50 States Classifieds offers both fee-based business ads and free
classified advertising serving the United States. We offer ads to small
businesses, individuals, charities, Missing Persons advocates, and many
others. We cater to small businesses, "mom and pop" businesses,
craftspersons, artists, FSBO home sellers, and individual people. Our
website is intended to be a local marketplace
The programmer/creator/owner of this website has been designing websites
since 1995. I have been in the Online Classifieds business
since 2002, when my father had the idea for AdvertiseWisconsin.com. Soon
after that, he also started CMclassifieds.com, to serve the Chicago Metro
area of Illinois. Around the same time, i began MidwestRummage.com, for
people who wanted to advertise their garage sales, yard sales, estate
sales, and related events in the Midwestern US. We printed business cards
for the websites, and the two of us drove all over Wisconsin and Illinois
talking to business owners and leaving our cards.
We later branched out to running a website for each of the 50
States, as well as several specialized websites like equipads.com and
subcontractorlist.com for the construction and equipment industries.
As our websites grew, it became much harder to maintain them separately.
In 2005, we decided to combine all 50 states into one easy to use website,
rather than trying to maintain 60+ individual classifieds websites. 50StatesClassifieds.com
is the result.
50 States Classifieds is dedicated
to providing an easy shopping experience, as well as
affordable and effective online classified advertising, for small businesses
and individuals. I am quite proud of my website, and hope you'll
look around to see why!
Some Quick Statistics about 50 States Classifieds
50 States Classifieds and our related
family of websites receive approximately 42,000 unique visitors
per month and approximately 121,130 page views per month. (source: QuantCast,
an independent, 3rd party statistics provider - information cited on
6-10-2009)
Consider This:
Have a paypal account? Put a "Buy it Now" button
in your ad, and you can receive payments directly from buyers. Great
for Dutch auctions or selling multiple items!
A professionally designed, SSL enabled eCommerce website can cost thousands
of dollars. 50 States Classifieds offers an affordable alternative! You
don't need an expensive website to have an online store anymore. Use
our website instead!
What we're selling:
Browse products and services listed by ordinary people and small businesses
from all around the United States. The items they are selling include:
homes for sale by owner, used cars, computers, machinery, contractors,
and more. Shop for furniture, clothing, jewelry, beauty products, toys,
and other items. Check out the authors, musicians, and other talented
artists in the books and
music categories.
If that's not your thing, try the Games category!
There are many other types of individuals and organizations who offer
quality products and professional services through our website. Look
around and see what treasures you find!
With
the easy to use WYSIWYG ad editor,
you can post a really fabulous
ad with full color, and even
HTML if you desire - no programming
knowledge needed. Some people even
use their ads and featured storefronts
as an alternative to getting
their own website, which would
cost alot more.
Because you can add PayPal 'buy
it now" buttons
to your ads, people can pay you
for your product directly through
your ad - something very few
classifieds sites offer.
To the shoppers
and sellers alike, I would
like to thank you for using my
website, and would like to encourage
you to tell me what features you'd
like to see in the future. I would
love to hear your suggestions,
questions, and comments.
Jessica
Owner, 50StatesClassifieds.com &
GreenWebDesign.com
A (not very) Brief History of 50 States Classifieds
50 States Classifieds
was created, and is constantly
updated, by Jessica Franke, who
also owns Green
Web Design, a Wisconsin based
Website Design and Online Marketing
company. I never know whether I
should refer to myself as "I" or
in the third person
when I am discussing my businesses,
because I eat, sleep,
and breathe my businesses, and
I don't necessarily like talking
about myself as an individual person.
Nor do you, the reader, necessarily
care about me as a person. After
all, you didn't come here to learn
more about me, you
came here to learn more about my
website. But nonetheless,
I feel like I should say *something*
about myself. So, here is a brief
history of what I went through
in the past, that resulted in you
being here, reading this page,
on my classifieds website.
I have been designing
websites since 1995. I started
Green Web Design in addition
to my full time job. I was always
looking for ideas for my web design
clients to advertise their businesses.
Since the majority of my clients
were just like me - people running
small businesses in addition to
their full time jobs, or people
who were just starting out in business
in general - I particularly looked
for low cost or free advertising
ideas to pass along to them.
