Classifieds: where commerce and community intersect

A little over a month ago, my team -- which usually focuses on things like hyper-local blogging and social networking -- did something that I think more newspapers should be thinking about. We launched a new self-serve classified ad placement tool that's focused on the future.

We call these enhanced online ads because they have nothing to do with print, and they leverage the online medium to the fullest extent. But what they really are is blogs reinterpreted as ads. We basically took our successful blogging engine, tied it to a secure payment gateway, tweaked some of the presentation and called the results classifieds.

This sounds simple, and it is -- but for newspaper classifieds it's a fundamental change. People on Bakersfield.com and our other local sites can now post an unlimited amount of rich text, pictures, and even audio and video (currently from YouTube) to tell stories about stuff they're selling. The result is something that's closer to eBay than traditional newspaper classifieds -- which I lovingly refer to as a "Haiku ads" because people forced to describe products in three lines using shorthand. By contrast, the new ads have lots of room to tell stories.

Enhanced online ads are fully integrated with our other community offerings, too. When you post an ad, you have the option to automatically link to your user profile so that people can see other things you're selling, in addition to your recent blog entries, comments, photos, articles and anything else you have contributed. We also include a link to post an ad right next to the button to submit a story, post a blog entry or post photos.

Another benefit of tying classifieds into our community platform is that we can provide fun new ways for people to shop by keywords in ads, just as people can browse for profiles by interest. We're having fun seeing which keywords are more popular -- something you can't do in traditional Classifieds which are organized by category. Well guess what? Portable keyboards is not a "classification" in our newspaper, but wow, there are already three ads with that keyword today. There are plenty of more utilitarian keywords too, like mowers and couches.

We like the tags because the let users tell each other what's hot in the marketplace right now, rather than having to always be locked into our rigid categories. And since the Classifieds are on all nine of our brands in Bakersfield, you can see how different products are of interest to different audiences. Bakotopia's keywords are naturally more eclectic than those on The Northwest Voice.

On the backend, we built a flexible tool that gives us granular control over pricing for each category. We can set the price to list (which is usually free for merchandise), the number of each upsell to include (such as photos and videos), and the cost for additional upsells. We can also set a package price that bundles upsells together for one fee. In this way, users have many choices over what to put in their ad and how much to pay, but if they don't want to get into the weeds they can just choose a package and proceed with composing their ads. It's not that different from buying a computer on the Dell or Apple Web site.

Yes, the ads are already making money. No, I can't tell you what the amount is (we don't release revenue information). But I can tell you that after just one month, the weekly revenue is already increasing at a fast clip and we're practically getting love letters from people thanking us for creating a better way to advertise locally.

I'm fully aware that many of the "content people" who follow me and the Bakomatic platform are probably yawning right about now because they think this has nothing to do with them. That's really unfortunate, because I would argue that this has more to do with user contributed content than a lot of other initiatives that fall into that category. Classified ads are the oldest form of user-contributed content in newspapers, right next to letters to the editor, and for a long time they were the only way that average people could get their messages out to the public without having to go through editorial gatekeepers. I'll never forget the award-winning journalist who once told me she got some of her best stories by looking for bizarre classified ads and calling the advertisers.

And that's just it: classifieds are stories that just happen to cost something to tell. Heavy users of eBay will tell you that the products with the most interesting stories get the most response and sell for more, and that can only happen because they have the space and tools to express themselves. It's gratifying to be able to say that in Bakersfield, people are already comparing enhanced ads to eBay, and thanking us for providing them when they get a call about their products in hours rather than days.

I can't wait to see what stories come out of our new enhanced online ads. In addition to making lots of money, I hope this results in our own local version of Antiques Roadshow.

Technorati Tags: Classifieds, community, Bakomatic