I have a local classifieds site i just built but need suggestions on getting people to post ads. Not many people will post on an empty site how do i get people to post? Or should I create a lot of fake ads to make the site look full. How did auction sites like Ebay and Craigslist do it? My site is targeted to the state of Pennsylvania. Thanks for the help.
I would start by joining the local newsgroups. We have two 'forsale' newsgroups in my area. You may have to post a few items you want to sell to get the ball rolling - and include in your post a link to the website where people can 'see a picture' or something along those lines. Also, you could copy a bunch of the forsale ads from the local newsgroup and add them to your site with a note "from xxx.xxx.xxxxx". This would help the website look more complete. At the end of the day...it takes time and a hook. Best of luck!
Hi, Instead of placing fake ads yourself, you could consider to allow the others to do that free of charge (for a certain period of time as promotion action). Thus, you would kill two birds with one stone - fill the ads space and getting some promotion for the site. As for initial site promotion measures, I must say that for your kind of site, offline promotion techniques seem to be most suitable. Good luck,
It's always difficult to get one of these to critical mass. You'll need a lot of patience and perseverance. Approach your the local used car dealers, pawn shops, antique stores, appliance retailers, sporting good stores, consignment shops etc. and offer to give them premium placement for one or more ads of they will place their inventory online. In addition, another simple strategy is to take one sub-category - for example used ford f-150s, optimize the category landing page for “Pennsylvania used ford f-150 trucks†– Make sure the <title> and <h1> tags include it and sprinkle the phrase throughout page. Then go get backlinks from as many free directories you can find using "Pennsylvania used ford f150 trucks" as the anchor text and deeplink to that page. When you’re done with f-150 trucks, start on the next category/sub-category and repeat. Once you start to get traffic you will get ads. . . . Good luck! -jay