Online Classified ads
Hello,
Your right it is hard to get people to advertise using online classified ads even if they are free, I have a site which has been up for about a year and a half. No I do not spam my advertisers, in fact I rarely send them anything except for offering to install their pictures for them, I personally feel this is an emerging market and a great cost effective way to get the word out, wether it be advertising your website of selling an item.
Lets look at this another way! If you have a business (brick and mortar), do you just put it up and wait for business? No, normally you call the local paper to advertise your services or buy
signage to advertise.
Online how do you get business to your site?
1. Optimize your site for search engines
2. Add a links page
3. Advertise your keywords
Put your ad on a quality classified ad site that is well positioned with the search engines.
For example on my site which is located in Ohio,
do a search on any of the major engines for keywords on classified ads for ohio.
Example:
Ohio classified ads
cleveland, ohio classified ads
toledo, ohio classified ads
Akron, Ohio classified ads
Search practically every major city in Ohio and you will see our site smiling back at you. I know it is just a matter of time before people understand the value of online advertising as when I talk to alot of people about advertising they think just because they put up a site online they will get flooded with business, this could be not be further from the truth! It takes a lot of work and you have to treat your web business just like a brick and mortar business if you want to succeed online.
Occassionally I send out advertisements to people who are not already advertising on my site but anymore I usually call first then follow-up with an e-mail explaining our services.
So to summarize classified ads online, most are free but go with the ones concentrating on the area you want to target they will give you the exposure in the area you want to be exposed, additionally most concentrated sites like mine do not load you with any e-mail like the big ones do.
The large ones give us smaller guys a bad rap and you add will get lost in the masses!
As far as being cost effective have you ever price a classified ad in a major paper, usually in excess of $100. for 7 days for only 20 words and no pictures. Don't expect calls as you usually get lost in the masses. I have apartments also and normally any more I do not even use the papers, they are cost prohibitive.
With paper I understand that for example they sell 100,000 paper a day but understand this out of that 100,000 how many are looking for what you offer, usually a very small % and unless you spend $1,000's of dollars they on a quarter or half page ad they will never find you. Online I recieve in excess of 80,000 people a month to my site, you get 1000 words of text, 4 pictures, use of html, and so many features I won't even try to explain, all for FREE. No comparison! especially when you take into the fact my keyword placement of my site as compared to the other sites this is the most important factor anyways especially if you are trying to sell something.
I hope that this has helped you in understanding online classified advertising. Additionally I was not trying to sell anything since I do not charge to advertise anyways.
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