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Drive Traffic with VFlyer Marketing Tools

February 23, 2009 By 17 Comments

I have mentioned to you before that I like to use the Free Classifieds online to drive traffic to my Online Stores and blogs. I have my favorite sites and not all due to the ranking.

I use Craigslist, Oodle and BackPage the most. With Craigslist dominating the online classifieds there have been many issues with fraud, sellers taking advantage of the system. Craigslist has enforced new restrictions and continues to find new ways to block spammers. Please do not SPAM

Today I was on Craigslist searching for FORMS (mannequins). I sell clothing online as well and I need a few of them for when I am ready to get a warehouse location. Right now I am in the process of purchasing the equipment I will need to run my own warehouse. I am in no rush and want to make sure I find the right location for my needs.

Anyhow, I realized that I had not mentioned to you about vFlyer. As I was searching I came across two listings.

Simple Listing – As you can see no information and images not the best.

VFlyer - A huge improvement.

Of course if you know how to use HTML you can create your own Template using FrontPage and submit to the Online Classifieds.

One of the listings is using Vflyer and the other a Simple listing. As you will see, what a difference the layout makes. Not only can you create a professional looking template, VFlyer can automatically upload your listings to most online classifieds. This of course is time saving and if you are looking to increase the traffic you certainly want to take advantage of this tool. Or if you are not familiar creating your own HTML code.

Note: Craigslist does not allow automatic submissions, therefore, Vflyer will provide you with an HTML Code to use on Craigslist.

Sites automatically submit to:

With the current market many of us are shopping for deals online. I search the classifieds for business supplies and anything I can think of that I will need in my warehouse. As a seller I will list where the consumers are. Not everyone is on eBay, Amazon or Overstock etc….. Many of the Free Online Classifieds have seen an increase in listings and searches.

VFlyer offers you a great tool for online sellers. With a low starting price of $12.95 for me it’s a valuable investment.

If you have FrontPage you can create a template and obtain the HTML code. Or if you use Photobucket you can use the image itself to create the Ad.

In the next few days I will start a new campaign for the month of March. I will report to you the tools I use and how well they work for me. Keep in mind “March Madness” is a great time for Pre-Spring Sales.

If you know of any sites that offer similar services please share them with us. Do you know of any sites offering a Free Service? Hope you find this tool helpful.

Filed Under: Featured, free classifieds, Selling online Tagged With: , , ,

Make Money Online with Craigslist

December 28, 2008 By 14 Comments

Using Craigslist is a great way to find rare and great items for you to keep or resell on auction format.

Sellers on Craigslist want to get rid of it quick and not deal with shipping and paying fees. This of course is the beauty of selling on an online Free Classifieds as Craigslist.

Searching

I would recommend that you search your local area. This way you save on shipping and gas. A great idea would be, if you live in let’s say Los Angeles and you have found items you can resell online with the potential of making you a lot more return in Orange County, it would be worth a trip for you preferably the weekend. All varies on the items you are interested in.

You can search by name of item and location.

Cross Search

Now, that you think to have found Money Making Item check out auction sites. See what it sells for or sold for in the past. Checking on eBay is simple:

Current: Simply type in the item number or description on the main search bar

Ended/sold: Next to the search bar à click on ADVANCE Search à type name of item à scroll down à Check off COMPLETED listings only à then HIT your ENTER button. Presto, this will display what its sold for in the past. Print for listing the item later. This will help you with keywords and pricing.

Run a search on Froogle, search the Manufacturer. Simply running a search online will give you an understanding on the potential of the item.

Shipping

Check rates or use the standard shipping fees calculator provided by eBay and other auction sites. Add to it the cost of packaging materials etc… Keep in mind the Post Office, FedEx and UPS do provide standard boxes to ship with Free of Charge. Make sure to insure the item. You can find Shipping information for ground, freight and how to handle claims here under Shipping category.

Finding a bargain

Do not be afraid to make an offer to the seller. Chances are they will consider it, unless the item is really popular. Then, they may hold on to it. Craigslist can carry a listing for up to 45 days. This varies from your location. The more popular cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, New York etc….. only allow 7 day listings. Run a search on Craigslist going back about 3 weeks. Contact the buyer and ask if they are interested in selling it to you for X,Y or Z…..

