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| The Truth About Free Advertising Copyright 2006 by Willie Crawford It has long been a topic of debate as to just how effective free advertising on the Internet is. It depends upon a number of factors that I'll briefly go over here. They include... 1) Who does the free advertising target? That is... who will be actually reading the ads. This is important because a lot of places that offer free advertising rarely if ever get any actual eyeballs on the ads. If no one reads the ads, then the ads can't possibly very valuable! You might ask, why on earth would anyone offer free ads if no one reads them. The answer is that often a condition for posting free ads is that you agree to receive mailings from the person offering the free ads, or you agree to allow the ads to be emailed to you. So the person offering the free ads builds a list and has a place to mail his offers :-) This isn't necessarily "bad", it's just something you need to think about. In the days when free-for-all links pages were very popular, this was THE reason many people operated those pages. I operated several and used them to grow my lists. Realize that nothing is totally free...you do need to pay some cost, but I want you to consciously consider those costs. 2) What are you selling and why? If you know who is reading the ads, then you absolutely MUST write ads that target these individuals. You need to offer only things that the readers of the ad would buy... or join your list in order to get for free. Use the two-step method when running free ads, or make sure that you have a logical backend in place. With two-step ads, you use the ad just to get your ideal prospects to identify themselves. Then you use the webpage or autoresponder series to do the selling. You don't sell from the ad. After you've got them in your funnel, or sold them something very inexpensive, then you need to have a sequence of communications flowed out that builds a relationship with them and upsells them to other items. Most people who fail at using free advertising do so because they try to sell from these ads rather than using it to just draw highly-targeted prospects into their marketing funnel. With some free advertising sources, a major percentage of those reading your ads will be others who've placed free ads. Often, they are just checking to confirm that their ads are there. So what do you think would be an ideal product to draw these people into your marketing funnel. Maybe more free advertising, or something teaching how to write better ads! 3) How easy is to cheat or short-change the system? One of the things that make many free advertising systems less effective is the natural human tendency to cheat... in other words... greed. People often destroy a very good system by wanting to get more than their fair share while at the same time not pulling their own weight. So, when looking at these systems, make sure that you look at how easy it is to cheat. 4) How many people actually see the ads? How does the system drive traffic to the ads? How viral is it? What "about" the system attracts visitors to the site? Identify these points so that you do have a feel for how many people might actually see your ads. 5) What are others advertising? You don't want to be advertising the exact same thing as everyone else. If there are dozens of ads promoting the same thing that you are, then your chances are very slim of someone noticing your ad and clicking on it. Make your ad different and make it something that you KNOW the reader desperately WANTS. So, these are just five factors for you to consider. I'll add to this list later. For now I wanted to show you three places that have given me positive results. Let me first of all point out that I don't spend an inordinate amount of time on free advertising. I place a fairly high value on my time, and generally consider it worth paying for a higher quality of advertising... such as pay-per-click advertising. When I find a source of free advertising that delivers good results, I leverage that source by testing upgrades. However, over the past month I have looked at dozens of sources of free adverting. I've also had friends and assistants check out dozens of free sources. Here are three sources of free adverting that do give me a worthwhile return on investment: 1) Free Advertising Blog - A blog where you are encouraged to place ads, and the owner is a "master" at driving lots of traffic to it. http://www.free-advertising-blog.com/Advertise-Free/119 2) Free Ad Depot - Free advertising in many format http://freeaddepot.com/?aff=3090 3) Opportunity.com - John Reese's twist on free advertising http://www.opportunity.com/r/williec I haven't stopped testing in other places, and as others prove worthwhile to me, I'll share them with you. In-fact, I've set up a special place just for this. I've set up a blog here: http://FreeProvenAdvertisingResources.com As I discover new advertising resources, I'll post them here. So that I don't spend all of my time doing this, I invite YOU to share your best PROVEN free advertising resources here. You can even use your affiliate links. You can't just place ads here, but you can recommend sites. It's critical that you be completely honest though. Your long-term reputation is at stake ;-) Help your fellow subscribers find real value, and they'll help you do the same. ------------------------------ Willie Crawford has taught PROVEN Internet marketing techniques to thousands of successful Internet entrepreneurs since late-1996. Subscribe to his free weekly ezine, which helps you cut through the clutter and time-wasting hype. Subscribe now by visiting: ==>>> http://WillieCrawford.com |
