About TownPost

A little background...

The TownPost project unofficially began late 2009 with creator brainstorming the best conceivable way of utilizing a website to truly promote local business. Since 2009 the concept has morphed considerably and web developer Steve Bizuns has estimated over 500 hours spent building the site and it's reputation.

The #1 question we are asked, "How do you make money"?

Well, we don't. There is revenue from our TownPost sponsors and "local deals" but it is a small fraction of our ongoing investment. DexCTS employs Alyssa Smith, who is our local advocate, and "sales" person for TownPost and has done a fantastic job of spreading the word. Our primary business is web development and business websites that we keep fresh and updated for a small monthly fee so business owners can focus on what they do best. This site is our resume for web design and our marketing tool for web and advertising customers.

What makes TownPost awesome?

"So what if we give free classifieds, there are large popular sites that offer this and some people choose to use facebook buy and sell pages instead."

Only meant for use by residents in near by communities. We police this site actively, anonymous ads are screened, and registration is denied for people outside of the local area. No scammers from other provinces or countries here, and if they do manage to gain access they will be banned in no time.

No Google Ads, only local businesses and homegrown advertising.. Given the traffic this site receives we could easily make money on banner ads or Google campaigns but we have chose to keep any and all advertising local and managed internally.

Business friendly. Our local directory is free for organizations that want to be listed, we have even given free listings to our competitors to show that this truly is a community site. There are paid options (sponsorship) that get special designed profiles, logo preview, and featured on the site as sponsors. Our approach has not been to hammer businesses with a pushy sales pitch, but to simply let this site speak for itself and wait until we are approached.

Traffic. Despite our success we know that there are still age huge number of people using other classified sites or Facebook. Well in short we believe that TownPost reaches more relevant visitors for sellers, particularly with small items that nobody in their right mind would drive hours to pick up. All classifieds are automatically fed to our twitter account @townpost and to our Facebook page that we begrudgingly created to reach the hardcore fb crowd. Classifieds accumulate upwards of 100+ views depending what they are for, but we believe there is a higher % of buyers within that group and the potential for TownPost is much greater than large global free classified sites.

Future expansion We hope that word about TownPost will spread to other communities in Alberta or elsewhere. We have begun to spread our influence with the launch of new sites in Slave Lake, Whitecourt, and Edson.