The old joke, "What's black and white and read all over?" may become outdated soon, since newspapers are no longer an exclusive resource. The Internet has changed the way we seek information and "things" — jobs, used cars, kittens and even out-of-print first edition novels can all be found with a few mouse clicks and some basic research.
With millions of Internet users looking for employment, products and various tangibles, a classified advertising section on your e-commerce site could help attract traffic, build community and create content. You may even be able to pick up some used merchandise for yourself too.
You can design your classified section to sell specific items related to your content. However, make sure the items being posted don't conflict with what's being sold on your site. You could have inadvertently set up some competition with yourself.
By creating a job board, you can offer an alternative to the extra-heavy Sunday newspaper classified section where one typically spent the entire day poring over the 5-point type and circling the alphabetized listings with a red pen. The job postings can be industry or geographically specific (or both) and it will allow you to create a valuable networking service. Your classified job listings could be become a page that gets bookmarked and virally marketed.
Bravenet
offers a free customizable classified advertising section. Registration earns you the bit of code that allows you to easily implement the board on your Web site. e-Classifieds has different levels of classified advertising software — Free, Lite, Basic, Photo, Standard, Professional, Commerce, Premium — to address various needs.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
