Monday, December 29, 2008

Free Classified Ads: What You Should Know

By Alex Wu

You have something you want to sell, or maybe something that you want? You do not want to pay to advertise it in the local paper. Well there are a few papers that let you advertise for free, and there are many more online sites that let you advertise for free.

The Internet is the best place to go for free advertising. They can target large local markets, and state wide markets and even further. They have large advertisers that place linked ads on their classified pages and that is how they make their money.

Personal ads can be listed, autos for sale, pets for sale, or anything else that you want to advertise. Many of the newspapers have online classifieds so you do get more exposure, but, for free exposure you cannot beat that. The profit is all yours. That is unless they let you advertise for free and then want a percentage of what you sell, but most do not work like that. They earn their money from the advertisers that place ads on the classified pages, like click ads.

When you decide to place a free classified ad on the Internet, do your homework and find out which ones rank highest on the search engines. You can use Alexa toolbar for this, or just do web searches as if you were looking for something on the Internet classifieds. Once you get the results make a note of the top ten results as these will be your most looked at classified ad websites. You should advertise on more than one.

This website will be hit the most as it comes up the highest in the search engine. That means a better chance that your ad will get seen by more people. Classified advertising is also targeted. People only look at the sections if they are interested in the products in that section.

Make sure that you read the terms of service on each website so that you know what is expected of you and how long your ad might run, and if there are any restrictions as to what you can advertise. Also read the fine print to catch any hidden costs.

These free classified ads will give you exposure in the local market as well as statewide and even global if you choose. Look for testimonials or look at ant statistic you can find about your chosen website to sell on. If they have a form join it so you can find out if other people are selling well on there. Ask how long it takes usually. Cancel your ad once your item is sold.

When you decide on the website that you will place your classified ad on, look into the terms of service and use. Make sure you know of any costs that they charge, and for what they are charged. Know what restrictions they have as far as what you can advertise on the website. The ads usually run between seven and thirty days, know what yours will run for. Do your due diligence so you can profit from using free classified ads. - 16738

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