Have you noticed how the word “free” is often treated as a dirty word, a four letter troublemaker that those self-appointed guardians of your e-mail account toss into the spam folder? Those powers that be want to tell us that anything that is supposed to be free has stipulations and should come with an asterisk, pointing you to the small print and prodding you to wake up and be realistic. There is a tendency to think that because of the nature of the Internet there should be many “free” opportunities for you to advertise and there are indeed places you can turn to broadcast your wares without a direct financial outlay.
Be very cautious when you consider anything as being truly free, as in almost every case your time is the most valuable element of all. Anyone who engages in Internet marketing knows full well that there are not enough hours in the day and time management is a skill that all must master. When you spend time doing research, this is not free. When you interact with sites that will display your products or services at no charge, this is also not really free.
Having said that, there are certainly some key sites online that will allow you to spread your word and many of them bear additional research. There are “horses for courses,” of course and you essentially need to get your marketing mix right first. Where are your prospects likely to be, what medium is likely to help you reach them and is the medium that you are selecting really appropriate for the type of product/service that you have?
One of the biggest “free” bandwagons of our time is undoubtedly Craigslist. This is a huge and basically free classified advertising platform, but in the larger markets and the more popular service sectors is undoubtedly saturated. Remember to keyword optimize your ad as they do generally run pretty well within Google searches. Back page is a Craigslist knockoff, though with much, much smaller reach and in European markets, Kijiji has a good following.
You can be creative, use HTML code and certainly make a difference by standing out. Some have tried to make a significant impact by manipulating Craigslist, by advertising in multiple markets and by trying to “game” the system. This is generally frowned upon and CL has put in place many obstacles to prevent this.
Numerous free classified ad sites exist in addition to the big players, such as Gumtree, Classifieds 2000 or Tumano. US free ads has one of the larger traffic networks out there.
Here are some others:
EPage classifieds
Recycler
Global free classified ads
Domestic sale
Classifieds for free
Can you recommend any other sites to advertise for free?
Adam Toren
Thanks for the suggestions
Thank you for the suggestions. I’m curious to hear about anyone’s successes/failures using sites such as Craigslist for advertising purposes. We are a local plumbing company and have thought about taking this route, however our consensus (at least for our market) is that people using Craigslist were looking for more of a handyman rather than a plumbing company. We figured it was better not to be on there than to misrepresent ourselves. Do others see the use of Craigslist for more amateur/freelance purposes rather than professional?
Very useful information. thanks and i will pass it along