@ Stacey
Thanks for your interest in Connections! Connections may or may not be the best fit for your needs. I’m leaning towards not. Presently Connections does not have any method to accept payments in order to be listed. Other users that decide to use Connections and want to take payments use member plugins such as Restrict Content Pro to take and manage payments. Basically after payment has been made they then have access to Form page, where the user can add their entry. This setup, while can work, is more complex since they are not integrated solutions.
Many users choose the cMap template as they template of choice. It allows visitors to filter by category and allows them to click thru to the single entry … but, it does not open in a new page, it opens within the same page/window/tab.
I hope this helps!