68 Classifieds Blog

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Yes, You Can White Label 68 Classifieds

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Eric Barnes

A common question or concern about 68 Classifieds is whether or not you can white label the script. We have a very liberal policy on our copyrights and you are free to remove any mention of 68 Classifieds in both the administration and your sites front end.

A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company (the producer) that other companies (the marketers) rebrand to make it appear as if they made it.

The only requirement is you must keep the copyrights in the php files. Which would generally not be seen by anyone except those doing physical work with the files.

I know we have never really outlined any information on how to change this and this post will go over how it is done.
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RSS Management with FeedBurner

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Eric Barnes

In a previous blog article we wrote about how to Use RSS to stay in contact. This is a great way of getting return visitors to your site. One big drawback with RSS is it is hard to track how many subscribers and how often the feed is actually used.

A great service now owned by Google is FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can enter your rss feed and it will create a new link that allows you to advertise. When people signup for this feed it gives you feed tracking, statistics, and more ways for visitors to subscribe.

You can also burn different feeds so you can have a main feed, certain categories, or any other option you can imagine.

7 Successful Marketing Tips

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Eric Barnes

Website Marketing 101Have you just started your website or need more visitors? I am sure I already know the answer and here are some tips to help spread the word about your site and drive traffic to your site.

1. Great content

The old adage is “Content is King” and this is so true in an online world. Nothing gets you to the top of the search engines faster than great content that people want to link to. Some ideas for getting links through content is guest posting on blogs related to your industry, writing tutorials for your industry, or writing article and submit to article directory type sites.

2. Start using CPC advertising

CPC advertising or Cost Per Click will allow you to immediately be at the top of search engines. You can start small with a budget of a few cents a day and spend all the way up to thousands of dollars a day. We have been using Google Adwords and Yahoo Publisher for several years now and haven’t found any other type of advertising that gets as much bang for the buck.

3. Use web directories

Submit your site to all the major directories. There are lots and lots of free directories that will link back to you without having to link to them. Keep in mind some do charge and some take FOREVER to actually approve your link (think dmoz) but I would recommend submitting early and just forgetting about it. You could drive your self crazy trying to figure out why your site isn’t approved yet.

4. Run A Competition

Lets face it, people like winning things. Some competition ideas could be for people registering at your site, joining a newsletter, posting a listing, or commenting on an article. The possibilities are really endless and you can find some cool in-expensive product to give away. I would probably find a product in your industry to give away. If you have a horse classifieds site your users probably wouldn’t want to win a toy boat.

5. Find Partners

You can find partners that are in the same niche and trade links or advertising. In this same category can also be posting in related forums and including a link to your site in the signature. When you do this add some thing relevant to post or thread or you could get banned.

6. Create Buzz

Come up with lots of wild ideas and you might find one that actually works. Look at the million dollar home page!

7. Advertise Locally

Don’t forget about car stickers, road side signs, t-shirts, or sponsoring an event. A lot of not for profit companies hold events that allow sponsorship. In our area sponsoring a small event costs a few hundred dollars.

Google Releases Ad Manager

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Eric Barnes

Google Ad Manager

I just heard about this today and it sounds like it would be a great resource. I can see this as a nice solution for those of you running classified sites and want to start running banner ads. I would also like to point out that it says, “Directly-sold”. Meaning you would be responsible for the billing on your end.

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.

Features

Ad Manager offers a wealth of features to help you with:

  • Inventory management
  • Yield optimization
  • Ad targeting
  • Trafficking, ad delivery, and order booking
  • Creatives and rich media management
  • Reporting
  • User interface navigation
  • Account administration

I haven’t had a chance to create an account and test this yet and if anyone does please feel free to let me know how you like it.