vFlyer launches commerce widgets

vFlyer, the ad and content creation, management and submission platform, that I have extensively written about has added support for widgets to its comprehensive platform. vFlyer new series of commerce widgets include Real Estate Listing Widgets, Promotion Widget, and Job Listing Widget. All in all covering a wide domain of ads generated through vFlyer. Nice part of the release is that widgets codes are available for both Flash and JavaScript based widgets, with the ability to customize the look and feel. vFlyer will also be adding support for premium widgets and launching the widgets through widgetbox in another week.

vFlyer has also extended its support to include online videos that can be embedded within classified ads or “virtual flyers.” Basically you can grab embed codes from Youtube,…and add them to your flyers. vFlyer has also added support for Yahoo Map mashups, enabling sellers to easily drop a graphical map onto their virtual flyer so that buyers can readily find the seller’s business or listing location.

The rate at which vFlyer is innovating and growing just amazes me. On the whole the strong touch of enterprise experience of its co-founders, Aaron Sperling and Oliver Muoto, gets reflected in each new build from vFlyer.

Related:
vFlyer adds revenue stream
vFlyer targets real estate companies – adds FeedExpress
vFlyer officially launches

Tags: StartupSquad, Web-20, vFlyer, classifieds, widget

Oodle classifieds now with price trends

 
Oodle has added a really cool feature to its local classifieds search engine named Oodle Index(OI). OI solves a very basic issue with classifieds – What is the true value of the product? Consider the case when you are in the market looking for a car. Getting the right price on a new car is relatively easy. Watch Edmunds.com forums for the car you want to buy for couple of weeks, read the posts back upto 6 months, extract the good dealer names, extract the price others are paying, and you are done. However buying a old car is a real pain. You don’t really know how much a car should be priced for, and what other people are paying. With most of the major sites spammed with dealer listing which are listed 5K-8K above than the actual price, it makes your search even harder.

Oodle Index solves this problem by giving you with average prices for millions of cars, homes, and rentals listed at Oodle for the past few years.  Just search for your car, click on Pricing, and boom — Oodle averages out the price trends for the last 4 years. The data, which gets updated everyday, also gives you information about number of units available for each sub-price range, which can easily tell you the right price range. Also, all the data can be searched for against your location that makes it easy for you to get prices paid by people around you.

I am all in for Oodle Index. Edmunds, please forget your TMV and tell us what people are really paying. Add some microformats to your forums, and make our life easier.

Links:
Oodle

Tags: StartupSquad, Oodle, Classifieds, Web-20

vFlyer adds revenue stream

vFlyer has finally introduced subscription based model for its online classified ad creation, management, and submission service. With the launch of the new subscription service each vFlyer user will be able to publish at most 10 flyers for free each month using an ad-supported model. Anything above that, they will have to signup for one of the service plans ranging from $19.95/month for 25 published flyers to $79.95/month for 125 flyers.

For power users going for the max plan, 64 cents per listing per month is great bargain that can get you a good amount of visibility across major classifieds sites like Trulia, Propsmart, Jobalot, HotPads, Vast, Google Base and Craigslist. And vFlyer is not just about the spread. With your ad showing up as a personalized or branded “micro-website”, you can easily make your listing stand out in the crowd. Not to forget, classified analytics, contact management……. make your classified publishing life that much more easier.

Since its launch 3 months ago, this is the second major release from vFlyer. Launch of revenue generation model by the bootstrapped startup just shows Oliver and Aaron’s resolve to attain profitability without diluting their equity earlier on in the game. Instead of just focusing on feature releases, vFlyer have done a good job in setting up their revenue, user, and partnership growth targets that should keep the right momentum and motivation.

Links:
vFlyer

Tags: StartupSquad, Web-20, vFlyer, classifieds

vFlyer targets real estate companies – adds FeedExpress

It has only been a month since the launch of vFlyer and they are already getting a great response from individual users as well companies. In my talk with Oliver and Aaron from vFlyer, they mentioned that real estate companies are showing lot of interest in vFlyer service, which is helping them generate very professional looking flyers in matter or minutes.

