Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Free Classifieds How Do They Work?

By Alex Wu

The local paper wants to charge you a large fee to advertise something, and the fee is almost as much as the item you want to sell. Try the Internet free Classified ads. They are a great money saver for those of you that have items to sell. You can sell anything from real estate to jewelry. The Internet targets a larger audience for you. They will target local and statewide audiences, and some even global for those small items that you want to sell.

You wonder why they are free. Well they have many "link ads" on their web pages and the more ads they have, the more pages they have to place those ads on. They are often paid on a per click basis. They also offer upgrades like you can post a picture with your ad for a fee, or get a premium membership and pay no fee for the extra feature.

The secret to where the free classified sites make money is in the click ads that appear on the pages of their website. They get paid per click. They also charge for premium features such as adding a picture to your classified ad they do quite well with this.

When you decide to place a classified ad on the Internet, do your homework and find out which ones rank highest on the search engines. You can use Google Analytics 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 three results as these will be your most looked at classified ad websites. You should advertise on more than one.

Once you know what you want to sell and where you will place the ad, make sure that you have a good, clear, and brief ad describes your item or service and set your price and method of payment accepted. Place a contact e-mail address not a phone number. You do not want your number all over the Internet.

Do not give out a phone number to call, people will call you all hours of the day and night. Dive an e-mail address for contact. I would create a free e-mail account just for this purpose. This will save you much grief. Place in the ad what type of payments you will accept. PayPal is my favorite, but you can take money orders and checks. I would not release the item or service until the check clears. There are scammers who use the "I will send the money once I know you have sent he product". Do not fall for that.

When you place your ad make sure it is clear, short, and gives a good brief description of what you have to offer. Adding a picture can help in some cases. Make sure that you describe you item honestly and include any flaws if there are any. A good description can mean a sale.

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 homework and you can sell many things for free on the Internet.

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