Ever spent a lot of time posting free classified ads all over the internet?
I can remember spending hours doing it only to feel like I hadn’t done enough and thought I needed to do more.
There is a lot of temptation to do free classified ads especially when your marketing budget for advertising is more like lunch money for the week.
I guess my biggest point is that even for all that time spent it resulted in some phone calls from people responding to the ads and well that’s about it.
A lot of people on the internet promote using free classified ads for traffic generation and maybe they did work very effectively at one time but with progress comes change and change isn’t always good.
I think it’s no wonder a lot of people try this marketing method first for their network marketing business and when it fails to produce the results they want they figure this network marketing thing is just not for them.
Well if you ever wondered why these methods aren’t producing for you here are some insights that may help.
1. With the creation of classified ad software people can spam these sites like there is no tomorrow.
2. The people actually visiting these sites are there just to POST their ads not read them most of the time.
3. A lot of the people that do visit the sites are there just for email harvesting so that they can begin their own spam campaigns.
The last one is a hard lesson to learn so if your posting free classified ads and start getting a lot of spam emails well now you know why.
If you do want to try this method and hopefully prove me wrong let me humbly suggest a couple of things to you about how to insulate yourself from some of the annoying aspects of it.
1. Set yourself up a throw away email address to hot mail or something along those lines as the reply email address.
2. Direct the ad to a sales letter or website that you have a autoresponder set up on. Responders don’t do spam..
3. Maybe invest in some classified ads software but don’t overdo it and abuse it and maybe you won’t spend all the time I did posting to these free classified ad sites.
Maybe preparing yourself this way will help. Now getting any responses from it well that’s another matter would love to hear about it if you do.
Steve
Hi Steve,
You’ve made some excellent points about free advertising, and quite frankly, I don’t bother with them because of the reasons you outlined. I realize many people are on a budget, but it takes too long to get results using this method. If your objective is to get quality leads, the best way is paid advertising. I think most people are aware of the saying, “It takes money to make money.” I believe it because I’ve tried free methods and they do not work as effectively as paid advertising. It wasn’t until I started to invest in advertising that I was able to see results. I track my results and in the long run, it is worth setting aside a certain amount of money to advertise and promote.
I hope the beginning marketers who read this, take your advice and do more research. If cash flow is a problem, my suggestion for low cost advertising is You Tube. Create videos, link them to your content, and optimize. It also takes time, but the results are better and you can attract quality leads. Finally, remember that time is money.
Raena Lynn
Raena Lynn recently posted..Tribe Networking Brings More Targeted, Peer-Referred Traffic
Raena now those are words of wisdom and thank you for sharing that. Your right the people that are preaching it have probably been there. I get good traffic and leads from blogging and articles but it did take awhile for that to start happening. But when myself and some other people in my primary business got together and decided to do some google ads that was a different story. We were seeing days of 400 plus leads from optimized articles and good bidding strategies. Hmmm funny you should mention Youtube I used to know a strategy to get clicks for only a penny maybe that is another blog post. Thanks Raena!
Steve
Hi Steve. I can’t say I’ve had a lot of success with free ads, but I haven’t been doing it long enough to know. I am going to a lot more link tracking to see where the responses are coming from. I do get a lot more response from my ad co-op ads, and I’m going to try some more videos, too. When I have a little more information, I can let you know. Enjoyed our session last night, even if I did keep falling off.
All the best,
Leslie
Leslie Denning recently posted..Get Started with Instant Payday Network
Hey Leslie would love to hear about it and do tell on the co-op ads write a post I will make sure I stop by and thank you for stopping in as well.
Steve