Yes Online Classified Advertisements can be an effective method to generate real and substantial traffic to your website!

You may have read that online classified ads were dead or just a place where spammers live, but I am here to tell you they are alive and kicking. You just need to use the right classified websites (no surprises there).

Still don’t believe me? Well what if I told you that eBay, the premier and largest auction site in the world has launched Classified Ads as part of their service? Getting interested yet?

They offer full multimedia options (video and audio) as well as regular text/html and are happy for you to link out to your website and show an email address (all of this stuff is not available with regular eBay auctions, well at least not if you want to avoid potentially getting your auctions closed down).

I’m sure you will agree that eBay would not launch a new service unless they felt they could make money out of it (and lots of money!).

And heres the kicker, search engines absolutely love eBay and you can be confident that your link will be found by the search engines very, very quickly (and you site indexed/re-indexed in next to no time).

Thinking laterally you could use this to launch a website and get your website indexed in a day or so by the search engines. Contrast that with how long indexing can take with using other methods (weeks and months in some cases).

Now because it’s relatively new, only certain categories with eBay currently allow Classified Ad’s but you can be sure this will grow over time.

The great thing about them is that you pay a fixed price for the classified ad to have it listed for around a month (or you can define a shorter period). Potential customers fill out a form on your classified ad page and the details are forwarded to you.

Alternatively you can have a link to your sales page and the customer can navigate directly there.

Of course eBay is not the only classified Ads site, pretty well the biggest site for classified Ad’s is craigslist.org (incidentally eBay owns a 25% stake in this company).

Craig Newmark (the owner) started the site in San Francisco (indeed when you surf over to craigslist.org you start off in this area).

However it has grown to include all states in America, as well as many countries including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and many more.

Once you hit the website you can easily select the area you want to focus on.

Millions of people use craigslist.org EVERY day so this is a huge opportunity for you, and the really cool thing is many posts are free! There is a charge for job postings in some areas, but a lot of the site is free.

Again thinking laterally if you find out a classified ad in a particular location is not free on Craigslist, then try another location, you should eventually find a free one.

Now don’t think you are going to be able to do one classified ad on Craigslist and post it in every location or serve it up for everyone to see, it doesn’t work like that. And if you start posting the same thing over and over to multiple areas of Craigslist the ad will get pulled.

So you need to be smart about this. Remember I have harped on and on about relevant great content?

No differences to be found here, make sure your post is giving useful content and relevant information, and that it’s posted in the correct location/section of craigslist.org.

If you’re selling computer equipment don’t post it in Beauty Services (even if you think your computer is a beauty like mine is).

Now duplicate content is frowned upon and will likely get your Ad’s deleted, but that’s not to say you can only post once.

Post to multiple areas by all means, but mix your content up and make it different. Although you can probably get away with just changing the subject and reposting, it’s far better to actually change the main text as well, so that if a potential customer reads both your classified ads they wont see them as the same classified ad and report you (in which case both classified ads will likely be deleted).

Most of Craiglist classified ads stay online and available for up to 45 days, so you get great value in leaving them up. And just like eBay, the search engines love Craigslist as well, and you will find your website is indexed VERY QUICKLY after you post.

Craigslist has some important posting rules you need to be aware of, so be sure to read the help section so you know exactly what the rules are.

Make sure the link you are displaying actually works, if your showing an email address, make sure it’s live, and that you are checking it regularly.

The good thing about Craigslist is that unlike most other classified Ad websites, they place NO LIMIT on the space you can use for your ad, so get creative, get your text rich and compelling and get people pumped up to click your link and find out more about you.

Now we have discussed eBay Ads and Craiglist, as to me they are two most important places you want to be listed, but there are literally thousands of other classified ad websites you should consider.

There is even software out there that you can buy that will automatically post your ad to hundreds of classified ads (although I personally don’t use software like this).

If you have any experience in a particular product please drop me a line, and I’ll incorporate your findings in a future version of this e-Book to benefit all readers.

Don’t ignore classified ads, they can dramatically increase web site traffic.

I’m now going to talk about a technique that may send your auto responder into Melt Down due to the number of people subscribing to it!

This is paid advertising, or payment for a list of subscribers, and possibly could have been included in the paid traffic chapter. However I felt the subject was important enough to warrant it’s own chapter. Some people may not want to buy web site traffic, but provided you look at the costs carefully it can be very effective.

The technique is not generally known by many Internet markers (or used by that many), and traditionally has been used by large companies only.

There are websites on the Internet that have pre-qualified lists of people waiting to join your list! You hook up with these websites and then all subscribers within your niche market are instantly sent to your auto-responder to sign-up. How cool is that? This is literally a way to add hundreds or thousands of subscribers to your list automatically!

Remember these are people who have specifically indicated an interest in your niche market so you have qualified people ready to buy your products (with that said, some of the less reputable Co-Registration sites may send you any people from their lists, whether they have indicated an interest in your particular niche or not, so it will pay you to stay with the reputable Co-Registration providers).

Of course you still have to actually be able to sell them your product, and sell them on yourself and your website.

You really want to have a decent auto-responder campaign up to give yourself every chance to make a customer from your signups (no surprises there).

The Co-Registration lists can be huge; it’s possible to get 100,000 or more people to sign up on your list. Can you imagine that! But the big lists also cost lots of money, and like any expense you really need to have a budget and know what your conversion rate is in advance before deciding on spending money on these services.

