How to start a classified and actually profit.

[keerthi]

Hey guys, This is the strategy I used to grow my classified site in a very short peirod of time. I was able to get 1000 visitors/day in a short time of 45 days.

READ ALL OF THIS CAREFULLY.

I'll start with the very beginning (after the setup of categories ).

The very first problem every classified owner is to drive traffic to their "empty classified site".

The truth be said its very hard even to get an empty classified site to get indexed on google.

Here is the tip. Unlike other who say to "be patient". DON'T BE PATIENT.

Treat your site as a blog at first.  Who will help me you ask? Your competitor will help.

Got to your competitors site. (usually olx of of your country). Identify your favorite category or niche.

Open all listings as your browser is capable. Use the ones with "email ids" explicitly mentioned. Use those only.

And to prevent duplication.

1. Go to translate.google.com
2. Enter title and description into translation box.
3. Translate it to "tamil" or "german" or "spanish" or any other language of your choice. (I prefer tamil coz it my favorite language and the oldest language in the world.)
4. Translate the "translated text" back to "english".
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for 2 or 3 times.
6. You will come up with a unique title and description now (hurray).

7. Use that title and description and do not forget to use the user's email id.
8. There you did it. Two mangoes in one stone. - You got content and you made some one to know that your site exists. Chances are that he will come back to post more ads.

10. Post 15 -20 ads daily till your site actually gets enough ads from others.
(another tip: use the email id of an agency or company)

Also did I forget to say "nail the onpage SEO" . If you don't know feel free to PM me.

thats all for starting classifieds in the series, still to come drive traffic and profit parts.

Do not forget onpage seo is an important factor for both new and existing clasifieds.

[frosticek]

@keerthi
I have comment to translation tip.
- this is not correct, because title & description becomes bullshit if you read it.
- every user will realize that all listings are spam/scam

Better tip:
- rewrite title & description by your words

Example:
Original Title: Audi A4 Quatro TDI for sale
Your Title: Selling beautiful Audi A4 TurboDiesel (Quatro)

This listing would be taken by google as unique, and every user will realize that this is real listing, not fake

[keerthi]

You are right frosticek. But nowadays translation got "readable". Grammar mistakes are now lot lesser.

Although your view is correct. This is the lazy man's way out.

-> Show Search Engines You have (original) content.
-> Attract new users/ad posters.
-> Relieve us of our duty to post ads on our own.

However if a guy is good enough in rewriting on his own. He can very well do it.

Pros of own rewriting:
We can come up our own high quality and unique description.

Cons of rewriting:
My process itself will allow only 50 to 75 ads posted per day (due to shoratge of time). But rewriting on own will even lessen the ads posted in the stipulated time period.

Thanks for your suggestion frosticek. 

[keerthi]

Thanks to rahulk for calling me and appreciating the tutorial.

Here is a more indepth additional solution for everyone.
This is a tip that no one will tell you.
With this tip you could double or triple your traffic with the same number of ads just by changing the keywords.

I could not attach pics. But I have elaborated the solution. If you do not understand any part of it ask it in this thread itself.

1. Go to google adwords keyword planner.
2. Enter your competitors url in the "landing page" form which is usually  olx.(your country's extension)/{CATEGORY}. For eg., delhi . olx . in/ cars- cat-378
3. Click get ideas.
4. The idea is to get low competition high converting keywords. Choose keyword ideas tab. Click competition twice (low competition keywords on top).
5. choose the low or medium competition keyword that has maximum number of searches.
6. Choose with common sense. Do not choose keywords like "free classifieds". Our aim is to use these keywords in an ad/listing not as the site title.
7. for eg., while searching for this I found the keyword "maruti suzuki kizashi". has 2400 searches but was low competition. This is a high conversion keyword.
8. hmm. this is the keyword I would like to use.  Got to your competitors site (all not just olx). type "maruti suziki kizashi".
9. Copy the description and keywords and email id(if explicitly mentioned on the site) otherwise use your mail id.
10. Add all the ads in that keyword by using the tip I mentioned earlier.
11. There you have it. Time is saved and traffic will be flowing.

You will start to gain traffic in a few days. Be sure to generate a sitemap and submit to google.

if done properly and consistently this method could make you the "second or third most popular classifieds in 8-10 months time".

Hmm. marketing money thus saved.

This is a crazy trick. But each case differs. If you understood this tip, very well. Otherwise if you are finding hard to implement for your country. You could always ask me.

And as I stated previously a little "on page optimization" could do the magic.

Your site can appear in first page of google as 3rd or 4th site in a few weeks IF IMPLEMENTED CORRECTLY. 

