Financial Media Group, an online web publisher focused on building 2.0 properties for integrated Ad Networks and eCommerce properties, has launched ForWant.com, an online free classified site that enables users to search for jobs, housing, items for sale, personals, and services.
According to a press release, revenue will be accrued by advertising on both CPM and CPC and CPA based models.
The company said that a completely free site is needed to compete with the likes of CareerBuilder, Craigslist, and Monster for these reasons:
– Craigslist.org claims to receive 12 billion page views and ranks the property as one of the top 30 web properties in the world as per Alexa (An Amazon company). Industry experts put the market cap conservatively at $1.0 to $1.5 billion. Their model has typically been free for the majority of the universe and the company does not accept advertising regardless of appeal of greater profitability.
– Monster.com has approximately $1 billion in market cap. The site is supported by job posting fees where a typical job advertisement cost is $475.
– CareerBuilder.com, another paid job classified, claims to have 400 million page views per month with advertisements typically charging $359.
– HotJobs.com, a leading product of Yahoo with a typical job advertisement costing $275.
Popularity: 7% [?]
February 20th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I’m impressed to see that there are still startups willing to launch, even in the face of a couple of billion dollar competitors and a recession. Most of my startup clients are hunkered down, but I believe there is still opportunity out there for the ones with the right stuff, as I wrote in http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/02/right-stuff-will-prosper-in-recession.html. Good luck to them.
Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Vanessa,
Is this something similar to the site called Oodle.com? It, too, has classified listings for jobs and property although I am not sure it’s intention is to compete directly with Monster, Craigslist or Careerbuilder. I read that Oodle recently raised $6.5 million in capital and I think it is supposed to take over Facebook’s “marketplace”. I’m not sure but it seems like a likely competitor as well.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Vanessa,
I just realized that Oodle was given an article on Cheezhead about it’s funding. You don’t have to post my most recent comment. I should have dug more in the past articles before I chimed in. -Linda
February 20th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
The situation with online classifieds looks pretty interesting…
Oodle is growing pretty quickly and has 3M unique visitors per month, compared to craigslist ~45M. What sets Oodle apart is that the interface is much more refined/stylized and it has the massive partner deals with facebook and others. Oodle gained about 1M visitors since November, but again, craigslist seems to have gained about 10x as many users over the same time period.
ForWant.com looks like its trying to compete with craigslist by offering a worse navigation interface combined with ads on every page. Not sure how they’re planning on making it grow.
I think for now craigslist is still the household name and seems more authentic and honest. The fact that it’s simple and has no annoying ads like the others is something I’ve come to appreciate.
*I used compete.com for visitor count
February 20th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Any one with a little money to buy a craigslist clone and to say they are launching a website to compete with craigslist, kijiji(Ebay) or oodle(Wal-Mart). Their website looks like it was bought off those clone sites. Please do Some real story telling and check out some of the smaller classified ads start-ups that are out there! Like Ziark.com or Superads.com and many others. Do a Real Story For Once!
February 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Not being negative but how many more ’startups’ want to do something similar. Maybe there isnt enough job sites and classifieds sites yet?
Then again with cheezhead and other big resources site providing a job section now, im no longer surprised.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
What about RegionalHelpWanted.com? We received more than 1 million sites to one of our sites HudsonValleyHelpWanted.com and we have 362 others that get equally high numbers. This would make us close to half a million views each month in total