Free Advertising and Get More Traffic With Craiglist and USFreeAds

Everyone knows how important it is to advertise. It's what sets the chicken apart from the centipede; the centipede lays a thousand eggs in silence while the chicken lays just one but squawks about it. Which one is better known as an egg layer? The chicken is, of course. But unless you have the budget of a small nation, advertising expenses can be an ominous prospect. So where are some places you can advertise for free? What are the advantages, disadvantages and legal issues? This post will cover a few places you might consider for free advertising.

Two of the most common places people go for free advertising are CraigsList and USFreeAds .

CraigsList, as you may already know, is a recent phenomenon of the internet world which lets you advertise the sale of just about anything and all for free. USFreeAds has actually been around longer than CraigsList, since 1999 in fact, but isn't quite as well known. Both sites allow you to post ads for free, but these sites do have a few limitations and regulations you will have to follow.

CraigsList has the advantage of being totally free, but since it is free it carries one major hurdle to the internet marketer. That hurdle, as you may have anticipated, is that they do no allow affiliate ads. In other words, you can't run an ad with the purpose of linking to an affiliate product. Up until very recently, marketers have found ways to work around this. But CraigsList has become more aggressive about their regulation. Either way, if you're in this business for the long haul it is wise to follow the rules.

USFreeAds does offer a free account, but it carries limited functionality. However they offer two types of paid accounts; the Gold Membership for only $10 a year and the Premium Membership for $9.99 a month. Of course the two levels of paid membership increase the features as you pay more, so you will have to decide which membership will serve your needs. You might be wise to start out with the Gold Membership and do some testing before you dole out for the monthly Premium membership. USFreeAds is generally open to posting affiliate links, but maintains a family-friendly policy and so they will not allow ads leading to Adult content.

General experience with these types of sites is that the general clientele is looking for really good deals, and generally consider the good deals to be something for free. eBay has somewhat of a reputation for this as well, the reputation that its clients want something for nothing, and my experience has been that it holds true even more for free ad sites. Of course this type of client might not be the right fit for everybody, and there will always be exceptions. So in the long run it remains for you to test out these options for yourself and decide if they work for you or not.

But what the heck, as long as it's free you can't be out too much more than a little of your time.