Since this has happened, business has boomed.  We are working on 5 different countries on a range of problems from new market entry to international expansion to new site development.

Here is our press release.

Classified Ad Ventures Pty Ltd today announced the launch of an expanded business offering to service the global real estate industry.   Leveraging the team’s extensive knowledge and experience working within the real estate category, the Classified Ad Ventures business provides digital marketing solutions and consulting services to portals, franchise groups and market leading real estate agents who are looking to stay ahead of the game in the highly competitive online market.

Classified Ad Ventures was founded in September 2008 by Simon Baker, best known for his eight years as CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group (www.realestate.com.au ).  During his time at the REA Group, Simon grew revenues from $4m in FY 2001 to $155m in FY 2008 and grew EBITDA from -$6m in FY 2001 to $37m in FY 2008. Most importantly, Simon delivered great returns for shareholders by increasing the market capitalisation from $8m in June 2001 to a high of $900m.

Baker has brought together a team of highly experienced professionals from his time at the REA Group, across key specialties including business management, sales & marketing, web design & development, project management and mergers & acquisitions.  Their combined hundred plus years of experience extends across both portals and agencies, in all major international markets, including Europe, Asia, USA, Australia and New Zealand.  No other team is better positioned to assist the industry in optimising its digital marketing mix to drive business success.

The team at Classified Ad Ventures includes Chris Vulovic, the former CIO of REA Group, Anthony Herman, former Head of Corporate Development in the EMEA region for the REA Group, Kelly Millar, former Consumer Marketing Manager for the REA Group, and John Hart, former Industry Marketing Manager for the REA Group, amongst others.

Simon Baker, CEO and founder of Classified Ad Ventures today stated:  “The incredible rate of innovation in the digital landscape presents opportunities for business never seen before, especially in the real estate sector.  The significant shift of consumers from print to online for their real estate needs requires businesses to adapt their marketing strategies.

Whether you are a portal, franchise group, broker or agent, success is determined by creating value for your customers and ensuring you are competitive and clearly differentiated in the digital landscape.  Our team’s track record in building a highly successful business for the REA Group gives you access to unmatched experience and insights into the category.”

Classified Ad Ventures current clients include some of the world’s major property portals, franchise groups, brokers and market leading agents.

Classified Ad Ventures online marketing services include business consulting, online marketing planning, website design & development, eMarketing, search marketing, editorial and video content, social media and display advertising.

More details about Classified Ad Ventures services can be found at www.classifiedadventures.com

Just over a month ago we launched a new business from our incubator, Classified Ad Ventures, called ListGlobally.  ListGlobally allows any realtor, agent, broker or developer around the world to advertise their listings to a global audience. All they do is upload the listing to www.listglobally.com and we then syndicate that listing to the market leading sites in 23 countries. We make money by charging US$90 to advertise the listing for 90 days and then pay our distribution network a percentage of what we charge. Overall a simple, but effective, model.

We were fortunate to have a great write up of the business in The Australian newspaper last week. Here is the article.

Nerd goes global in real estate listings: Simon Baker’s attraction to the net has paid off

FORMER REA Group chief executive Simon Baker is a self-confessed “closet nerd”.

From a young age, the 43-year-old says, he has been fascinated with computers.

Baker previously ran REA Group, the owner of realestate. com.au, before starting his latest venture, Classified ADventures.

He studied computer science at Monash University, and his first job was a “tour of duty” at IBM in the sales division.

“I started off life as a programmer in sales and marketing,” Baker says.

“As such, you can’t help but get attracted to the internet and the opportunities it provides.”

He loves the fact that the online real estate market is not fully defined yet, and that new products and possibilities are arising on a daily basis.

That fascination has brought him to where he is today — running his own show as founder of online classifieds company Classified ADventures.

The company provides operators of online classifieds sites with consulting services and helps them get the most out of the internet to advertise their listings.

Among the websites in the stable are smartagentsites; Sobox (Social Media in a Box) and listglobally.

The last, launched a couple of months ago, aims to help real estate agents get global advertising exposure for their listings.

After talking to real estate agents around the world, Baker discovered there were people buying properties across borders.

When you look at the way the online advertising space is set up, he says, each country has its own realestate.com.au, but no one is seriously asking how to market a property across a number of countries to attract an overseas buyer.

Out of that idea, listglobally was born.

From there, Baker says, his team approached the real estate.com.au equivalents in 20 markets around the world to see if they could put listings on their sites.

In each market, the website has become one of the most popular.

For example, if you are in Britain and want to buy property in Australia, he says, your first port of call may be rightmove.co.uk (the equivalent of realestate.com.au).

