OLX offers a wide range of services, from education and jobs as well as the buying and selling of all type of products. If you have not tried it yet, it is time you know about this website to search for local jobs or to post jobs online.
History: In March of 2006, Fabrice Grinda co-founded OLX, Inc. with business partner Alec Oxenford, in the hopes of building the largest free local classified site in the world. As co-founder and co-CEO, Fabrice drives the company’s business development, oversees an organization of over 80 employees and negotiates acquisitions with global partners.
Q.
I was quite impressed to see the OLX website and good to know that anyone can post free classifieds and job ads. How is it doing in the US mainly on the local ad postings?
We launched in the US three years ago without fanfare. The US is relatively small for OLX, but growing. We get about 5 million unique visits per month and have over 1 million ads online. We have been most successful in real estate and jobs – the two categories where Craigslist charges in certain cities (while we are free).
Q.
What is interesting to see in the job ads section is you have classified various industries and sectors, but how are you ensuring that spam job ads are not showing up which is important for the user trust?
We eliminate spam in various ways:
- We rely on our community to help us identify spam and scams (there is a “Flag this ad as scam” button on all listings).
- We have a dedicated team of 20 people who check the ads after they go live.
- We use keyword and duplicate content filters to prevent spamming.
All in all we remove 60% of the ads posted on the site.
Q.
Also can a user add or request more job categories on OLX jobs search section? If so, how?
When “Other” becomes a big category we look at the type of ads there to determine what new categories we should create. We also receive suggestions from users through the “Contact OLX” form accessible in our footer.
Q.
How would you compare yourself to Craigslist if someone to post local ads online?
Craigslist is a fantastic site that works well, but we felt we could bring the concept of free online classifieds to the next level. We added a number of features which we believe help make OLX a “Craigslist 2.0”:
- Pictures in the listings and search results pages
- Fantastic mobile version – http://m.olx.com
- The ability to search nationally and from a certain distance from your zip code
- The ability to display your listings on your social networking profile
- Great ajax WYSIWYG editor to easily create rich listings
- Better search options – especially in cars and real estate
We are also committed to being free forever. We don’t intend to charge for posting in any category – ever. Granted charging helps limit spam, but we feel you also lose many legitimate postings. We prefer to control spam differently.
All that said, we won’t deny the obvious: you will get more replies on Craigslist. However, given the better user experience, users should use OLX as well. It costs nothing 🙂
Q.
What are some of the new features that we should look forward to that would make your website more user friendly and unique in future?
By the end of the year, we should have a few cool new features including:
- An iPhone app
- Google Maps integration in the real estate section
I posted an ad today and was quite impressed by the fast online posting. Wonder why I never heard about OLX before. Keep up the good work and I am sure my blog readers will benefit from the various job postings on your website.