I'm new to the
VB community. I started a community in '96 using wwwboard and switched to Discus in '98. A month ago I went to
VB, and with no importers had to do a cold startup with a full cutoff on the Discus board.
I'm using PP Classifieds in conjunction with classifieds on a
VB forum. What I did was to make PP Classifieds part of the benefits of being a paid subscriber to the community and severely limited the categories on the free forum classifieds, making them less convenient to use.
By combining the subscription to the PP classifieds I was able to get around the problem of getting paid for the classifieds, and even offered a 1 month subscription for $3 allowing unlimited classified posting for that month.
IMO, about 40% of classified activity on a fairly busy board is useless traffic. Many of these users are making money off of your work and investment while making no significent contribution to the community. But I'm old and grumpy, and have been doing this for a long time.

I've been the auction route, and have found that classifieds are a much bigger draw for a site with a niche market.
Anyway, so far I've been very satisfied with PP Classifieds.
FWIW