Classified Ads websites are helping many small businesses to post free classified ads and get their brand to reach their audience easily. With a single entity, sellers and buyers get connected and can sell and buy products or services that are locally available.
The classified platform is well-customized and organized which will help users easily search and find products or services by getting into relevant categories. By seeing the popularity of the online classified business, every aspiring entrepreneur started searching for a ready-to-use classified script, and some even plan to start a classified website from scratch.
Online classified business: Trends
You may be curious to know more about online classified business models right now. But before that, you need to know the latest trends in this classified industry that will help you to focus more on the business model to choose for your online classified business.
Mobile advertisements
By 2027, it has been projected that 54% of online classified business revenue would be generated through mobile devices. The rise in the use of mobile wallets is one of the key drivers and this is going to help online advertisers promote their brand by giving more offers for users paying through wallets and can expect some unbelievable turnover.
Enhanced videos and images
Buyers get more information about the product or service when they are described in the form of a video or an image. When we take the real estate industry, 84% of buyers have admitted that they would prefer a property that doesn’t have any images or videos on the website. This shows that ads that contain videos and images have a better conversion rate.
Online classified business model transition
There is a tremendous change in the business model of classified websites in recent days. It is not just allowing sellers to post their ads and earn profit from them. Online classified businesses have started adopting multiple marketplace business models that will let the admin earn commission from each sale, subscription fee, membership fee, and many more.
Utilizing Big Data
Big Data has become one of the most important considerations in the online classified industry. With this advanced data-driven technology, advertisers can easily analyze their target audience, forecast customer behavior, and many more aspects can be determined. Every online classified business website collects users’ information at the time of registration and the data is going to be well-used in the future with the help of Big Data.
Adopting Artificial Intelligence
Corporations have started to invest more in AI technology in recent days. Artificial Intelligence has more to contribute in escalating classified businesses. For eg. In job classified business, AI can easily identify the right candidate who will suit the job position. It can go through the resume and can check the qualification, experience, and many other factors and will get us the best candidate in seconds. AI can also be used as a span detector and can protect your classified website from spam and other cyber-attacks.
What are the common online classified business models?
The business model concerns the main aspects of the business. If you plan to start a classified website then you need to choose the right business model which will determine how you are going to deliver your service to customers, how will you bring revenue and what are the sources of revenue, and many more.
Transaction-based online classified business model
This is the classic way of bringing revenue to the platform. The admin can directly sell his product or service to the end-user who can be a company(B2B) or a consumer(B2C). the admin can set the margin for the product/service and can get profit by selling them.
Admin can follow different pricing tactics to sell his product or service. If the product is software, then he can charge a one-time license fee, or users can be allowed to subscribe to the software package and renew it periodically, or even they can pay whenever they use it.
Pros
The admin of the classified business portal will get complete control over pricing.
Cons
The admin needs to handle the financial sales pressure as the product is directly sold to the end user.
Advertisement-based online classified business model
This is one of the best online classified business models that is being used for more than a decade. You can sell ad spaces from your classified website and can let any third-party advertisers post their ads in those spaces.
The advertisement charges can be set by the admin of the platform and advertisers can negotiate the price with the admin and finalize the price. The ad space will be given for a certain period. Once the period ends, the advertisers cannot use the space.
Pros
There is a strong demand for advertisement spaces and you can charge well from advertisers.
This will increase your website traffic instantly and also organically.
Cons
This is a secondary revenue stream and you cannot let advertisements of third-party users distract your audience and get landed on their pages.
