goWholesale Goes With Free Classifieds
By Dan Muse

If you're like many small e-businesses, you are always looking for new cost-effective ways to let the world know about your products or services. You now have a new � and free � way to advertise your wholesale or small business related products.

goWholesale.com, a search portal that attempts to bring together buyers and sellers of wholesale goods, is expanding its services to include free classified advertisements. The company already offers pay-per-click advertising service, wholesale online auctions and organic search results.

"By providing a combination of paid and unpaid content, we are generating the largest and most targeted resource for wholesale products and small business services," said Asad Haroon, general manager of goWholesale.

In addition to the new classified service, goWholesale is unveiling a new design that will make the classified ad content searchable from the search engine's homepage by either category or keyword search. You can use the same search term to search Web and auction results, delivering search results in one location. Through a partnership with eBay, goWholesale's search engine is able to include eBay listings in its results, Haroon said.

You can place up to five free classified ads, which will be posted for 30 days on Gowholesale.com, said Haroon. He added that the free classified should advertise a specific wholesale product or business service aimed at the small business community, and that the ads may contain a graphic.

According to haroon, if you are trying to reach a small business audience, search engine marketing is the way to find customers. He added that 80 percent of small businesses use search engines to find products and services. On the flip side, small businesses are also big buyers of search engine advertising. "Overall, businesses spend 20 to 25 percent of their advertising budget on search engine marketing. "However," he said, small businesses spend 50 to 100 percent of their budget on search engine marketing."

You don't have to be a pay-per-click customer of goWholesale to use the free classified service, Haaron said. But that paid service is also designed to be low risk. "You need to put $100 in your account to get started," but that is applied to keywords you purchase through the pay-per-click bid process.

According to goWholesale, which is a subsidiary of Liquidity Services Inc., buyers who search the portal for bulk wholesale, surplus and closeout merchandise include e-tailers, discount stores, eBay PowerSellers and dollar stores. Haroon said businesses conduct about 400,000 searches a month on goWholesale. He added that company uses a variety of both traditional and Web-based marketing to promote goWholesale.