Less than a year ago I founded free local classifieds (iupost.com) that has much better user interface than Craigslist, easier ad posting process, and allows selling via PayPal. Unlike other websites that target specific niche, the content on iupost is all ads posted by users that can differ a lot from one another. People who do visit it like it a lot and post on it but I am struggling to find good method to drive traffic other than PPC.
Is there some specific promotional method that would work better for me than others?
Try social media optimization. A very good method now a days to get targeted traffics to your classifieds site. Join some of the popular social news network and participate there along with post your news with link to your site and attract more votes to promote your news to home page of that social news site.
advertising it more to get it well known. people like to go to classified ad sites that gives back traffic for them or gets their products or services sold.
Thanks a lot for all your feedbacks. Weblaunch can you please specify in more detail what do you mean in your comment? I am not sure I am following you.
Try some offpage search engine optimization like directory submission and social bookmarking. Those stuff really work in driving more traffic. The traffic turning into clients depends on your website.
He’s suggesting that you advertise in local print media (which could be newspapers, magazines, phsyical bulletin boards, etc).
I’d give you specific help but your website isn’t resolving (getting an error over here).
I suggest that you look at what Craigslist did. It started very locally and saturated itself with local listings. Then it gradually branches out to other locations, getting saturated with each one. Now it’s a global classifieds board as you well know.
It’s not a bad idea. People aren’t going to list or view your classifieds if you don’t have an audience or listing traffic. Getting listings from all over the place with an scattered audience isn’t enticing at all. Focus on getting your current city using it. Once again I can’t see your website so I’m just taking blind assumptions.
If you can get your current city using it, surrounding areas have an incentive to join. And then THEIR surrounding areas have an incentive to join.
If you decide to go down this route, your question then effectively becomes “How do I promote this locally” which is much less daunting than “How do I promote this generally.”
Try to get high PR in google. This will help u urs site up. Try all promotional technics like forum posting direcorie submission, Rss feed blogging etc
Focus on local search promotion by submitting your website in local search engines, directories and online yellow pages. More ways to cater local market;