In 2002,
my father had an idea: AdvertiseWisconsin.com.
He created a free classifieds website
that quickly became very popular
not only with my web design clients,
but with Wisconsinites in general.
Inspired by his idea, I created
MidwestRummage.com, where users
could place a free rummage sale
ad in the Midwestern US. At the
same time, we also collaborated
on several other websites: AdvertiseArizona.com,
AdvertiseCalifornia.com, AdvertiseTexas.com,
CMClassifieds.com (for the Chicago
Metro area), and over a dozen others.
We bought a domain name for every
state, and several others such
as RummageArizona.com, RummageHawaii.com,
etc. We also had other ideas, but
couldn't afford to do everything
we dreamed of yet, since we were
funding all of this with our regular
jobs. Back then, domains were $35
per year or more each, no matter
where you went. All
in all, we bought over 100 domain
names over several years. Some
were up and running, and some were
still in the process of being developed.
As the websites became
more popular, we had
a really hard time keeping up with
deleting the spam. Things slipped
by us. We would wake up each morning
to find hundreds of spammy ads
mixed in with the good ads, and
if we didn't catch them all, we'd
quickly lose sight of it in the
next day's deluge of ads. I tried
to find ways to stop them from
posting in the first place, but
the classifieds scripts were not
standing the test of time - although
I had originally paid $49
per licence, per website, for the
classifieds script, it turns out
that the company no longer provided
support or updates. Because the
websites were all free and we didn't
receive a cent from them, and since
we also had to pay for web hosting
for the websites, it started to
become a burden and even a liability
to have each site running as a
separate standalone website. There
had to be a better way.
Eventually, I got
the idea to combine all 50 websites
into one giant website, while still
keeping users from each state in
their own category so they could
find other locals more easily.
This would also allow me to cut
back on total maintenance time
- who wants to log into 50 different
websites, individually, several
times a day? Not to mention only
having to worry about spammers
and hackers attacking 1 website,
rather than 50 individual websites.
So, I bought the domain name 50StatesClassifieds.com,
and started the long, arduous process
of not only designing and creating
the new website that could handle
thousands of categories, but I
also had to combine the data
from the original 50 websites into
the new website and test it
before each of the old websites
could be disabled and forwarded
to the appropriate page on the
new website. It took several months.
I decided to use PHP to create
the new website,
which is a much more efficient
programming language than the PERL
/ CGI scripts I was running on
the old sites.
I didn't want to
lose any users who were still going
to the old websites via their bookmarks,
so I kept the individual domain
names and used them to direct returning
visitors to the appropriate state
at 50StatesClassifieds.com. That
way, users returning after not
logging on for awhile would still
be able to figure out where the
site went. I never got rid of those
domains in the end, and continue
to pay for them each year. Not
only because people were so used
to using those websites in the
past, but also because I think
it's easier for shoppers to remember
us if they have several domains
to choose from. If you can't remember
50StatesClassifieds.com, then maybe
you'll remember AdvertiseWisconsin.com,
or AdvertiseMilwaukee.com. Or perhaps
AdvertiseClothing.com will stick
in your brain longer than the others.
I also like to print up business
cards for AdvertiseWisconsin.com
that I can leave at any business
I visit, and every time a friend
or family member goes on vacation,
I print up a batch of cards for
them to distribute if they are
willing. Just for example, my husband's
grandpa took 1000 HawaiiClassAds.com business
cards with him to Hawaii, and his
brother in law, who is a taxi driver,
hands them out to his fares. I
have a friend who lives in Chicago,
who hands out CMClassifieds.com
and AdvertiseIllinois.com business
cards for me. Many of my friends
also hand out AdvertiseWisconsin.com
cards, and I have also printed
up MidwestRummage.com bumper stickers
that I hand out at every rummage
sale I have. With over 100 different
website addresses to choose from,
there
are lots of ways to find this website!
Unlike websites
such as Craigslist or eBay, our
ads are not automatically approved.
