Black Belt Web Marketing.pdf - Costa del Sol

Classified Ads as a Way to Increase Web Traffic
Classified ads are another approach to generating more web traffic. Hundreds of locations
exist on the web for placing a classified ad. Many of them are free. Your challenge is to
determine how extensive you want your classified ad campaign to be. How much time (and
money) do you want to spend?
First, you may want to ask yourself, "What’s the risk?" Reportedly, some classified ads sites
are actually schemes to generate email lists. Placing an ad could get you more junk email
than web traffic. Junk email is a risk you run though just be being active on the net.
Registering or announcing your web site will also likely attract junk email. It’s a small price
to pay for the benefits of exploring another avenue for generating web traffic.
You have a large selection of regional, national and global ad sites from which to choose. A
lot depends on the audience you are trying to attract to your web site. Most classified ad
locations offer headings under which you place an ad, similar to print media. Attracting the
right audience rests in part on how relevant the heading, or headings, you choose are.
With many free sites, it is a case of "you get what you pay for" They don’t have the
resources to aggressively promote themselves so traffic is low which means you are wasting
your time if they are on your list of sites where an ad was placed.
Some of the best site cost, but not much -- certainly not as much as print ads. It’s probably
good idea to start with free sites and analyze the results before spending money on classified
ads.
How Much Time Do You Want to Spend?
Like registering a site (Lesson 2) and announcing an event (Lesson 3), you could spend a
week doing nothing but place classified ads. You have to decide for yourself how much
time you want to spend placing ads. We recommend that you select ten reputable-looking
sites and track traffic from those ads. Then decide how much more effort you want to put
into an extensive ad campaign.
If you do decide to place your ad in a multitude of sites, we recommend that you select the
best for now and wait until after you have tried the other approaches for boosting web
traffic described in the lessons in this guidebook before continuing toplace more ads. By
that time you should have an idea how the classified ads you placed are doing.
A lot depends on the product or service offered at your site. If an analysis of these sites after
a few weeks suggests that classified ads are profitable, only then should you devote
considerable time and money to classified ads.
Lesson 4 Pg. 3