Friday, December 26, 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.

When you are ready to place your ad, make sure that you write a good advertisement. Be brief, informative, and give a good description of what you are selling. Use an e-mail address rather than a phone number for a contact, as your phone number can be all over the web and you will receive calls you do not want.

When you choose a payment method make sure that you do not send any item without receiving payment first. PayPal and Money Orders are both good ways to accept payment. If you decide to accept checks, make it clear that the item will not ship until the check clears. You have to protect yourself from the Internet scammers.

When you decide on a website to sell on, check to see if they have a forum or message board there. Read them to see how well the ads on this website work. Get involved and ask questions as well. The better informed you are will make you a better seller.

Make sure you read the Terms of Service so you know about any fees or restrictions on things that they let you post. Find out how many days that your ad will run. The normal ad runs for seven to thirty days. Remove your ad when your item sells. Make some money, and pay no fees. - 15359

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