Rich i have suggestion

With the Rebirth of Herpwantads.com (GREAT IDEA) i was wondering and with talking to a few people and the classifieds here do seem to be a "slow road" i will be honest i do try to post things here as often as possible and at the same time i do post on the " other site aswell" unfortunately in the many years i have been here i have only sold 2 items on the classifieds here .I know you have said that they are picking up but im not so sure that the actual "use" of them picking up is making a differnce in the sales side of them and i think its mainly due to the fact that so many ads are left up for what seems like ages .I noticed on the herpwantads site that ads there have a "shelf life " if you will they run for .and then they drop off the radar screen so to speak .Also with such depth included in the classifieds here i do think that it ads some confusion to many people and more or less gives them the feeling of being overwhelmed searching them .I havea suggestion and may have already offered it im not sure ....
would it be possible to do a redirect on the classifieds section and link it to herpwant ads ? like if a person is looking for boas and they come here and click on the classifieds section have it narrowed down to a degree for boas,pyrhons etc etc and have it redirct them to the herpwantads site in the appropriate heading ?

so if i clicked on the boa classifieds here it would send me right into the boa section of herpwant ads ? i think that the auto culling feature you have there would benifit you and the users and advertisers in general that would keep ads from just piling up for months on end of items people dont delete when sold or no longer offered . just a thought i had in my meager lil brain

The HerpWantAds site is offered in addition to the classifieds here on FaunaClassifieds, NOT a replacement. I think the more avenues a person has to be able to offer their merchandise for sale, the better. Also, from an advertising and name recognition standpoint, the more places people see your name, the better it is for you.

I've said this time and time again, that if any business gets itself locked in to where their entire business is under the control of a single individual, they are just asking for trouble sooner or later.

As far as the number of ads in the classifieds section here is concerned, if there is one thing I have learned, it is that traffic draws traffic. People tend to want to post their ads in places where there already appears to be a large amount of trafiic. Sometimes you HAVE to leave old ads in place in order to have the appearance to people that there is enough traffic there for them to want to post their ads.

But is that REALLY a problem here? I just took a look at the Ball Python classified ads section and there are 1,592 ads placed there. I had to go back to page 7 before I got to the ads that were more than a month old. If someone is going to be scanning through ALL of the ads and haven't found what they are looking for within the first 7 pages, then maybe they are looking for something that just is not easy to be found. And on the other hand, if they found this "difficult to find" item on page 30 and it was an ad 6 months old, well at least they found it! Is that really a drawback? To find an old ad for what they wanted rather than NO ad at all? At least they could likely contact that person, and just maybe the item is still available after all.

Yes, I believe traffic to the classifieds is definitely increasing here. Old habits die hard, it seems, but people will go to where the classifieds are being posted, no matter where that is. There is no logical reason at all why people would be more prone to buy from one site over the other, except that the more traffic there is, the more likely it is that a buyer will bite on your ad.

It's up to the sellers to crank up the engine here. The ads have to be here to bring the potential sellers to look at them. I could beat myself into the ground and get all of the potential buyers in the world to come here, but if there is nothing being advertised that they want to buy, what would be the sense of doing that? It doesn't cost you even a dime to post your ads here, so even if just one bears fruit you have a positive cost benefit on your side for nothing more than the minor effort it took to post that ad.

How much more cost effective can you get than that?

Yeah, perhaps it is a slow road, but at least it is a road, and a free one at that. And certainly it is not going to stay a slow road if everyone puts at least a small effort into making this THE place to come to search for classified ads. This is really up to you all. I'm doing the best I can to give you all of the opportunities available to allow your business to survive, no matter what happens or who you might get on the wrong side of some day. Don't believe for an instant that it can't happen to YOU.

Rich

Dont take what i posted wrong i and im sure 98% of the others do appriciate what you offer here for us for FREE!! no mistaking that point one Iota (sp ) and i do understand your postion on it .
alan

Heck, I didn't take your suggestion as being any sort of negative thing, Alan. I just answered it as simply and directly as I could.

People will just go where the ads are, no matter where that is. It is the people selling the products that will create the traffic patterns of commerce. If they post the ads, there is certainly enough traffic on this site that it is now self sustaining and self growing. ALL of the new registrations to this site have been primarily from word of mouth referrals from current members and other sites linking here. The tide IS turning.