Monday, December 29, 2008

Free Classified Ads: What You Should Know

By Alex Wu

When you want to advertise you want to go the cheapest route. In the local paper there are some things that can be put in for free like lost animal listings. Most everything else you have to pay for. Online however there is a wealth of websites that you can advertise your business or services for free.

You can place many types of ads on the Internet free classified ads sites. They are open to all, and they usually have great results. This is often a better way to sell items for people who want to avoid fees as you would get from the local classifieds or on e-bay.

The best way to find a good classified service to advertise your product or service on is to run an internet search with a few keywords like classifieds, or local classifieds, to find out which ones come up first in an Internet search. This helps you to decide which one would give you more exposure for your advertising.

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.

If you have smaller items you may want to hit a larger audience. So advertise in local and global. The choice is yours just make sure you add shipping into your price. Read other ads to get a feeling for how they should read. See how fast the ads move, that is to say how quickly items sell. This is important for you to know what to expect.

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.

The ads can run anywhere from 7 to 30 days depending on the website, so it is worth checking into it. If they have any stats as far as how fast people are able to sell on their read them, if here are testimonials read them as well.

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. - 17943

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