?

Love to be able to achieve your bottom line "There are many ways you could twist this idea and make a nice passive income that doesn't take a whole lot of work." Op, perhaps you can mention one way to twist it. Can I take a peek at your site?

This could/should work in any size town. My niche is the military market. Any place that has a good bit of rotation would be viable.

Think college towns.

Well i maked a classified site in php+mysql but no seo no visits.

We made the first Blackhat related Classifieds site

Let's see if I got it. Your site is a list of all the best of services in each category such as best hair salon, best mexican food, best night club. Each business pays $50 a month to be in your website. I think this type of site is called a directory not classified. Think I got thrown off when you called it a classified site, I was thinking buy and sell kind of classified like craigs. I just got up and the grey matter wasn't functioning on all cyclinders yet .

Is it viable to get your site to be found by your target audience when they look online?

Well, I just now did a few searches on G for best hair salon, best mexican restaurant in my city and yelp is the top dog in the serp. It's going take some hard work to outrank yelp. Maybe your offline advertising is the way to go, at least in the beginning while you're working at outranking yelp.

This is not a classifieds site, it's a directory listing site.

And it's a great idea, it sounds like the same business model as yelp. Great job.

I think he did an classifieds site and for each category he has Futured Listing paying $50/m.
Good luck with your project.

Any chance we could see your site? Just kind of want to see the overall layout.

I guess I was mixing apples and oranges. Yes, I should have said it was a directory site instead of classified.

The whole idea here is to run with an idea. You never know what might work till you try it. I've failed many times with different business ideas.

Sometimes even a blind squirrel can find an acorn.