blog.backpage.com

No doubt, times are tough. We’d like to help out any way we can by making it easier for job posters to staff that position they have available now that they gave that overpaid Steve from accounting the axe. Or help the down-on-their-luck find that second job to pay down their mortgage, Van Halen tribute bands (DLR era only – none of that pansy Hagar crap) book that sweet Bar Mitzvah gig or help you sell that car or truck before the bank repo’s it. Whatever the case may be, Backpage is here to help.

• …lowering the price on sponsor ads by 25% in select categories in all cities indefinitely (or until the IRS recognizes our clearly tax deductible contributions to the “Backpage.com Foundation”).
• …improving the auto repost feature in most categories to allow users to repost ads more frequently. Categories that are effected will see the durations fall from 7 days to 3 days.
• …currently testing a feature that will allow users to instantly repost their ads to the top of the listings. This will allow users to attract more visibility to their ads.
• …launching a promo code, good in all markets, for all ads and ad upgrades for 10% off all purchases. In celebration of how clever we are, we’ve named that promo code BAILOUT (expires 3/31/2009).

Another reason to support the Backpage Bailout Movement? This year we’re aiming to build more fuel efficient and green, Earth-friendly ads and with your help, we can get there. Additionally, January has proven to be a strong month for us. As the the Alexa.com Traffic Rank Trend graph below illustrates, even in a tough economy users are still posting ads and using backpage.com regularly.

Craigslist will start charging for erotic services soon. Backpage.com has been doing this for years.  It is perhaps the best way to reduce the prank postings, illegal postings, and postings by under aged users.

Not many solutions for user content generated sites are perfect when it comes to content quality. Craig will face some of the same challenges we face. While there is fraud with employer postings, it is significantly higher in adult. I outlined a few challenges below.

Stolen credit card use

Users “borrow” credit cards from friends, family, or customers. 

Stolen credit card use is just a lot higher in adult categories. We usually hear from the owner of the credit card one month later by a phone call or charge back. Meanwhile, the ad was up the whole time and the user was able to get away with the fraud. 

Once fraud is reported to us, we can trace it back to a user and take steps to prevent future abuse.  Unfortunately though, many internet con artists are seasoned, and can work their way around blocks.  It really is a “whack-a-mole” type problem.

A far bigger problem is syndicates with unlimited stolen credit cards. They are criminals. They account for nearly $400,000 in attempted transactions on our site alone this year. They get stolen credit cards from viruses on a user’s computer or from bogus web sites. They then use a credit card to post fake ads in paid categories with links to sites with more viruses. Or, they post fake ads to get email addresses to spam users with Viagra over seas sites, porn, or adult dating.

Some internet marketing companies sell phone verified accounts on craigslist. I’m sure they plan to use stolen credit cards for the additional verification.  The criminals have an unlimited amount of user’s credit card numbers and personal data. They will post using a US internet service provider. It will be almost impossible for any automated fraud detection. 

So, I congratulate Craig on implementing a model similar to ours. As an upside for our economy, he will need to hire people to manage the massive increase in credit card fraud. There will be a lot of it. Backpage recently added two more people to our fraud control staff. It’s the hot new job for our growing e-commerce economy where stolen credit cards abound. 

- Carl

Now you can get paid for helping to promote us.  We have had a number of users’ request we build this. We now have a beta version for select clients.

Here’s how it works:
Simply place a text link or banner ad for backpage.com on your web site or blog. The link or banner ad will have your affiliate id.  When users click the link or banner ad and post an ad on backpage.com in the next 30 days, we tag the user as referred by you via your affiliate id. When the user buys upgrades for any of their ads, we pay you 10% commission on any online only upgrades.

Why is this good for you to do?
We have millions of postings each month. Some users spend $1 to $1,000 a month on sponsor and auto re-postings upgrades.  Many people have never heard of us, so there are millions of new users.  You can earn significant commission from these new users. Users are looking for cost effective advertising that is easy and self service. That’s us. Free classified sites like backpage.com are very popular in this tough economy. Our traffic has grown a billion page views this year.

Who is eligible?
Right now, I am looking for a couple dozen larger web sites or blogs with sizeable traffic. The ideal sites will reach a market interested in posting online classified ads ranging from something to sell, jobs, events, services, rental and real estate ads.  You will have to wait for us to finish developing the self service interface to check your commissions earned. But for your patience, we will treat you well since you will be one of our charter affiliates.

Very soon we plan to open this up to everyone…so let us know if you are interested.  Even if you are not a larger site, I will save your info and contact you after our initial testing. Please be sure to include your site URL and your day time phone number.

Thanks

Carl
Site founder
carl@backpage.com

Any paid upgrades help us pay for staff and start new cities.  The following promo code is good for a 15% discount: SAVE15. This promotion will expire Sept. 30th, so you’d better jump on it!

• User authentication: You can now show your first ever posting date on the site or links to your other ads. This info adds to your credibility. You’ll see this option… on the posting form. I think it’s a good idea for most users.

• Post in over 100 cities: A sponsor ad can now be placed in 108 cities in a matter of minutes.  Plus, your post can not be solely removed by community reporting. It’s a paid option and it helps us pay for staff. To post in a bunch of cities at one time, go here

• Promote us: Our entire PR effort is based on inbound linking from users. Go here for sample ads to place on your site or blog.

• Multi-city navigation: You’ll see some changes in LA, Miami, and South Texas. Users can browse the greater area or drill down to a city.

• Other user requests completed: Users can view photos faster when browsing ads in full view. We fixed a delay in multi-city ad changes to ads appearing on the site. For pets for sale and autos for sale, we added some more fraud control.

• Sponsor ad discounts: You can now get a 5% to 50% discount by running your sponsor ad for multiple weeks. The discount varies by category. Sponsor ads increase results, increase referrals to your web site, can not be removed by the community, allow full use of html, and are targeted by category with high conversion rates. They also help pay for our staff and servers.

• We are ready for a few larger web sites to test a feed:

This would enable users to post content on your site and have it also appear on backpage. Content must be relevant, useful and user generated (versus machine generated). If you are interested, please email Support. Be sure to put “ATTN: Carl” in the text of your email.

Find out what people are looking for on backpage.com. For example: “bartender” is the most popular job search in Dallas and Astoria is a popular search for an apartment for rent in New York City. About 15% of users search. It makes sense to check the popular searches link at the bottom of any category you plan to post. You can then write better posting for searches on backpage.com and for searches on Google. Please avoid stuffing your postings with keywords since they will get removed.

This feature is alive across all bp markets. Check it out for yourself.

You can now get a 5% to 50% discount by running your sponsor ad for multiple weeks. The discount varies by category.

Sponsor ads increase results, increase referrals to your web site, can not be removed by the community, allow full use of html, and are targeted by category with high conversion rates. They also help pay for our staff and servers.

To celebrate our users helping us hit half a billion page views a month, we decided to add 15 new cities to give you guys more places to post. Those 15 new cities are:

They are marked as “new ” here”.

Find out what people are looking for on backpage.com. For example: bartender is the most popular job search in Dallas and Astoria is a popular search for an apartment for rent in New York City.

Find the Popular Searches link at the bottom of the page in each city…

Click here to see people are saying about us according to Technorati.

Good news for you brokers out there in NYC!

Broker postings in New York can now use paid feeds in RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0. They can be submitted manually by the interactive bulk upload page or automatically by HTTP post. To request a feed account, please click here to email Support. To review technical documentation on how the feed process works, please go to http://newyork.backpage.com/online/bulkupload/Documentation.