5 ways to make money with your Classified Ads Website?5 ways to make money with your Classified Ads Website

When it comes to making money online, there’s nothing like an online marketplace or classified ad website. There are several ways you can monetize your classified ad website, but it depends on your niche & strategy to see what’s the best way to go.

              

MEMBERSHIP OR PAY PER AD?

The most common business model is a membership subscription where visitors can post an unlimited amount of ads based on a monthly fee. This is interesting because you are generating a recurring stream of income.

BUMP ADS

Bumping ads gives users the possibility to put their ad back at the top of the listings. Normally the top ads are the most recent, so when your advertisers are in a competitive market and it’s important to be at the top of your category Bump ads provides an easy way to get it there without having to post another ad again and again.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Even without charging money to post ads on your classified ad website you can still make some cash with your site. A website where people can post free ads will be more likely to get a steady amount of ads & traffic.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance based marketing. Publishers get rewarded when they send converting traffic to advertisers websites. Affiliate networks connect publishers & advertisers, publishers can browse the affiliate programs & get promotional links or banners. There are lots of affiliate marketing platforms, the most popular are:

– Commission Junction
– Amazon
– Google Affiliate Network
– Linkshare
– Clickbank

FEATURED ADS

Give your advertisers a way to stand out of the other ads on your website by offering featured ads. Featured ads draw more attention and will have a higher clickthrough rate, so more visitors will take a look at it. Use featured sliders on the homepage or category pages of your classified ad website.

These plugins will help you sell your featured ads:

– Xtreme Carousel slider plugin for ClassiPress
– Paralax Hotspot slider for ClassiPress
– Featured Ads sidebar for ClassiPress

BUILD YOUR CLASSIFIED ADS WEBSITE WITH WORDPRESS

ClassiPress is a theme developed by AppThemes and turns your WordPress website into a classified ad website. The theme comes with a lot of functionalities out of the box, and many of the monetization strategies we showed you in this post are already available.

WHICH WAY SHOULD YOU GO?

This depends on your website, niche, traffic, competition, … There is no such thing as a holy grail when it comes to making money online. You should take a lot of things into account when you decide using on or several of the techniques explained above. There’s only one thing that matters: if your classified ad website provides value to your advertisers & visitors you will always be able to monetize it.

Starting a classified ad website isn’t a way to become rich quickly :) you will read lots of stories online, but be honest… Do you believe them? Instead of subscribing to their “secret formula” we recommend you make a plan before you start.

Take a look at some books on marketing & business plans for classified ad websites. You will get plenty of information on how to plan your business & make it grow step by step.