The current global climate increases the viability of on-line free classifieds sites. One of the leading independent classified sites is Zikbay, with thousands of free ads posted daily, but can it grab a fair market share?

There can be little doubt that the world economy is in trouble, tune into any news channel around the world and you are bound to find at least one running story covering a financial crisis somewhere. Although this is bad news for many businesses, those companies which are operating an on-line free classifieds site such as DNN Direct, the owners of Zikbay, are in an arguably healthy position. Consumer cash dwindles, and the need for bargains and reduced cost goods rises, for those middle men such as Zikbay, who put buyers together with sellers, this could well be a boom time.

Traditionally there are several big players in the classified ads arena, most notably eBay on the profit making side and the ever popular Craiglist that seems to go from strength to strength. With these kinds of large corporations operating in the marketplace can Zikbay really grab a healthy market share? Rafal Furdzik, a spokesperson for DNN Direct and Zikbay has this to say, “On-line classified ads are a growing market, the economic position is forcing this growth, as with any growing market there is always room for a smaller player to take advantage of the room that this growth has created. At Zikbay we firmly believe that we have one of the best free classifieds sites around, and we are sure that the success we have witnessed so far will continue”.

Just how popular is Zikbay? Maybe by taking a look at its visitor and classified statistics we can judge if it has the clout to carve of its own place in the free classifieds marketplace. Site statistics indicate that since its debut in May of 2008 that the site has received over 300,000 visitors. Although this number is far less than the big players such as eBay, this is nevertheless a health amount of traffic. A more startling figure is that from these 300,000 visitors over 100,000 classified listings have been posted, a very health conversion ratio indeed. Rafal Furdzik extrapolates on this by saying, “We are extremely proud of the number of classified listings we have gained from the actual number of site visitors we have had, I believe this is a physical manifestation of the fact that our users truly appreciate the features of our website. Not only do we offer enhanced classified listings including multimedia content, but our entire website is fully search engine friendly, meaning that our classified ads are spidery by major search engines and returned in search engine results, this means our advertisers are receiving an additional benefit on top of the ability to place and respond to free classifieds”.

We can clearly see that Zikbay are aiming to take advantage of the possibility of an uptrend in the use of free classifieds type websites, and it would appear the DNN Direct are placing their considerable resources behind Zikbay, in an attempt to make it a successful free classifieds site. A courageous move in these financially problematic times.