I wish I had 7 to give away after the responses in the first hours after posting.

We hear this kind of thing again and again.  FPF can be a super-effective way to buy, sell, give away, etc.  The big differentiator… your posting reaches people who are not actively looking for what you have/want.  But when they read your FPF posting, some of them think… “Yeah… I’d love a trampoline!”

Jay Schauer, a friend who runs Ad2Ad.com, … complains that “people seem to assume that classified advertising is an easy business to understand and enter. It’s not. It’s a business that demands fierce commitment to localization, understanding the nature of the small local advertiser, and a commitment to small, individual sales.”

Schauer notes that it is “hard ground for start-ups driven by dreams of an IPO. In the past year I’ve seen three competitors drown. Two others are careening toward the treacherous shoals…

“What those failing groups seem to have lacked is the desire to get down and get real with the individual advertiser who will actually pay for classifieds. That customer is not rich, not sophisticated, not interested in pretty, elegant or cool.”

He goes on to note that “the bulk of classified advertisers live in small towns and tight neighborhoods. They don’t build social networks. They are typically the salt of the earth — and hence of little interest to VCs. This customer wants RESULTS FAST. They want to get information to their neighbors — who are also their customers. Most important, they will pay a reasonable price to do so.”

“Classifieds are not pretty,” says Schauer. “But the economic engine they support is large and remains robust. More important, the neighbor-to-neighbor business interaction is core to the strength of the greater economy and to our political well-being.”

While Front Porch Forum is more about neighborhood conversation than classified ads, many of the postings are, essentially, classified ads shared among clearly identified nearby neighbors.  And FPF postings often out perform classified ads on Craigslist and other platforms.  In fact, a member just posted this on FPF in Burlington’s Old North End…

Hi Neighbors, In my recent posting offering to sell several items  (coffee table, accordion, shelves, etc.)  I received way more response then I ever expected!  I sold/gave the items to those offers which landed in my inbox first.  I apologize to all those who I did not respond back to… if you did not hear back from me, the items are gone!  Many thanks.

Here’s a general article on the local market from Business Week. Many people have seen it and emailed me about it.

It bothers me because it’s pretty superficial…

Here’s the reality, which BW either doesn’t fully “get” or seem to want to explore in sufficient depth:

• Local is about offline — money spent in physical places.
• E-commerce is <4% of retail; 95%+ percent of product purchases happen offline. Increasingly those purchases start online.
• 99%+ of service business transactions happen offline/locally (yet online is the place where more and more people go to find service businesses).
• People may communicate via Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook to others around the globe but they live in physical places and when they travel they’re also in physical places, where they stay, eat, shop.
• SMB advertiser acquisition is hard, yes — no dispute there (see the last two years of blog posts)
• The central barrier to more geotargeted and local advertising by nationals has been the challenges of offline tracking in any given campaign

“Does anyone know of a place that would have a vintage style Hearse that I could rent like a Limo?  Do I just start cold calling Funeral Parlors?”  -Brennan in Burlington’s Old North End

“Cold calling” indeed.

Local media is so fragmented that its becoming increasingly important to aggregate classifieds from several sources. GoogleBase and Oodle go a long way in this regard… But other classified aggregators are coming up the horizon, too.

One site that recently launched is iList, a San Francisco-based company that has received $1.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It offers users the ability make their ads portable to all their friends who are tuned into them on all the social sites…

The authenticity of users is especially pushed – something that is coming up more and more. Users won’t see the site’s authenticity star until they verify their identity via cell phone SMS.

Forbes: “The Watch List: Meetup.com. The bartering economy will expand. Local social networking communities will continue to thrive and help people connect to information, resources, ideas and employees. Meetup.com groups will be at the center of the burgeoning part of the economy. Entrepreneurs will tap these groups for goods and services and to form new partnerships.” (Maureen Farrell via Greg)

We certainly see high volumes of business being done through Front Porch Forum… and it seems to be increasing as the national economy sours.

Consumers might “hate ads,” but not enough to pay even as little as a few cents a day to avoid them.

He reported on a survey…

When we asked consumers if they would pay $39.99 a year, which comes out to less than $4 a month, for an ad-free version of one of their favorite sites, only 2.4% said definitely yes, they would be likely to do so. And only 3.5% said they’d be very likely. In fact, 84% of the people said they’d be unlikely or not at all likely.

At the lower price of $29.99 a year, or less than $3 a month, only another 1.9% of consumers said they would be very likely to pay for an ad-free version.