Classified website that can bring all ofline ads Online and connect offline people

By Pradeep Chaudhary on December 9, 2010 1 Comment / 1849 views

Hi Guys,

I am working on a classified ad website that can address the mass, mostly the people who are not so net savvy and don’t use internet or computers. Want to make it simple to post ad via SMS/Online and get response via SMS.

We will be feeding ad from Off line media like newspapers, to ensure people who are not that much tech savvy and those who cannot post online ads, can also post ads and get response using SMS on their mobile. May be who ever is interested can directly request the number and contact the ad owner on specified mobile number.

I am not good at writing business plan etc, but for sure write technical documents and get the site developed with quality. Run a web development company and a few portals to generate leads for packers and Movers,review website for packers and Movers https://www.packersmoversreview.com etc

I tried to find some genuine data of today classified market in India, but could not got much information and I am still researching. But I think as of now, In India there are lots of people who are posting ads on Newspapers, because they are not net savvy or cannot use email or don’t use computers. Buyers are all around the net, but want to bring offline ads to the Internet as well

Our platform will serve those mass offline people. No nonsense fields etc, just location, description and you are done. Who ever is interested could request your number and an SMS will be sent to the interested party with contact number of the ad owner, or may be they ca directly respond from the website itself via SMS.

Any input from you great entrepreneurs are highly appreciated and open to discuss.

Thanks
Pradeep

Comments

Pradeep Chaudhary

1 Comment

Pradeep Chaudhary January 17, 2011, 5:03 am

Thanks a lot for a detailed respose. My focus is in general its not quite specific as B2C or B2B.

We will be launching this city wise and for sure not going to offers ads in those hundreds categories.

Thanks again

Pradeep

Yatin Mulay said:

What is your focus going to be? B2C or B2B? You could take some clues from folks at JustDial for B2C segment and IndiaMart.com for B2B segment ( or the usual suspects like Craigslist india & kijiji )

In either case, make sure you have a flat architecture to begin with ( try to limit it to at the most 2 folder levels from the root )

( Make sure your CMS allows clean, static, search engine friendly url’s right off the bat and pay great attention to taxonomy. This would be helpful in drawing in free organic long tail traffic via search engines.

Changing URL structure at later stage, even when done by hacking your .htaccess may not help much.

Add categories and cities in GRADUAL fashion. The typical mistake many classifieds sites make is that they start with hundreds of cities and categories, subcategories right off the bat ( because they want to be “comprehensive / all encompassing )

(The problem that typically occurs then is that, there’s no enough link equity for a new site to deserve full crawl depth. And even if the crawlers crawl & index you, they will typically drop off pages from their index when the fresh site boost period is over )

Be prepared to fight lot of spam ( Don’t use ReCaptcha, they have been hacked )

Start building your tribe on social media.

I’d expect cheap bids on many terms, so PPC option too can be explored

Best wishes for your success.