Prompted by the great response, vFlyer rolled out FeedExpress service that allows mid-large size real estate companies to dynamically generate custom flyers and than post them into leading online marketplaces. Pricing for the FeedExpress service is on per case basis that includes one time fees for feed and custom templates, and CPC or CPL(cost per listing). vFlyer has also added Trulia, Hotpads, and Propsmart to its real estate ad distribution network for better ad visibility. Previously vFlyer automatically distributed ads to Oodle, Google Base, edgeio, Vast, and Simply Hired. Users and companies can now add their company logos, personal photos, and member association groups to their vFlyer accounts which than get reflected in the flyers.

Pretty soon vFlyer will be looking to add multi-user access to accounts to enable teams member to publish flyer from the same account. This will be helpful for large estate companies who can than operate from the same sub-domain under vFlyer.

I feel that the pace of development and expansion certainly reflects the management teams strong background in developing scalable and feature rich content management systems. vFlyer does seem poised to establish itself  as the largest classifieds content store and distribution network.

Related:
vFlyer officially launches
Easier classified posting using vFlyer

Links:
vFlyer

 

Tags: StartupSquad, Web-20, vFlyer, classifieds

vFlyer officially launches

vFlyer, about which I had written last month, launched officially today. Since writing about it, I had a talk with vFlyer founders Aaron Sperling and Oliver Muoto. Their plan for vFlyer is to address cumbersome process of creating and posting of classifieds, which has not been really addressed till now.
 
As far as monetizing from the size, vFlyer will be having advertisements on secondary pages like contact reply form. These ads will be complimentary to the classified, like having carfax ad on a ‘BMW for sale’ classified.

vFlyer will be charging posting fees for classified bundles although they haven’t come out with any price list. Also vFlyer will provide its users with the ability to create customized pages for a small charge per month.
 
vFlyer has been bootstrapped by its founders till now, who are now in a process of closing the seed round. Overall vFlyer is a good idea, with lot of depth to it than what it seems initially.

Links:
vFlyer
StartupSquad on vFlyer

Tags: StartupSquad, Web2.0, Web_2.0, vFlyer, classifieds

Easier classified posting using vFlyer

vFlyer wants to help people save time while creating and posting classifieds. vFlyer creates standardized, professional-looking classified ads and even will be able to post them on leading classified websites like eBay, Craigslist, LiveDeal, oodle. vFlyer is co-founded by Oliver Muoto, a serial entrepreneur, who previously co-founded Epicentric that was acquired by Vignette in 2002.

Getting down to the feature set, to start creating flyers using vFlyer you get to choose from number of categories like Real Estate, Vehicles, Services, Merchandise, Events, etc, to which you product belongs. For each category vFlyer has comprehensive set of customized fields that are to be filled out by the user. You can choose from number of templates for the flyer, add photos, add links to your website or auctions, set expiry date. Once you fill out the information the flyer can be saved as draft or published. vFlyer maintains a list of all flyers created by you so that can edited, published/unpublished, and deleted easily.

While publishing you also have the option to automatically publish the flyer to GoogleBase, Edgeio, and Oodle(i think this option is still under development). vFlyer provides browser buttons for easily posting the flyer on Craigslist. vFlyer provides HTML code that can be used to post the flyer on other websites. You also have option to download the flyer in PDF. vFlyer can also be emailed(flyer or PDF or link) to your contacts, which can be imported, from AOL, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Plaxo, and Hotmail.

One interesting feature of the vFlyer is that you get Activity Reports for your flyers. Information provided includes Flyer Views, Total Page Views(Flyer Views + Slide Show + Gallery), Flyer Views by Source(Unique visitors to the flyer either hosted on vFlyer or partner sites), number of page views grouped by referring site, and Contact request count for the flyer.

All these services are for free from vFlyer. So where do they get funds for operations? I think vFlyer initially wants to play as an flyer creating and hosting service. When and if the number of classified being created from vFlyer reach a significant amount vFlyer will hook up its own classified publishing interface. All these are my thoughts. Maybe they just want to give out something for free. Overall a nice free tool to manage your life.

Links:
vFlyer

Tags: StartupSquad, Web2.0, Web_2.0, classifieds