Why are my listings not showing up?

One of our main objectives is to offer complete and relevant listings to enhance our user experience. When a user is looking for something specific, say "real estate in Mumbai", our search results for those listings should be relevant without any spam, repeat or incomplete listings.

To accomplish that we have a list ranking system in place that weeds out bad listings with a score set below a certain threshold. A listing could also be rejected if it is incomplete, inappropriate, repeat listings (within a specific time period), MLM listings, get rich quick schemes, listings for ad clicking services, etc. The listing that you post should confirm to our "editorial guidelines".

When you post your listing, please make sure it is complete with clear title, adequate description and it's in the right category with your correct email address (we validate the email!).

How to gain better exposure to my listings?

Well, the answer is Premium listings. Premium listings are a great way to showcase your listing to hundreds of thousands of customers visiting our site. Ofcourse it does cost a little money (starting at $1, see rate card below), fraction of what you would typically spend on a newspaper listings or other indian classifieds sites that charge an arm and a leg.

All premium listings are run for 30 days with a guaranteed priority "sticky" listing in our homepage for 24 hours.

Rate card for premium listings:

1) Premium listings with Bold, Border and Highlight - $1
The adtype, item title and location are highlighted.

2) Picture - $2
In addition to the above you can include a picture with your listing.

3) Picture slide show - $3
You can add upto 5 pictures and we will have them in a slide show format.

4) Homepage featured (Basic) - $4
This gives you the ultimate exposure. Under the "Featured Classifieds" section of the homepage your listing will be rotated at the top and botton of the homepage and in all search pages.

5) Homepage featured (with picture) - $5
In addition to the above you can include a picture.

6) Homepage featured (with picture slide show) - $6
This option includes homepage featured listing with picture slide show.

Our stats consistently show that premium listings receive more response compared to the free listings. It's no surprise 50% of our total listings are "Real Estate" listings. Folks, you can't get a better deal than this, give it a try.

How to post a premium listing?

It's very simple. Click on "Post" to list and follow the instructions to make payment, upload any pictures and you are done.

For additional information click on "Premium".

New ad campaign - what do you think?

Our new ad campaign is set to start by the end of next month. We are considering the following image ads for our new ad campaign across our partner sites. The idea is to keep the ad clean, simple and to the point! Just like our site. :)

The new ad campaign (above) will be replacing our current advertsing campaign (below) that we have been running for the past 6 months...

Please let us know your thoughts.. good, bad, any fresh ideas!

The basics - Posting/Editing/Deleting your listings

Ok.. it's simple. You click on "Post" to post your listing from anywhere in indianClassifieds.com and the listing will appear on our homepage. The order of the listings displayed will be First In First Out (FIFO) in our homepage.

No registration, username or password is necessary to post or view the listings.

When you post the listings, the content will get into a buffer, checked against few metrics (spams, in-appropriate listings, editorial, etc) and gets released into our homepage. There might be a delay between the time you post and when the listing appears on the homepage.

Here are few key items to consider:

• Post your listings with concise title, clear description and in the right category
• Complete well written listings will at times have higher listing ranking compared to other listings, plus it will be syndicated via RSS, Mobile, etc
  
• Listings with EXCESSIVE capitalization will be ignored
  
• Repeat listings for the same items and MLM listings will be ignored
  

We will be introducing a new feature in the coming weeks for you to manage your own content in your listing. When you post a listing you will get a confirmation email which you can use it to Publish, Edit, Delete your listing. We will officially make an announcement here when it is available.

• Next week we will cover the basics on our Premium listings
• Week after that we will cover indian Classifieds for your Mobile ^new!
  

The beginning - first innings

A little history.

We started IC (our acronym for "indian Classifieds") in late 2001 to dabble with Java and ASP. The idea was to learn these languages and the first application that we created was a simple classifieds service that is easy to use. We ran the entire site with just three key files - post, index, and search.

We officially launched the site in early 2002 with some basic features to list classifieds. Soon we realized we needed a decent domain name for our site. All the good one's were already taken (duh!) and when we saw indianClassifieds.net was available we picked it up for around $9.

We also bought the indianClassifieds.com domain but we had to pay a few grand. Looking at the web analytics for organic searches today buying the indianClassifieds.com domain name seems like a good investment.

We have added number of features over the past year based on user feedback. We have a number of new exiting features in our plan of record that is actively being worked on and we will be releasing them shortly. We are in the process of testing several key features, more on those in the coming weeks. Our search engine is based on keyword search - though no Google, it works very well, check it out.

We will be using this blog to communicate and to get feedback on new features, marketing ideas, etc. We have lots of fun doing this and putting our creative energy to work.

Until next week, good bye!