Dear Yclas friends,
You are already in business and you are searching for a way to make additional money on your classified site? You are at the right place!
Today, we prepared 6 ways to make money on classified sites!
Follow these proven strategies and increase your income!
Pay to post
You can earn extra if you activate the pay to post feature on your classified site. Users will pay to publish an advertisement. It’s simple, you just have to choose the payment On option, then whenever someone wants to post an ad on your page, they’ll have to pay in advance.
Another feature that you can activate is the payment with moderation. With it, your users will pay to publish an ad, however, you can moderate the ad before it becomes visible on your site.
Paid Categories
Another way of earning money is on classified sites. Creating paid categories can benefit you in many ways, one of which is an additional fee for specific categories. With Yclas, you can choose some categories where your users will have to pay to post ads. (Read more: How to add categories and manage theme )
Move to top or feature the ad
Exposure is essential with classified ads. You can charge extra for displaying a classified ad on the top of listings. Visitors always check out the first results that appear, thus your users can make sure that buyers will notice their product. With us, your users can get better exposure by paying for moving their ad to the top or highlighting it by making it featured.
Subscriptions / Memberships
Another great way to improve your earnings is by adding subscriptions or memberships. You can create daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly subscriptions for your classified site. Here you can find more information about this feature. Read more about the features that you get with us
Marketplace with Stripe Connect
Another way to make more money with your classifieds is to use Stripe Connect. We offer you the opportunity to use “Stripe Connect” on your classified website at any time. With it, you’ll be able to charge your customers an application fee (percentage) based on the sale they made using your classified platform.
What big marketplaces charge in 2026: benchmarks for your own price list
The hardest part of monetizing a classifieds site is setting the price. Charge too little and you leave money on the table; charge too much and sellers go back to free alternatives. Here is what established platforms publish on their own fee pages (checked October 2026):
| Platform | Model | What it charges |
|---|---|---|
| Craigslist | Pay to post in selected categories | Most categories are free. In the US: $5 for cars/trucks by owner or dealer, motorcycles/RVs by owner, all for-sale by dealer, services and commercial real estate; $10-75 for jobs depending on the area; $3-10 for gigs in selected areas; $5 for apartments in Boston, Chicago and NYC. |
| eBay | Listing fee plus commission | 250 free listings a month for sellers without a store, then $0.35 each. The final value fee in most categories is 13.6% of the sale up to $7,500, plus $0.30 per order ($0.40 over $10). |
| Stripe Connect | Payment rails for commission on sales | When Stripe handles pricing, the platform pays no Connect fees and sellers pay Stripe's processing fees. When the platform handles pricing, Stripe charges per monthly active account, per payout and on payout volume. |
| Google AdSense | Display advertising | Publishers receive 80% of revenue after the advertiser platform's fee, or about 68% when advertisers buy through Google Ads. |
Lessons for a niche classifieds site
- Charge where the value is high. Craigslist keeps most categories free and charges only where a single listing is worth a lot to the seller: vehicles, jobs, dealers, rentals in expensive cities. Paid categories work the same way. Keep general categories free to build volume, and charge in the few where sellers earn the most.
- Use small fees for visibility. Featured listings and bump to top work best as small, optional add-ons on top of free posting, not as a toll on every seller.
- Commissions need transactions on your site. eBay can take 13.6% because the sale, payment and buyer protection all happen on eBay. If your buyers and sellers only exchange contact details, a commission won't stick. Pay-to-post fees or memberships for dealers and agents fit better.
- Banners pay off at scale. AdSense pays per impression or click, so it only adds up with high traffic. On a small niche site, one directly sold banner to a relevant local business often earns more.
How these models map to Yclas settings
On a Yclas site you can turn on pay to post, with or without admin moderation, and set a price per category. You can charge for featured listings and for moving an ad to the top, and sell membership plans. With Stripe Connect you can take an application fee on each sale: a percentage of the sale, plus an optional fixed amount on Stripe Checkout payments. Escrow.com is available for safer high-value deals. Yclas takes no cut: payments go straight into your own Stripe, PayPal or other account, as the features page explains. The how to earn money guide walks through each setting.
Advertising Banners
Sell advertising space on classified sites. By advertising on your classified site, you can earn money on the side. There are many ways to do that, you can research websites in your niche and start collaborating with them. Make sure that you don’t advertise for websites that are unprofessional or spammy.
Yclas allows you to include commercial banners with advertisements. You just need to put an HTML code on your site.
To place a banner on your site, our widgets could be useful (see: Overview of widgets). For example, in the widget Text, you can put the HTML code of a banner.
Yclas gives you an unlimited amount of users and traffic, unlike others. We don’t limit your site by the amount of traffic or registered users you have. We want you to succeed, and that means as few restraints as possible.
There are various ways to make money on classified ads and following these tips can get you there. For a full list of features that Yclas offers you can check our classified ads script features.