Each month, 1.6 million searches are carried out on that site’s international section, he says.

“What’s funny is that the fifth most searched country is Australia and there are only 200 listings there,” he says.

“It’s all about saying how do I put Australian listings in front of English buyers or South African buyers or Hong Kong buyers.”

Essentially, with one click and a fee of $90, a real estate agent can put their listing on the equivalent of realestate.com.au in 20 markets.

By the end of the year, he hopes to be in 23 countries.

If all goes to plan, listglobally will be a $10-20 million-a-year business.

Baker’s fascination with computers started early, but the property link was accidental, and only developed several years ago, while he was working at realestate.com.au.

Not long after joining News Limited (publisher of The Australian), Baker says, he was asked to undertake a review the realestate.com.au business.

Not long after that, he joined the board of realestate.com.au and asked for a shot at the top job.

In 2001, he got his shot.

For the next eight years, he says, he spent morning, noon and night turning the online property portal around from a loss-making business to what he describes as a very profitable, dominant market player. In 2008, he departed as chief executive of REA Group and a week later started his own venture with some of his former colleagues.

He had two aims. One was to invest in companies through an investment fund known as CAV Investment Holdings, and the other was to build companies.

With the money he earned from his shareholding in REA Group, Baker invested in a number of businesses. But the main focus for him is Classified ADventures.

He identified about four or five ideas and created an incubator in which those new businesses could be formed, he says.

Three of those ideas have become reality: Sobox, smartagent sites and listglobally.

Baker says his team has very clear goals it wants to achieve, given its financial projections.

With distribution partners lined up, he says, the next goal is to increase the number of listings going through the system. “Our first goal is to get to 1000 listings a month, then we want to get to 5000 listings a month,” he says.

“We are the only ones doing this,” Baker says of his new online property classified website.

“We are the first one to go out and line up all these market leaders, link them all together, and provide them with a feed of properties.

“Either it’s going to be an incredibly good idea or I just wasted two years of my life.”

The ideal candidate has probably worked for a realestate.com.au or domain.com.au in a front line sales position.  They would have experience as either a BDM (business development manager – ie new business) or account management (management of existing customers).

Classified Ad Ventures is building a series of new and innovative online products and services targeted at the real estate agency market. Recently we launched SOBOX and ListGlobally.  SOBOX provides social media solutions for Australian and New Zealand real estate agents while ListGlobally allows real estate agents to advertise their listings around the world.  Classified Ad Ventures has more products in the pipeline and these will be launched in the coming months.

Our sales team will have the chance to sell across the range of products to real estate agents in their territory.

Packages for sales people are competitive, weigheted towards uncapped commission, and include telephone and laptop.

In addition, you will get to work with many of the team the built realestate.com.au and the REA Group.

If you are interested in a position, know someone that is or just want more information, please send an email to sbaker@classifiedadventures.com.

The focus for Classified Ad Ventures is clearly on the online classifieds segment of the internet market.  Classified Ad Ventures was set up in late 2008 with 3 objectives in mind:

• To utilise our extensive experience in online classifieds to inspire online classifieds businesses around the world to achieve greater results;
• To develop new and innovative products and services to help property portals and their advertisers; and
• To invest in emerging online classifieds businesses and to help them grow rapidly.

We have put in place a high quality team who has, in combination, over 40 years experience in online classifieds.

Our consulting arm is now working with a number of customers throughout the world to help them grow their businesses.  We are helping them tackle a range of issues including:

• How best to improve sales and marketing
• How best to structure their business for optimal performance (at low cost)
• How get more from technology within their business
• What products and services to roll out next

In addition to face to face consulting, we operate a number of information sites to help keep portals managers and their advertisers up to date with everything that is happening in their market.  The sites that we have up and running are:

• www.propertyportalwatch.com
• www.jobsportalwatch.com
• www.propertyadguru.com

Our incubator is financing and working with a number of new businesses including:

• An SEO business that specialises in only property classifieds
• A listing distribution tool for agents
• A feed management tool for portal sites

Finally, our investment arm, CAV Investment Holdings, has investments in 7 businesses including:

• www.homethinking.com in the US
• www.tokyoapartment.com in Japan
• www.iProperty.com operating in South East Asia
• www.redbubble.com – one of the global leaders in helping artists self publish
• www.ArtsHub.com.au – the leader in the Australian online arts community
• www.HippoJobs.com.au – a leader in the 18 – 24 year old casual and part time jobs
• www.SportsPassion.com – an emerging local sports social networking site

Check out everything that is happening on our site www.classifiedadventures.com.

We would love your feedback on our business as we strive to get better and better.