New Ideas To Use 68 Classifieds

[seymourjames +]

An idea which some of you may like to consider for the script as a future project.

I have a deal going with an estate agent to publish just his listings of French property. He is not willing to pay for the site itself or posting listings of his houses (estate agents in France like everywhere are under a lot of financial pressure) but he is willing to pay for leads generated from it. Its a different business model and becoming increasingly popular. With this site French Property it also returns revenue from google ads. So it has 2 revenue streams. Generating leads can be lucrative for big ticket items like property or plots land. There are other items too like boats dealers, car dealers, industrial items, etc. In the case of my site - I can charge $15 a lead from a potential buyer's lead. The site is of course closed to other advertisers and search engine optimized around the subject of property in france. It also sends a copy of the email contact to me too so there is no argument with the agent. It only requires one small change in the contactus.php file to achieve that.

[Lhotch +]

Very clever idea David. Are you posting the ads on the classifieds or is he?

[seymourjames +]

Either of us can.

I hide the login and register links of course on the template and exclude them in robots.txt. I also only display the 'place an ad link' when a user (i.e me or him) is logged on.

To be safe it is also best to redirect the register page using .htaccess -

Redirect permanent /userjoin.php ]http://www.mydomain.com/

For this French Property , I actually have a custom module for importing xml feeds of all his properties from his back office system. It makes it pretty quick when a dealer or in this case an agent has many listings. Sometimes we add properties manually or modify them. I can see lots of potential markets for using the script this way on high value items which cannot be sold per se online.

[Blair +]

I hate to be a stick in the mud but.....
In many states, it is illegal for real estate agents to pay referrals to anyone who does not have a real estate license.

That does not mean that your concept could not be applied to other markets (like boat dealers, RV dealers, car dealers, etc.) just real estate.

[Lhotch +]

One could argue that the agent is paying for advertising via the site. The site simply charges a $15 per e-mail sent to the agent

[Blair +]

Originally Posted by Lhotch

One could argue that the agent is paying for advertising via the site. The site simply charges a $15 per e-mail sent to the agent

Oh yes! There are many ways to skin a cat. My intent was not to discourage it but rather be aware of the pitfalls.

[seymourjames +]

Same in many countries for real-estate if you are attempting to conduct an actual transaction but this is advertising per click or email. Otherwise any website anywhere with property listings would need a license and that means half the classified sites out there would be breaking the law and so would google (they don't have a license last time I checked). It is no different than making a site for them in reality. My point anyway is high value items can be marketed this way using the 68C script with a few minor modifications.

As per se, the point it may become illegal in certain places is if you start to communicate back with the potential buyer (i.e. encouraging them) . You have then entered into a negotiation. I simply log the emails sent to the seller and charge him accordingly. Sorry - should be clear.

[seymourjames +]

Seems to be going well - Projects. If anyone is interested in build sites like these as single advertiser sites using 68C which is a great vehicle for doing so then please contact me. I can think of many scenarios where customers do not want competitive ads.