Classifieds sites are gaining attention in the ecommerce world. AuctionBytes interviewed Dean La Velle, editor of Ocala4sale.com, to find out how eBay sellers may be utilizing classifieds sites. La Velle's company operates two such sites in Florida, Ocala4sale.com and Gainesville4sale.com.

AuctionBytes: Your company runs two online classifieds sites, can you tell me who uses them?

Dean La Velle: Our site is used by a startlingly diverse group. When I started with the company I pictured our average user as a mom with kids trying to find a bargain while getting rid of things her family had outgrown. It turns out many of our heavy users are men (our top ten pages include our ATV's page, Motorcycles page, RV's page, Boat page and Horse & Utility Trailer pages), judging from user feedback, surveys and anecdotal evidence. It looks like the gender breakdown in general is just about 50-50, while the income and age groups are all over the place. We have everything from several million-dollar horse farms to free swingsets, and everything in between, and that seems to bring in a wide range of visitors, most of them local.

AuctionBytes: Do serious or recreational eBay sellers use classifieds? Should they?

Dean La Velle: What eBay has a hard time moving - couches, lawn mowers, anything that's difficult to ship - we can help them sell. This is also true of recreational eBay sellers who would rather sell to someone local and save the headache and cost of shipping things that otherwise sell well on eBay - cars, heavy equipment and antiques, for instance.

AuctionBytes: If your site is free, how do you generate revenue?

Dean La Velle: Our free ads are all private-party only, but we offer business text ads starting at $16 per month. This is a great price for serious eBay sellers to move people to their auctions, and for eBay drop-off businesses to advertise locally. Any serious eBay seller should look into online classifieds as a way to get past the competition on eBay, and pick up customers who might be intimidated by eBay's size and complexity. What we offer eBay sellers is a local audience and the convenience and cost savings of not having to ship items. That localized expertise is what Meg Whitman talked about when she gave the rationale for buying into Craigslist. Online classifieds have figured out how to connect with local buyers and sellers, and help them connect with each other.

AuctionBytes: If your classifieds aren't connected to a newspaper, how do people learn about your sites?

Dean La Velle: We rank very well in Google, Yahoo, and MSN and that drives quite a lot of our traffic... and, of course, our users add us to their Favorites quite a lot! Our backend pages (the actual classifieds pages) are a big source of our search engine traffic. Once on those pages, our visitors then navigate to other sections and realize there's more here than meets the eye, then bookmark us.

We also have been very active advertising locally - billboards, lifestyle magazines, weekly newspapers, community sponsorships, and particularly through lettered advertising on our vehicles, which has been very effective. It's funny you mention newspapers - the local NY Times-owned paper not only hesitates to mention us in print, they refuse our paid advertising! I guess since we've published around 250,000 free ads in the past six years, they must realize we're cutting into their pie. As well, people find us because they're actively looking for something similar to what we do. They have something to sell, or they're looking for something used at a good price, and they we are!

http://www.ocala4sale.com

http://www.gainesville4sale.com