I'm starting a new classifieds website and I need content for my site. I'm thinking of grabbing a copy of my local Sunday Paper and duplicating the classified ads on my website. Is this legal? Does the paper OWN the content on the classifieds? If this isn't legal what is the right way to go about this?
In general , copying content is not a good thing. However you can probably do this if you specify the source of the original content.
Good thinking, I never thought of that. After the ad description I could put something like: Source: The Name of my Local Paper - April 7, 2013
Dont think just because you post the ad from the paper on your site that it will be unique; I would bet most major newspapers are already online, and they would certainly publish their content on their website also.... It seems like a lot of effort to go through...some big sites have process where you can setup an api and pull ads directly to the sections of your website that you want.... of course when you do this, they no doubt get some type of backlink....
their websites are stone age. the online classifieds that they have is separate from the physical paper the print and the few ads they online are probably outdated. if there ads were even online, it certainly isn't being published by them. As for the effort, my data entry girl in the Philippines knocks up a 100+ entries for $30.
I tried the forum thing for awhile ie: paid posters... all i got for my effort was a steady bill, and nothing to show for other then the paid posters talking to each other.... If you are going to constantly pay someone to keep posting for you, then it will add up to be a big expense in no-time; my suggestion is to hire a coder to create an api for you; that would be more effective and less costly....
Just a thought... allow people to join up to your site and list items for free. Perhaps have a competition, first to list say 100 items might get $20. While listing 100 items might be a too high a goal, it is just an example (20 or 50 is probly a better milestone). If you have 10 people trying to do the competition to 100 listings, then you might get 500+ entries before you have a winner, and hopefully it has cost you less then paying a data entry person, leaving more funds open to advertising in papers and other places to attract the users in the first place. Just my 2cents worth.
people can already list stuff for free. the competition is a good idea and i'll be doing something like that for the facebook page but i think i'll get a lot of nonsense links. who really has 20 stuff selling at one point? i'll end up with a ton of bogus listings at my site. which will turn people off that actually use my site. i'd rather have competition on facebook get the most likes from shares of my photos and give the person with the most likes a small prize.