Picking up

Unless you are picking up at a retail location, I would highly recommend that you have a shopping buddy with you and/or meet in a public neutral place. If you are picking up furniture or any large item at their home, definitely be safe and take someone with you or let your friends and family know where you are.

All Sales are Final

Get this in writing. Or make sure that you fully inspect what you are about to purchase. You will be responsible to your Buyer in the event the item(s) is faulty, defective or not an Authentic Prada, Burberry etc….. Taking pictures on site would be a good idea.

Listing the Item

Now that you have your hands on the item go back to your notes and list. Re-inspect the item, refer to the manufacturer for description (if needed), provide accurate measurements and take plenty of pictures. You can even relist the item on Craigslist or at another Free Classifieds if you do not want to list on auction site. Don’t forget the Traditional Garage/Yard Sale.

Tip

What are the hot items? Exercise equipment at this time. DVD’s and any electronics. With Christmas just over, many are parting with items you can resell. You may want to do the same, resell locally or donate.

Filed Under: Craigslist, eBay, free classifieds, What to Sell, Where to Sell Online Tagged With: , , , ,

Oodle & Facebook Good for You

December 4, 2008 By 10 Comments

Have you ever wondered why listing on eBay is successful? eBay using all offered in order to drive traffic to your site. Your job is to list what you have, ship it and make your customer a happy one.

eBay spends hundreds of thousands on keywords per day, TV advertisements, Free Classifieds and most of all the affiliates.

The affiliates are the backbone of all the sales generated on eBay. An affiliate can successfully make 50% of your eBay bill. That is a lot of money.

Visiting Oodle a Free Classified marketplace you can easily upload your listings and generate plenty of traffic to your site. Take a closer look and you will find that Oodle also carries a large amount of eBay’s listings. Affiliates? Sure, why not.

Regardless, Oodle has a pretty good ranking. You benefit a great deal from placing your Promotions or Campaigns on these sites.

With the success Oodle has had, they are now teaming up with FaceBook. Oodle announced that Facebook selected Oodle to power its marketplace, Dec. 2 by Craig Donato. They plan to launch Facebook’s Marketplace sometime 2009. For details click HERE .

Now would be a good time to familiarize yourself with both Oodle and Facebook. Grow your community today.

I also recommend that you look into Bebo and Kaboodle

Filed Under: free classifieds, Social Networks, Traffic Tagged With: , , ,

Tons of Free Traffic for the Holidays!

November 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Now, I did create a video that I will be posting. However, something is wrong with my media that I cannot get sound. So I will try again later this week.

There are many sites out there that you can use to drive traffic to your site. What is great about these sites is they have millions of targeted users visiting their site a day. You can list on their sites absolutely FREE of Charge. Of course, you do not want to fill it with SPAM.

One of the fall backs listing on these sites such as Craigslist is that the competition is petty, they will FLAG your listing. Then someone FLAGS your listing; what they are doing is reporting it to the Classifieds site that you are in violation of one of the regulations, and then your ad is taken down.

Okay, so let’s get started.

Below is a list of some of the sites offering you Free Ad placement; along with their

Alexa rating:

Froogle Ranking 2


Craigslist Ranking 38


Backpage Ranking 1,687


Kijiji Ranking 2,261


Oodle Ranking 3,689


OLX Ranking 10,950


Recycler Ranking 31,359


Penny Saver Ranking 241,694

Go to Alexa and search for Backapage

A – This is what you will see. You will find the ranking information and a graph on the traffic. Backpage gets tons of traffic and that means exposure for you.

click to enlarge image

B – Scroll down the page you will find a breakdown on the on the Most Popular pages on that site. This is your guide, this will determine for your where to place your ads. Of course I recommend you start placing ads there but also place in as many other Cities as you can.

By doing so, it will also help your own Alexa rating.  Nice huh!


click to enlarge image

C – Now, you visit the site directly. You will find the entire list of Cities where you can place those ads.


D – Now that you have determined what Cities are generating the most traffic, its time to select your Category. If you are selling an item; then you know where to go. But if you are offering a service You may want to place them in Services / Community or Job Opportunities.

click to enlarge image

E– Once you have determined the category you want to list in click on it. Check what others are doing. You will some include images, phone number, email address and websites. Now, having your website creates a link. That is what you ultimately want. Its easier for them to click on be taken where you want them to land and for them its an added convenience.

