Whilst reading about Topix’s classifieds system over breakfast this morning I had some thoughts on blogs and classifieds in general. Hardly well thought out but interesting nonetheless.
What if bloggers were able to opt in via a simple plugin to a classifieds program that showed geo targeted, contextual classifieds. If we were able to distribute classifieds across the huge and diverse expanse of the blogosphere it could be awesome.
Of course there are some major considerations that need to be taken into account:
#1 what’s in it for the blogger?
The trend is that classifies are free to place right? But I don’t think that’s necessarily a must, they just have to be cheap to place, and simple to pay for, and hopefully successful. On that basis the publisher could be cut in on a revenue share basis much the same as any other kind of ad network deal.
Another way of looking at it might be that the ad is free to place, but you pay for connectinng to interested parties. So if i see your ad, click it, and get to fill in my email and phone #, you, the advertiser have to pay to get that response —fraught with it’s own issues of course, but worth exploring maybe.
The thing here is that if someone could figure out how to make it financially sound, distributing ads across opted in blogs via a simple plugin would not actually be that complex, someone should try it.
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10 thoughts on “Classifieds and Blogs”
found a site like craigslist called buy sell exchange swapshop classifieds with a heap more features and for the time being its totally free to use. Even video classifieds.
I think that EBay just came out with something like that, Chris.
If i was looking for a new bike, and happened across a blog about cycling, i might be interested in seeing ads about 2nd hand bikes in my area…
Ok, well, would you mind clarifying a little more of what you’re hoping for then? I’m interested in making something you’d use, but don’t want to waste my time building before I understand what’s desired.
Thanks Nick.
bit off track to be frank, but if you develop your thoughts a bit further, feel free to post a new thread to thrash out the details and see if anyone else might beinterested inhleping on such a project nate
I don’t have any specs/requirements quite yet for something like this. So, I’m wondering if it would work something like Adsense or some of the other ad publishing services. The difference would be that it’s obviously just focused around what I’m doing, so we’d have to have a way to track the clicks and pay the people who have it on their site (paypal?). The problem of click fraud that Google has would be the same for me.
Any thoughts on that? Or am I totally off track from what your original idea was?
Post the specs/requirements Nate
Raj, we could use the Partners code base for a lot of it, it might make a worthy project after we get that out the door and working nicely…
I see it taking off on an exchange basis maybe, accept some ads, get to place some. maybe as a way to promote your blog to others interested in your topic…
Hey guys. I have a classifieds system that is paid. Unless you’re talking about rental properties, it’s probably not your niche, but I am wondering if you guys wouldn’t mind helping out?
I’d love it if someone wants to help make this a reality.
A virtual classifieds system: I like it. If you came up with a comprehensive tagging system for each classified a, the blog owner could configure – via the plugin – the type of classifieds they want on their blog. At any time, they could change the allowable tags. Very interesting, and Performancing is just the community to pull this off.
I think it would work really well for certain niches, I am thinking particular of offloading second hand camera gear on photoblogs. While not identical I had a similar idea a while ago about distributed ebay; rather than adwords/adsense ads saying “buy [whatever you typed] on ebay” have proper ebay listings on blogs. The ebay seller would pay extra to have a reduced sized listing containing small image, title and starting bid/current bids, placed on the geo-targetted network of sites in a rotation. Payment is an additional cost like they already do for ebay extras, the blogger gets paid just like the standard ebay affiliate scheme if the sale/bids come from their clicks.
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