In order to promote your site, I would suggest you to learn and research about SEO, I think at first you need to learn from many famous and largest websites about SEO, SEM such as: Searchengineland, Searchenginewatch, Searchenginejournal, Moz,...they're all giving free basic SEO, SEM techniques and courses that you can follow up and practice as well. After that, you should apply these techniques on your own real website with your domain and hosting, try your best to practical daily as much as possible.

I believe that you can get the result after some months you try hard.

Good luck to you,

What type of classifieds ? and can you take feeds from other sites ? to give your site listings to attract other listings ?

Promote it locally then regionally then wider. You can also fill it with content from other website using "guest" user/member that you can create on your own. Ask your friends, family and close people around you to help you fill it with anything possible.

Buy a solo ad in a newsletter in your niche offering free or discounted listings to get the site filled with content. Then hire an SEO expert to help it show up in the SERPS.

What goals are you trying to accomplish with your site ? What are the benefits of using your products and services ?
Did you engage on twitter using either polls or surveys to get feed back ?

How is your site better than Craigslist or the Facebook marketplace? You'll have to know how to convince people of the advantages of your site.

Who will buy and sell on your site? Everyone or a small niche market? Go where those people are and advertise your site. It will be a lot easier to track down a small group of people than try to run ads for the entire world.

For instance, I'm a member of a site that runs classified for magicians. I've also seen them for guitar players.

Figure out your target market and go where they are.

Rose

I hate to be a debbie downer, but classifieds are not as popular as they used to be, and people already have their favorite sites picked out, and it has taken many years for those sites to build up to what they are today...

I would highly recommend that you hire someone to make a
niche click funnel site for you; I think you will be more satisfied,
and it will not take you 10-20 years to get it off the ground...

right now, i feel that you are throwing money in the toilet...
(I should know as I have already been there...)

kmnkumaran,

I suggest you offer a free classified ads to get some traction going on your site. Not sure classified ads are a way to go, aren't they dying?

Chris

Don't listen the naysayers, if you have the will to go, go for it, just go for it. Amazon is taking over all the small business so should small business owner just put some cans on the side of the road and ask for some spare change? Ridiculous....


Classified sites is not going to be overnight success. There is branding involved. People should right on their head think about your site when posting, but they won't bother to do that unless their ad is going to be seen. So, how can you get them to have them see their ads. Can you print some flyers and advertise locally? If you are just going to put a classified site for one particular city, you will have better chance of success. After that it is constantly pushing your website in people's mind. You can do that, by making your site go viral. Once it does goes viral then direct the visitor in some way to check out your classified site. There is a lot of branding involved with classified site. Can you do it? You can, if you can get hordes of people to visit your site. If you've got the skill and mindset to drive traffic. You can have a thriving and successful classified site.

Ridiculous is right. I think you should get out sometime.

Show of hands, who will post an ad on an empty site with zero traffic? Don't be shy, put them up.

What's that, there are too many alternative options with a lot of traffic?

Ahh, come on, just go for it!!

Brent

You can promote your new classified sites on social media platforms like facebook, twitter, pinterest. Also you can promote via ad posting on other ad posting sites.

its targeted at a particular country and classifieds are very very popular here as there is huge demand for jobs housing and automobiles which people always refer to classified

of course there are numerous classifieds already and some newspapers have their own online classifieds

But i think there is still room for a new classifieds and the only issue is the starting point to get the listings filled up

Thanks for the suggestions

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Do business listing, it is very effective for brand awareness.
Social Media is the best platform to promote your new business

Dont do it. Abandon the project now. A brand new classified site wont earn you money. How will you compete with Craigslist? You already have empty categories and listings. You will blow all your money going this route. Pick another niche to operate in. This niche/income model is already tapped out - and mostly non-lucrative.

First I would pay someone to populate the site so it doesn't look totally bare. Then I would start using SEO

Even a classified ad site has opportunities for using "regular" content.

Consider a section with articles/videos that describe how to write effective ads. At minimum, you could have four pieces of relevant content -- one on how to post ads on your site, along with tips for ads offering jobs, housing, and automobiles. You could also add a page with different abbreviations used in ads in your country and what they mean.

All could be relevant for SEO as well as garnering links from other sites.

Another possibility is placing similar content on other publishers' sites. You could end up with both a spurt of direct traffic and some good backlinks.

