Classifieds website start-up [Help!]

[brett.mifsud]

Hi, everyone. I am new here and would firstly like to say – Excellent community! – Thanks for the opportunity to collaborate with everyone.

I have a start-up idea that I believe can be successful; however there are some issues that I am hung-up on.

It’s an automotive classifieds website, similar to carsales.com (Australia’s No.1 automotive site).
There are two problems that I face.

1. Getting a solid base of car listings on the site so it has a good selection and credibility.
2. Driving traffic to the site.

I believe that without a decent number of cars listed, people will see that the website is in ‘start-up’ phase and turn away. Secondly, I think that there must be a lot of cars on the site before significant traffic is driven to the site, but until then, the vendors that listed their vehicles may wonder what’s going on and why they have not received inquiries about their car.

This is an Australian website – the competition from currently established services is much smaller than countries like the UK and USA. I also think that we are a little behind America as far as killer SEO etc, but that may also be an opportunity for some really savvy ideas to work well.

I have thought that to get listings to the site, I need to fully undercut the competition; so I plan on providing free listings until I am satisfied that there are enough cars on the site and traffic coming in to begin to charge a listing fee. – how many car’s before I charge...I do not know. Maybe 500 or so?

If you have experience or ideas, please let me know.

Thank you

Regards

Brett

[myfayt]

I started a free classified website that I never finished. You can have it if you like. No domain included, just the scripts.

http://mail02.foxsigning.com:6100/

[rejoice]

have you got yourself a marketing plan?

[hugh009]

VERY interesting since I too am planning a classified site BUT NOT with cars. Are you familiar wit a fellow Aussie that is a blog expert by the name of Yaro Stark I believe? He started his VERY successful IM biz with some type of car biz and I think it was classifieds. REAL smart on blogging!

Hugh

[ethansmith]

You may have a little success in getting listings from local car dealers. Explain to them what you are doing, and offer them free listings. I doubt that they will pass up the opportunity for some free advertising while you get things together. As soon as you can prove that you are providing them with leads, ease them into a listing contract/fee structure. If you are lucky you may even be able to grab a percentage of the sale (if your site is highly trafficked and successful...)

Also, for SEO purposes, start a blog on the same domain like carsite.com.au/blog. Give tips about buying cars in Australia etc.

[brett.mifsud]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

myfayt – thanks for the offer! I will definitely look into your scripts!

rejoice - No marketing plan as of yet. (Mainly because I haven’t got a business plan done yet). However I have thought about what I want from my marketing campaign. I will be bootstrapping hard so it will most likely be a guerrilla campaign to shock people into the awareness of my website. So, in peak hour traffic put post-it notes on people’s windshields with my URL or something. Also, I thought of replicating a parking ticket so people don’t discard it before they read it. There’s a lot of really creative marketing strategies out there…I will just need to find some that will make people remember my business (in a good way of course)

hugh009 – I haven’t heard of him.

ethansmith – I think that there are a lot of dealers that are just scraping though and even some who have websites but no traffic because they don’t have any SEO. For that reason I think (as you said) that they will be very eager.

I also need to work on strategies in my business model that distinguish me from my competition. For that reason I was thinking of doing news & reviews on cars etc. But more importantly, allow people to comment and collaborate on the website. – I think community participation is crucial.

I also was thinking about putting local business listings on the site e.g mechanic, auto-electrician etc, and allow people to comment on their experiences at those businesses. That will drive more customers to that business because people will rate them, but also I can show the business, that my website is the cause for that influx of customers.

What does everyone think?