Note: I am fluent in Spanish and speak French. If you are a blogger. Guess what, the French are big on blogging. If you speak Spanish; then you will also benefit from Backpage. Backpage advertises in Univision which is huge in the Spanish speaking market. More on that later.

F– This is an example of someone that have taken full advantage of the Free
Classifieds. Looks like a newspaper clipping in full color. You can view this
listing HERE . There are many other listings that are simple and straight to the
point and do generate a good amount of traffic.



Even if you only create a Coupon for your listing that would be wonderful. This seller has created an elaborate ad. A bit too busy. Not only is the contact information provided and website address but the Sellers has also Hyperlinked all the images. Clever…clever

Once you have placed a few ads, visit the others the other sites and place them there too. On Craigslist due to the competition you may want to place a few ads a day or one a day. Create various ad templates. Some sites allow you to input HTML code, so you can use something like Front Page to help you.

Let’s not forget to use the Social Sites also, to drive traffic. Perhaps you want to set up another email address to automatically respond with details or you simply hyperlink everything so they can visit the site directly.

There is software out there to allow to you list in bulk. However, I do not recommend that you over do it. It can get you on the black list. Craigslist is big on this. The last this you want to do is get banned from Craigslist. As long as you list a few ads a day, various categories you should be fine. There are others listing as much as 500 per day and eventually they are banned.

I will list more information on these sites and give you some fun free graphics to help you create an ad.

Filed Under: Craigslist, free classifieds, Selling online, Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , ,

eBay’s Dirty Laundry

October 16, 2008 By 4 Comments

eBay’s dirty laundry…I think it would benefit you to know a bit more about eBay and Craigslist.org . I like Craigslist for many reasons. FREE listings and great way to generate immediate traffic to your listings or postings.

On April 22nd Craigslist released the following statement:

“Ebay has filed suit against craigslist and its board of directors:

http://news.ebay.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=305980

We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.

Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.

Ensuring the future well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community is admittedly very important to us. But Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here — unless of course they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay’s stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party. (In which case, they’re out of luck.

For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development.

Addendum in response to commenter question – To be perfectly clear, Ebay’s stake in craigslist has not been “unfairly diluted” as they have claimed.”

Ebay claims to be safeguarding their investment. For all of us following Craigslist and eBay, it is no secret that eBay has been trying to gain popularity on their Free Classifieds in Kijiji.com

While eBay’s attempt to bring down Craigslist has been unsuccessful ; eBay has not resorted to the lawsuit. Here is a link to the coverage by MSNBC

How did eBay acquire the stock? Former employee sold it to eBay. Craigslist had no Clause at that time regarding stock being offered to the company first.

Craigslist followed up the story on 4/30/2008 with the following statement:

“The public version of Ebay’s claims is now available.

We will file our formal response in the next few weeks, and until then will do our best to abide by protocol in not responding to specific assertions made in Ebay’s complaint.

As those who know us best will recognize, every measure we have taken has been for the sake of protecting the long term well-being of the craigslist community.

Sadly, we have an uncomfortably conflicted shareholder in our midst, one that is obsessed with dominating online classifieds for the purpose of maximizing its own profits.

It’s a conflict of interest worth keeping in mind if you decide to give this filing a read.”

On 5/13/2008 Craigslist announced to have filed the following:

“We filed a complaint in California today, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.

We respectfully ask the Superior Court in San Francisco to enjoin this conduct and order eBay to (1) make full restitution to craigslist, (2) disgorge their related profits (3) restore to craigslist all shares of the company acquired by means of, or for the purpose of unfair competition, and (4) pay punitive damages for their malicious behavior.

Full text of complaint is available in PDF or HTML”

The claim also outlines how eBay was running Ads using Craigslist.org as a headline to benefit and drive traffic to their site Kijiji.com

So why did I post this story now? Well, I check on the Paypal’s site regularly for updates and changes that may affect sellers or the industry. I noticed something strange; Paypal’s footer has a link to Craigslist.

This sparked my curiosity and I checked on Craigslist’s Blog and no mention of changes in ownership or changes in control.

Of course, eBay owns 25% of Craigslist stock and perhaps that explain all the changes Craigslist has made to their sites. Such as:

1. Mandatory Registration

2. Mandatory phone verification

3. Divide categories

I have not found any updates on the case. I will certainly post updates as they unfold.

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Filed Under: Craigslist, eBay, free classifieds Tagged With: , , , , ,