Look for possible opportunities offline. Maybe it's a premium listing consisting of a listing on your site and inclusion in a space ad you take out in a local paper (if such a thing is available in your country).

On a related topic, how do you plan to differentiate yourself from the already established sites? What will make your site different/better than the classifieds offered by the local paper, for example?

Figuring that out will give you something besides a "me, too" site to promote.

You are trying to the social Media site. I believe the Social Media site is the best place to promote any site. Carry on, you will be succeed. Thanks for your advance.

If a user thinks your ads are fake why would they add new ads?

Brent

If you want to promote as soon as, then PPC is best way and perform SEO on it. It will surely helps you.....

I built a strong classified site with this method.

I gave away free adds for six months. Ffor the next 6 months I charged $1. At the end of the first year I slowly raised the prices, but offered past advertisers the ability to buy credits to run ads at the old prices.

It took 2 years to make any money but wound up generating $750 to $1000 per month, regularly after 2 years.

Some might say that's more trouble than it's worth, but this is the closet thing to that much sought after 'passive income' you'll find. The question is, are you willing to wait 2 years to make any money?

Obviously you need to be doing something else to generate income until it starts to produce revenue.

No one is getting rich in classifieds outside of the major players. If you're looking for overnight income - move along. There's nothing to see, here.

Thank you.

P.S. I also built a directory site and cross-promoted them.

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I once created a site like this.

You need at least $ 100 per day to:

branding
seo
backlinks
publicity
upload videos to youtube
socil signal
and 200 other website optimization.

Trust me.
You just do not have a secret recipe

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You can post ads on other classifieds like Craigslist and Backpage, Print ads in news papers and magazines, Pay per click ads, forums, YouTube, Instagram.

Good, already you are working in the right way. The Social media site play an vital role in the field of Traffic. Beside this, you can increase your site back link more & more. Thanks for your advance.

Sorry for any typos, grammatical errors or poor sentence structure. I was in a hurry.

I'm not going to go into great detail in what I am telling you, but it's not rocket science and you should be able to understand what I am telling you, at least one level down without me having to explain it. If you need clarification on any particular point, just ask and I'll do my best to explain further.

Here is what I did and did not do to promote my site.

1 Join your local Chamber of Commerce/and or local Business Cooperative. This shouldn't cost more than $100 per year and is basically all you need to spend to get the ball rolling. (I started my own business coop so I could offer advertising, marketing and promotional services with discounted pricing based upon the concept of group purchasing). They allow you to make direct offers to other Chamber members and will promote your offer via their website, their monthly newsletter and their new member info packets. Supply the Chamber with the link to an Opt-In page. This is important as you will see, later.

2. Offer all Chamber members the following:

a. Six months of unlimited free classified listings, as long as they place one listing during the first 30 days to 'lock in' the offer and to get them to actually post at least one listing as soon as possible.

b. After they post an ad, contact the company and tell them that you are extending the invitation to all of their employees through the same opt-in page, whether it be 10 or 1000 employees. They have their own in-house organs for disseminating this type of information.

c. Your first message in your email series should be clear that they, too, need to place at least one listing in order to avail themselves of the 6 months of unlimited free listings.

d. As each listing is placed, contact that person and tell them that you are going to extend the offer to any family member or friend that they would like to pass it along to. Have them direct the person to the opt-in page and continue this process. In a mater of weeks your offer will have been presented to many thousands of people for them to get 6 months of free listing on your site, as long as they post one listing in the first 30 days. Of course, you can create a greater sense of urgency by shortening that to any length of time that you deem appropriate.

So far - you haven't spent a penny beyond your Chamber membership.

Next.

Set up some special fund-raising programs for non-profits. As an example, call your local SPCA type organization and tell them that you will wave all listing fees in order for them to promote an opportunity for local residents to offer up something for sale during a certain time period with the proceeds of the sales going to the organization. Also - Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, the list is endless. If you want maximum bang for your buck (the first one of which you haven't even spent, yet) organize a bunch of charities to do this over the same time frame. Not only will you get a great deal of (FREE) local press coverage, that can go beyond print into radio and TV, you will develop lasting relationships with organizations that view you as a benefactor. They eat this sort of thing, up.

Next:

Have business cards printed with the above offer and mail 100 or more to each Chamber member with a retail location and tell them that they should give one to each customer as a way of saying 'thank you' for their business. The business looks great without spending a dime and you are finally starting to spend a little money, printing and mailing the cards. Quit your bitching. So far you have put your site in front of thousands of people for almost nothing.

