Why Classified Listings Get Declined
When we first announced CoolTea Classifieds, it never occurred to me that we would also have to develop a backend admin system to help with the process of declining listings.
From the start, we knew that we wanted to keep our classifieds with high-signal and low-noise ratio thus avoid some of the noise you see from other free listing sites - e.g., all the condos for sale, sex hook-ups wanted, get rich quick schemes, etc.
We figured since our system stated “Business-centric por favor”, required valid email address to confirm and used captcha (graphics/numbers used for forms to deter robots), we thought it would be the occasional listing that would slip through that would be addressed via an occasional email from one of our admins.
But even I was surprised at the volume of people trying to post some of these listings. Not there is anything wrong with selling condos, looking to get some, or attempting to get rich, but there are other, more appropriate places on the web for those kinds of listings, especially considering our goal with CoolTea Classifieds is to hold a business-centric emphasis - one that benefits the artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses in our communities.
So shortly after launch, we developed an automated backend system to help people understand why their listings were declined and here are the reason codes as fyi:
- Code 01 - Missing Contact Information
Your listing did not contain any viewable contact information - e.g., no phone number, email and/or web address to contact for more information. Note that while you supplied an email address when you created your classified listing, your email is never listed on the site unless you include it in the body of your classified listing description. Next steps - Create a new listing with contact info, and it will be promptly approved for publishing … FYI - If you do list your email address in your classified listing description, we recommend that you do it so spam robots don’t easily harvest your email address — hence showing your email as myname at mydomain dot com is better than listing it as myname@mydomain.com. Alternatively, myname [at] mydomain.com also works in making it easy to read by humans but more difficult for spam robots to harvest. - Code 02 - Better Suited as Event Listing
Your listing contained date-sensitive material and is better suited for Event Calendar Listing and not a Classified Listing. Currently, CoolTea currently provides free event listings - see http://cooltea.com/listmyevent/ - Code 03 - Real Estate Focused
You can promote your real estate site and your real estate services, but you cannot promote properties. Exceptions can be made for studios and home offices on a case-by-case basis. If market demands grow in this dept, new real estate categories and/or dedicated property classifieds might be developed … to be continued … - Code 04 - Multi-level Marketing
MLM (multi-level marketing) listings are mostly prohibited because there are so many of the same kind - e.g., when we first announced CoolTea Classifieds we had dozens of similar listings for get rich quick, sell vacation condos, promote video emails, etc., that we had to create this Code 04 policy to insure that listings from artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses would not be overrun. - Code 05 - Bad Debts
The organization referenced in your listing has an outstanding debt with CoolTea, and we therefore cannot in good faith publish your listing. - Code 06 - PPC Portal
The web address you specified goes to a search portal that appears to be a PPC (pay-per-click) model, thus the links and content are thin and not likely of value for our customers. Furthermore, for the similar reason we decline MLM (multi-level marketing) listings, PPC listings are mostly prohibited because there are so many of the same kind - e.g., when we first announced CoolTea Classifieds we had dozens of similar listings for get rich quick, sell vacation condos, promote video emails, etc., that we had to create this policy to insure that listings from artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses would not be overrun.
