If you haven’t heard, Ebay launched a free classifieds site called Kijiji.com sometime last summer.  The site has started to gain momentum among consumers the past couple of months.  Since then, it has grown from 362,000 visitors in July, 2007 to 1.8 million in January, according to comScore.

This is a great indicator for those who doubt that the local market is exploding.  This however, is more bad news for traditional media newspapers.  The internet continues to change consumer habits and the focus has gone from global to local with the current trend manifesting.  

As technology continues to advance, classifieds are evolving from the traditional stale black and white text.  Classifieds have become huge revenue earners in the online local market.  They will be mandatory for any developed geo domains wanting exponential growth.  

Do you have a free classifieds section on your developed geo domain?  If not, you are leaving alot of consumer needs on the table.  Consumers are addicted to classifieds, they are either looking for great deals, or listing them.  The word “free” builds traffic and loyalty, all while bringing in advertising dollars. 

Once you build loyalty and traffic, then you can start charging listing fees.  I have seen many geo sites that do not offer this and only focus on advertisers.  Remember, consumers bring in advertisers, so do not forget about their needs.  Your number one priority should be to meet or improve consumer needs before even thinking  about improving advertising needs. 

On a different note, what was ebay.com thinking when they chose the domain Kijiji.com for their local classfieds.  It just goes to show you that big media, even though they have been online all these years, has lost touch with effective internet branding.  Imagine having to pronounce this website to a friend or even spell it.  The only reason it has been successful with traffic is because it is linked on every ebay.com internet property.  ebay.com is a top 10 company for internet traffic.  So many great names to chose from and ebay picks Kijiji.com, go figure! 

2008 is proving to be the breakout year for traditional print media to embrace internet technology.  The internet is continuing to change traditional media strategies.  Yesterday, I posted about a media company abandoning their print newspaper.  One of the main reasons they decided to do so, was not pubicly mentioned.  The secret reason you ask, is a large decline in publication advertising in print editions.  Print classifieds have continued to plumit through recent years as consumers embrace the internet to search for products of interest.  

This evolution has launched the new era of local advertising platforms and strategies.  Businesses are seeking more cost-effective ways to generate traffic to their brick and mortar shops.  Advertising online has become cheaper and more effective in generating traffic for most industries. 

Two of the major revenue earners for print classifieds are auto and realestate classifieds.  These two areas are being targeted by many companies.  Autobytel is taking advantage of the decline of print auto classifieds by offering a new service.  Autobytel has launched a cost effective local marketing platform called LocalConnect on MyRide.com that allows a conumer to shop dealerships in their local area.  

With local internet technology changing so fast and taking away from print media in large numbers, it is only a matter of time before traditional media moves completely online through a targeted geo domain to fulfill consumer needs.

There are a few readers of this blog that are in excellent positions when classifieds are completely abandoned in print and provided 100% online. 

You can read the complete article via theAutoChannel.com