There is no harm at this point in asking the retail business owners if it might be possible to place a banner ad at the bottom of their home page - linking to your site. As soon as you hear, "Well, I have no objection to that, but I wouldn't know where to start," you may have just found yourself a client for website management and/or development. You have now opened the door to an unlimited array of products and services you can offer this business, ad infinitum, going forward. Videos, color printing, t-shirts, EDDM mailings and the list goes on and on - hence the use of the aforementioned 'ad infinitum.' Of course you don't do any of those things, or maybe you do. If not, this is why God created outsourcers.

Don't waste your time with anything other than the most perfunctory SEO, back linking or any other such nonsense. I don't even use Social Media. It's just not necessary - but if it floats your boat, go for it. If you find yourself having the time to do SEO, SM, backlinking and all the rest that goes with it, you are NOT building your site organically, at a very local level. You are 'local' and almost 100% of your growth is going to come from word-of-mouth and local promotion. Sure - you can follow the basic prescribed rules by aping what is generally recommended for IM, but if you want to grow, quickly, eschew all of the things you think you have to do and think outside the box.

Additionally, if you combine this with a directory site (which unfortunately costs a bit to seed) and a lead generation site, you can be king in your local area. I had the following under the business coop: Directory site, Classified site, Lead Generation site, a City guide, Deal site and I tied it all together with a local Internet radio station that provided business information to local businesses as well as 30 minute shows, 'spotlighting' various business that were willing to pay $90 a pop and I was able to automatically schedule their show to rerun on various days at different times, for a measly $5 per replay. These are basically 30 minute commercials for the business, but presented in a format that appears to be built on the premise of 'imparting of wisdom' to other business owners. Ego rules, especially in business. The fees add up quickly, and once you get the spot into your broadcasting software, it's about as 'passive' as any income can be. I realize you may have no interest in these ancillary income producers, but I just want you to be totally aware of what you could do, if you wanted to.

There are dozens of ways to do this, either small, with one site, or full-bore, if you're energetic and like to think big. Most things have been done to death and are trotted-out in the same mundane, rote formula. That's why few succeed.

One thing to keep in mind about suggestions that you will get on how to move forward on building your site. Most of it will come from people that have never built anything like this, if anything at all, but if nothing else have memorized the "secret formula.' I'm calling bullshit on that. lol

I have more, but this should get your started and I'm pressed for time. Holler if you need more ideas and as I get time, I'll append with other things I have used.

Good luck.

Thanks for the ideas. But i understand all that in reference to Normal blogs etc...about seo and writing blogs........ But classifieds is different from blogs and needs to have user posted latest info like things wanted or for sale ..sellers and buyers..

I know i can do ads but when people come and see an empty site most of them will go away not interested. the reason i say this is I tried that

And I dont want to put fake ads

and I dont want to write articles and blogs about how my classifieds is so wonderful

Thanks for all members comments and suggestions But I was looking for any Practical suggestions about classified and not just normal sites or blogs

You could do what Airbnb did and use a script to contact authors of Craigslist listings and suggest they post to your site as well. Airbnb did this for rental listings in their early days with much success.

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For promote your new classified site you need to do SEO in your site also make sure on and off page SEO...
Another important things is make high quality and strong backlink which definitely help your ranking.

You can first collect the email address and mobile number of the people who used free classified website for ad posting. You can contact them and tell to post ads on your website.
Also be active on Social Networking sites and share the ads of your website as much as possible.

I'd say look for the lists of classified sites and then add your website there in either comment section or ask the webmaster to include yours in the list too. In Such posts you will be targeting the already interested audience.

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For promoting your classified site you should perform SEO activities like Bookmarking, Image sharing, Article, Blogs, Analyze your competitor backlinks and activities, Keyword research.

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Hi please check below details to promote classified sites:
1. Advertise
2. SEO
3. Use Social Media
4. Build your Email List

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I have just picked this thread up - albeit a little late but if people still want advice for what it is worth I have a directory site not to dissimilar to a classified ads site.. I have a niche directory site local to a particular area. I generate around $1,200 per month passive from this one site.. My advice would be to get a press release for you site.. and defiantly write decent stories information in regards to your site that people find interesting. Once you have awareness you will have your own promotion and people will contact you to advertise.. It is not difficult but time and persistent to the site are important..

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