Looking at the Classifieds space in Australia, one website is striving to achieve a total solution in the free online classifieds marketplace.
iBUYandSELL - (upper casing intended) is a free online classifieds website for the Australian marketplace with some key differences seperating them from the large players occupying the majority of the market share - We caught up with the Sites solution designer and architect Ryan O'Connor to discuss what they are.
By users for users - this key functionality opens up the sites development lifecycle to an open public forum for the user community to discuss the sites future. Users can openly discuss and constructively criticise all aspects of the site to determine how development time should be better spent. "The goal here is to create a site that is ultimately a product of the user community, if all the content is user generated then the decisions that go into how and why development resources (and dollars) are spent should be a collaborative and majority decision of the user community" says Solution Architect for IBS Ryan O'Connor.
Open Social - IBS is completely free, and we intend to keep it that way forever."Many classified websites open up and provide limited time listings until the content is at a level where they can start charging a fee again, we will never charge for generic advertisements"
That being said there is a chargeable component that applies to Premium advertisements "to extend the sites flexibility and functionality we must provide users with the choice to give their content qualities which will give their advertisements better reach and circulation than others, this creates a micro economy that gives the content depth and dimension, otherwise we would struggle to provide any sort of logical algorithm to show listings in"
The other main reasons for including this chargeable component into the site is to fund development and maintenance of the site. "we are ultimately providing a free service, however let me tell you that the development, maintenance and ongoing support does come at a cost unfortunately - IBS promises to plug 25% of any revenue generated straight back into improving and maintaining the site, forever"
Staying Green - IBS is also affiliated with many conservation projects in Australia, and plan to contribute 10% of the sites revenues towards the projects "We are passionate about Australia and wildlife conservation, and we intend to make our contribution to many conservation projects within Australia"
Australian Partners - IBS is always looking for other firms and organisations to get involved in our project, we invite any organisation that has any interest to contact us enquiries@ibuyandsell.com.au
IBuyandSell Australia is nearing launch we should see this in beta for general release by May 2010
