Noah's List is a Classifieds Portal With a Strong Local Flavor

Most Web professionals have a hard time looking away from even the slightest new business opportunity, which is one reason why Noahslist.com founder and CEO Stave Taylor has received so much response to his locally run classified ads portal. The site allows people to attach to the portal by licensing a link to their own geographic area and operating that portion of Noahslist.com, which provides design templates and tutorials and drives traffic from the "mothership" to the local operator's part of the site.

"People that own businesses all have that entrepreneurial edge," says Taylor, whose new project is an extension of Noah's Classifieds, the most popular classified ads software on the Web. "We wanted to make a classifieds portal and to take it a step further, where it's marketed and worked locally and it creates income for people. I tell people that they aren't going to get rich from this, but something's better than nothing, especially in this economy."

That was incentive enough for the Idaho attorney, the retired businesswoman in Tampa, Fla., and the radiologist in Mesa, Ariz., who purchased the license to that city's link for his work-at-home spouse. These local operators will keep their own earnings from classified ad postings and local advertising, and they are responsible for monitoring all the activities on their sites.

"We want business-minded people who want to earn some supplemental income," Taylor says. "They keep their own profits, but it's more about connectivity and being locally run and locally operated and people being locally reachable."

Which is what makes Noahslist unique in the online classifieds space and what differentiates it from sites like Craigslist. The local operators on Noahslist maintain their own quality control and businesses do not have to worry about offensive and irrelevant content, or being flagged by users. And Noahslist can provide the personal, local touches that others like Craigslist cannot, such as specialty advertising.

To ensure that all this is done properly, though, Noahlist puts its operators through an interview process before granting them a license, and then trains them in the intricacies of the position. There is a designated licensing fee to pay and an annual contract to sign, and anyone interested in participating can fill out an inquiry at Noahslist.com.