[frosticek]

@keerthi
Your theory with google translator is correct just for "global" languages like english, spanish, ... But if you try to translate english text to Polish, back to english and repeat 2-3 times, you will get absolutely different meaning

In my opinion, it is better to create less ads per day with quality content, instead of many ads with senseless content.

But it is nice tip at all

[keerthi]

both of us are saying the samething

laziness is inversely proportional to quality.

Most classified owners choose this bcoz they are lazy enough to blog.

But I tell you guys. You wont be doing this for long. might be 6 months max and meanwhile delete all users ads that are short, spammy and low quality.

You will immediately start attracting high quality users.

[keerthi]

and one more factor is also there. Google sees sites with high number of pages as enterprise level site.

Its one of the factors that google uses to rank sites.

If you could produce high number of quality ads in short period of time . Kudos.

[keerthi]

@frosticek. You are correct. that does depend on the translation quality. For Some language google has not improved the translation quality.

[keerthi]

and for those of you who have PM'd me. I will bring up a unique case specific improvement tips.

[keerthi]

Still afraid of competitors? Not any more. I love my competitors. They are doing me a huge favor without their knowledge.

This is how to use competitor data and stamp them to the ground.

You could start marketing your blog only after you actually earn from your site.

[keerthi]

CASE SPECIFIC TIP 1:

CASE: NICHE CLASSIFIEDS; BIKE CLASSIFIEDS

aide2001 has asked me in this thread how to improve unique visitors:

http://forums.osclass.org/general-help/please-share-your-web-links-(of-osclass-themes)/msg105846/#msg105846.

This is a very simple tip. Since you have a niche specific classifieds site you have an added advantage.

=> Add a blog in a subdomain such as blog.yoursite.com or a folder yoursite.com/blog.

=> Link recent 5 blog posts in the main page. I have seen your site You have no additional space. Please make space or utilize the sidebar.

=> Again peek into your competitors to know what they are posting.

=> In India a famous niche specific blog is "b i k e w a l e . c o m" . I am not sure whats famous in UK.

=> See what they are posting and post similar topics.

=> also use the tips mentioned above for your main classified site.

=> and even more. You will get an added advantage over every other classified site, Backlinks.


All the best. If you give me your competitors URL ie., the most famous bike classified site in your country. I could find you some useful data.

And remember "on page SEO " is also the key.

Coz those big guys have dedicated team for on page seo.

[keerthi]

Hmm. few days ago. I recieved a PM from our forum member "matias_tv". Please see images.

matias owns a property classified site for SantaCruz, bolivia.

I must congratulate you matias_tv. For you have done a really really great Job.

1. for choosing a classified thats highly profitable (PROPERTY NICHE)

2. You chose it for An AMERICAN STATE Bolivia.(their clicks are of high value) not Indian traffic (who are just a resource hog in server, their clicks are waste.)

3. You actually live there. (I assume you do. please mention if you don't)

Hmm. Its pretty easy. You have asked for SEO. But you do not need SEO.

Forget search Engines. (I actually hate google's latest attitude, they behave like they control the internet. Which I would not allow till my last breath.)

You do not need search engine traffic. You need customers and they are near you.

Just print a large posters and issue it to all real estate agencies near you. Ask them to use it. Before doing it. Post at least 100 ads in your site yourself and also hide ads count in home page.

Stick the posters in bus stations and Railway stations. (This is illegal in many parts of world except africa, I suppose. Just Add privacy to your domain name just in case.)

Use adsense for your profit till then.

And if competition for your site actually increases Just mail all your customers to pay you to make their ads premium or get their company featured in main page. Remove adsense afterwards.

Make sure You collect phone numbers too. Could be useful to create personal touch

You could expand your visitors from just SantaCruz city to all the cities of Bolivia.

But You could not go further from bolivia due to your domain's extension.

But given the migration rate to cities you will never saturate. Your old customers stay with You and your new customers come in a steady rate and stay with you.

There You can kiss goodbye to google then. (Every webmasters dream).

But I am pretty sure you will get traffic increasing from google to. But You can disallow google bot since you no longer need it by then.

Googlebot used to download 14 gb of data everyday from my site. Its just precious bandwidth that can be used for enhancing user speed experience.

[keerthi]

and @matias_tv. you need not worry about on page seo or any search engine related sh*t. Instead of wasting your time on SEO just resort to offline promotion.

Start your bike and start throwing off posters all around your city. Stick a huge sticker behind your car.

[Aficionado]

Hey buddy, it's very nice and good information for me, because i'm new in internet market. I point out some thing from this article.
Thanks for sharing.

A lot of clever spammers here latetly. Like you.

[keerthi]

I am no Internet marketer nor a spammer. These are the methods that worked for me and I shared it. If you have something to share have your say or get the hell out of my thread. A lot of newbies find it very useful.