I’ve been working on a WordPress classifieds advertising plugin, and as it nears completion for the specific project I’ve designed it for I start to wonder what other sorts of websites could benefit from such a platform.

There are already numerous classifieds advertising websites for nearly any niche under the sun, competing with newspaper classifieds websites and the almighty Craigslist. So what else is there left?

Well, at its heart, it’s an open publishing system. Open in that anyone can create a post and have it appear publicly for all to view who travel across that particular collective website. It’s a two-sided model: the input, and the displayed output. And within each of these two sides are embedded multitudes of revenue-generating business models.

On the input side, opportunities exist for charging for, or at least requiring, membership, before allowing a post. There is the opportunity to charge per post, or per term such as month-to-month or annually. Maybe it’s free to post but there are additional premium features for sale. Maybe there is a surcharge such as a percentage of the sale price for an item bought or sold through the website.

On the displayed output the same opportunities for paid membership revenue exist as on the input side. People would have to pay to see the posted content, whether it be the posts themselves or some other supporting material. There is advertising opportunity just the same as any other website around the content (and business model) proper  (or maybe the advertising revenue generated upon the website traffic is the only revenue source).

But, surely there is something unique somewhere within this spectrum, someplace as yet untapped where some entrepreneur can turn a buck?  A gateway or fold somewhere across the land whereupon one might collect?