One thing that I never liked about
many websites I have tried in the
past is how many obvious (and
not so obvious) work from home
scams, cash gifting scams, and
other junk you have to dig through
to find anything that is posted
by a real person or business. Allowing
spam to be freely posted not only
detracts from the quality of the
website hosting the ads, but it
also distracts attention away from
people who are legitimately trying
to sell items locally in their
communities. If potential buyers
have to sift through 5,000 work
from home ads in every single category
in order to find the one thing
they're looking for, then what's
the point? Shoppers won't dig through
all this junk, and won't come back
to the site because they don't
want to waste their time. Do you
like to shop at websites where
there is a lot of junk? I know
I don't!
It's a lot of work
to screen and approve every
ad by hand, but I think it's worth
it for two reasons. The first and
obvious reason is that I am very
proud of how hard I've worked to
build not only this website,
but the entire network that goes
along with it - why would I want
people to deface it by posting
useless junk? The second reason
is because there are a lot of trusting,
naive people in the world, and
I don't want one of them getting
taken in by something that they
found on my website. I know that
I can't save the world, nor can
I catch every scammer - but
at least I can stop the obvious
ones from getting through. The
scams that seem obvious to me
might not seem that obvious to
grandma sally or cousin earl, so
by not allowing the obvious and
known scammers and spammers to
post anything, I like to think
that we are helping to keep people
who are a bit less internet savvy
safe. Or at least safer than they
would be on a site that does not
screen their ads.
We also don't offer
any kind of adult services ads,
escort ads, or related ads for
similar reasons. It's no secret
that websites like craigslist have
encountered the exact same problem
that has plagued print newspapers
since the day they were first printed
- dangerous, and even murderous
people use newspaper personals
to meet unsuspecting victims surprisingly
often; pimps use newspaper
and online ads to attract customers
for prostitution rings and human
sex trafficking rings; and a variety
of other criminals have used them
for a variety of reasons throughout
recorded history. The majority
of ads that users place are just
ordinary ads. But if someone isn't
paying attention, people can literally
get away with murder. And that's
one of the many reason that our
website is rather special
compared to others. We screen everything.
If a free ad doesn't seem right
to us, we can quickly delete it
with no second thoughts. It was
a free ad after all, and we tell
you right up front that if we don't
like it, we won't post it. But
paid ads are also screened. We
have, in the past, refunded payments
from users who placed ads that
were against our company policy
or which violated our terms of
use, as well as ads which we felt
were scams based on the similarity
to past scams that we have encountered.
We are committed to having only
high quality classified ads on
our website in order to provide
a high level of safety for our
users.
We want our website
to be family safe, as well as socially
conscious. We have no way of knowing
if anyone is who they say they
are, and there are plenty of other
websites where these types of services
are offered already. We don't want
the burden of deciding which personal
ads are "safe" or
not, and we never, ever want our
website to have a body count,
so we have chosen to not allow
any types of adult service
ads. We do allow ads for adult
products if they are tasteful
and non-explicit. But never any
adult services that would lead
to an in-person meeting of any
type. This is not the place for
that! We have chosen, instead,
to create a business oriented website
which also welcomes charities and
individuals. We mostly cater to
small mom-and-pop type businesses
-
My
father, my husband, myself, and
several other people log in throughout
the day and approve or disapprove
new ads on the website. It doesn't
matter if you put your ad up at
8am, 8pm, or 4am, it will usually
be reviewed within 2-4 hours of
being posted. If there are any
questionable ads, the other editors
leave them for me to have the final
say on, and if I can't decide whether
I think an ad is real or a scam,
then I leave it sit for a few days
and think about it before making
my final decision.
I also research
topics in
Google, Yahoo, and other search
engines, in order to see what others
are saying about the product,
service, or company. This helps
me determine whether it is something
that I want my website associated
with. Especially for "Work at Home"
ads, which might seem very attractive
in this recession when so many
have been laid off. If we are
in doubt about whether or not to
approve an ad, Google gets the
final say, depending on what their
search results bring up about the
company or industry in question.
Sometimes I spend hours reading
about a specific company, or product,
before making my decision. And
then in the future, when I see
an ad for that company or product,
I can make my decision instantly,
saving time in the long run.
Previously, when
ads used to be approved automatically
without any human review, I am
sure that several "bad ads" slipped
in. You might occasionally find
one when looking through the older
ads. However, as the older ads
expire, those will become more
and more rare. If you see any ads
that you feel are "bad ads",
please let us know so we can delete
it!
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