If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that Jay and I run a small, fairly successful classified site network in Oakville, Mississauga and Burlington. We’ve been running them for years now, and in fact they were the first sites that Jay and I developed together.
For a long time, we’ve been trying to get the script re-built from the ground up - and now finally after several false starts, we’ve managed to get it complete… almost. We’re in the final testing stages before going live. Part of the reason it took so long to develop is we were trying to get it done for fairly cheaply, and it was difficult to find a reliable programmer who could work within our budget. We actually started the project with several coders who eventually petered out on us, but fortunately they hadn’t been given a deposit and we weren’t out any money when they left us.
We finally found someone to do the script several months ago, and he has just about completed it. It’s really come together quite nicely, and I think our users will be very impressed. Not only does the site incorporate some neat AJAX functionality, but we’ve added features that will make both administrative tasks easier, and improve user experience.
Users can now register (optional), and if they do, they are able to see when their ad is approved and can delete it when they are no longer interested. Also, paying advertisers are now able to place automatically-posting text ads that will be posted once a week. We’ve also revamped the design to give the sites a fresh new look.
The real changes come into play on the admin side. Not only have we added several structural changes to increase the number of indexed pages Google has on us, but we’ve added a banner management tool (previously, adding banners had to be done manually, and it was time consuming).
Running classified ad sites for a few years has given us a unique perspective on the kind of repetitive problems that you run into over and over. The major headache is people posting ads that require a paid subscription… previously, we’d have to manually email them and tell them they must buy advertising to advertise their business. To solve this problem, we’ve added a 3 step system: once we flag a message business, the script will check an advertiser list, and if the post is not on that list, then it checks if the user has any warnings already. Finally, it springs into action. On a first warning, the user is sent a nice message explaining how our site works in terms of advertising. The second warning is a sterner message that informs the user that another infraction will result in a ban, and finally the third warning adds the poster onto the ban list and they are no longer allowed to post ads.
Jay and I are both really pleased with how this script has turned out, and we may even decide to package it as an electronic product and use it as a new product we can sell for money. I’ve always wanted to have a library of high quality scripts to sell from a website.
Good Profits.
