The Article Writer

I’ve been going through my inventory and have decided to clean out several sites and domain names. Each site is hosted and registered through GoDaddy, assume no income. Free push to your GoDaddy account.

If offering BIN, hit the comment button and post Sold to BIN identifying the site that you have purchased. Payments through Paypal only.

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Debt2Assets, PR3

• Founded 04/26/2006 — I purchased this domain last fall and built/launced the site in November 2007.

• Domain Expires 02/14/2009

Comments — I wrote every article on the site. Some of the earlier articles were shared with article directories while most of the recent material is unique to the site. Debt2Assets is a personal finance blog geared toward helping people get out of debt. Assume no income.

BIN: Sold to R 03/28/2008

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TravelDuties, PR3

• Founded 11/06/2007

• Domain Expires 02/14/2009

Comments — All of the material on this site is unique. I started TD with the intention of pitching it as a cruise line resource site, but got very busy with another career site. Assume no income.

BIN: Sold to Blink 03/27/2008

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Carboy, PR0

• Founded 03/30/2007

• Domain Expires 03/30/2009

Comments — I thought this domain was a lot older than it was, but I found out after I bought it that it was dropped. Therefore, I lost interest in developing the site which has just a few pages to it.

BIN: Sold to Gawk 3/27/2008

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This thread will remain open until March 31, 2008, or whenever the sites sell, whichever is earlier. Once done, I’ll close the thread and announce the end of the sale.

I had occasion recently to do some research on the alternatives to Craigslist, the ubiquitous online classified site that everyone in the world seems to be using. At least everyone that I know who is looking for a job, seeking to promote their website or business, or desiring to SEO (spam) their way to success. Which is almost everyone! wink*wink

Let’s just say that one of my SEO practices warranted that I take a look at some Craigslist alternatives out there, thus the reasoning behind my research.

What I found was a pleasant surprise, not that I didn’t think that other sites existed, but that some of these have been around for quite awhile. I know a lot of people live or die with Craigslist (CL), but if you’re looking for something a bit different, then the following are worth a shot:

Backpage — This site has the look and feel of CL, but is a bit more polished than the standard bearer. Ads run for free and the city selection roughly parallels CL. You can pay a few a token amount of money to automatically bump ads every seven days and you can purchase block ads which dominate the top of listing category and cannot be flagged by users. Backpage is owned by the Village Voice.

ClassifiedExtra — Canadians in Toronto and Vancouver love Craigslist — I know this because if I have to post an advertisement in either location, both cities perform extremely well with CL. CE is new to me, but with a PR6 ranking, it gets a good amount of traffic with penetration throughout Canada. A French edition is also available.

Gumtree — For UK readers, I’m thinking that Gumtree could be your favorite site. Again, this is like CL but a bit more refined. Select cities in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the US are also featured. Gumtree is tied in with Kijiji (see below).

Kijiji — Don’t ask me how to pronounce this site! I just started using it yesterday, posting an ad very similar to what I can post on CL. I like the layout, the fact that ads stay live for six months (okay, maybe I’d prefer to bump them up), and a synopsis of the listing is featured on their site. Kijiji and Gumtree are eBay companies.

There are other classified sites out there including Recycler, serving Los Angeles and Southern California; LiveDeal — which is tied in with the YellowPages; and AdPost, to name just a few.

Oodle is interesting as it operates as an aggregator of several sites including CL, Kijiji, and several popular job sites.

If you’re looking for a gig, something to sell, or an item to buy, these other sites can provide some decent alternatives to CL and each one is free to use. SEO anyone?

I’m familiar with copyright usage, particularly pertaining to citing other people’s stuff when I blog, write an article, create web content, etc. However, when it comes to licensing material out that I write, I’m a bit at a loss in this area.

Recently, I was approached by someone who wants to license what I write for my automotive blog and use that material on his commercial site. I haven’t responded to his request just yet as I mull over what this could mean to me.

The last thing I want is for a third party site to upstage my own site(s) with articles I wrote. I made that mistake when I submitted hundreds of articles to the article directories a few years back only to find out later that they often appear higher in the Google SERPs than my own work. I don’t mind sharing, but….

I’d be interested in knowing what others are doing when it comes to licensing their work. I have one tab open to the Creative Commons (CC) page today, running back and forth to it when I get a chance. CC has quite a few licensing options, but I’m not sure which one(s) would be right for me.

If you have experience in this area, please hit the reply button to share what you know. Thank you!