As I have mentioned elsewhere in another article on this website, it’s really important that you track your referrals, especially in the case of paid traffic, so I would suggest that you use link tracking software and/or have a completely new set of auto-responders just for the referrals from the Co-Registration websites so you can actually measure your results.

I have details of link tracking software in the Tools of the Trade resource on this website, I suggest you use Pro Track Manager (a Mike Filsaime product). This is actually a re-branded version of AdTrackz,which I happen to believe is the best Ad Tracking software currently on the Internet (in my opinion).

According to some of the gurus who use Co-Registration sites they profess that you can double your money in seven days. In other words you will get back twice what you invested in purchasing the referrals within seven days.

The other thing you really need to be careful about is ensuring that your auto-responder provider will support co-registration.

AWeber does not support co-registration, and I’ve heard stories of accounts getting deleted if they are found to be using Co-Registration services.

The probable reason for this is that having a large number of people getting “subscribed” to your list in one hit would place a huge load on their servers.

If your looking to use Co-Registration, I suggest you look at both GetResponse (Auto Responders) and GetSubscriber (for Co-Registration services).

These websites actively support each other so you can be sure there are no issues using them both together.

Co-Registration could just be the jump-start your website needs, so I suggest you check out these websites and read up on Co-Registration services. This could be a fantastic way to generate web site traffic.

This is paid advertising, or payment for a list of subscribers, and possibly could have been included in the paid traffic lesson. However I felt the subject was important enough to warrant it’s own lesson.

The technique is not generally known by many Internet markers (or used by that many), and traditionally has been used by large companies only.

There are websites on the Internet that have pre-qualified lists of people waiting to join your list! You hook up with these websites and then all subscribers within your niche market are instantly sent to your auto-responder to sign-up. How cool is that? This is literally a way to add hundreds or thousands of subscribers to your list automatically!

Remember these are people who have specifically indicated an interest in your niche market so you have qualified people ready to buy your products (with that said, some of the less reputable Co-Registration sites may send you any people from their lists, whether they have indicated an interest in your particular niche or not, so it will pay you to stay with the reputable Co-Registration providers).

Of course you still have to actually be able to sell them your product, and sell them on yourself and your website.

You really want to have a decent auto-responder campaign up to give yourself every chance to make a customer from your signups (no surprises there).

Generally the Co-Registration web-site will charge you for each referral that they send to you, but remember this is targeted traffic you are getting, People interested in the niche market you are in, all you need to do is sell to them.

The Co-Registration lists can be huge; it’s possible to get 100,000 or more people to sign up on your list. Can you imagine that! But the big lists also cost lots of money, and like any expense you really need to have a budget and know what your conversion rate is in advance before deciding on spending money on these services.

For example if your normal sale rate for visitors is 5%, e.g. On average of 100 visitors to your website give you 5 sales, you can work out roughly how much you can afford to “pay” for a referral.

Bear in mind that, in theory it’s likely that you will get a better conversion rate from these lists than you would normally because they are targeted referrals, but of course the selling process is entirely up to you and the strength of your auto-responder messages and sales pages.

Worse case it would be possible to be paying for all these referrals and have no sales, so it’s probably wise to start with a small budget and work your way upwards as you see how it’s going. In other words, gauge the response with a small number of referrals from a Co-Registration site, and then make a decision on buying larger numbers based on your success rate.

As I have mentioned elsewhere in this eBook, it’s really important that you track your referrals, especially in the case of paid traffic, so I would suggest that you use link tracking software and/or have a completely new set of auto-responders just for the referrals from the Co-Registration websites so you can actually measure your results.

I use a product called Pro Track Manager (a Mike Filsaime product). This is actually a re-branded version of AdTrackz which I happen to believe is the best Ad Tracking software currently on the Internet.

According to some of the gurus who use Co-Registration sites they profess that you can double your money in seven days. In other words you will get back twice what you invested in purchasing the referrals within seven days.

Again (and yes I know I have mentioned this a few times already) this depends on the strength of your sales letter and auto-responders, and also the relevance of your product/services to your targeted referrals.

This is why it is very important to ensure the categories you choose relate to your area or your niche to ensure to the maximum extent possible the referrals you are receiving are interested in your product or services. I can’t stress this highly enough.

This really could be a way to instantly build your list. Just think of the amount of money to be made using this method, and also keep to the back of your mind that most of the competitors in your niche probably don’t know anything about it.

Reputable Co-Registration sites guarantee against spam (e.g. They do not allow interested people to register on their servers with a hotmail (and other mail accounts similar in nature, and ensure that only the people who have actually requested to be on their lists are actually on them) and guarantee that the email addresses you receive are real and working ones.

In fact they often supply more than the number of referrals to ensure you do get a full list of subscribers just in case a couple of email addresses have changed.

As I mentioned these subscribers (to the Co-Registration sites) have taken the time to sign up and asked to be contacted whenever a site in your niche market has information to give them. So these people are hot prospects, we know this because of the hassle they have gone to ensure they find out about websites just like yours.

Of course like anything there are good and bad providers, and Co-Registration is no different.

The other thing you really need to be careful about is ensuring that your auto-responder provider will support co-registration.

AWeber does not support co-registration, and I’ve heard stories of accounts getting deleted if they are found to be using Co-Registration services.

The probable reason for this is that having a large number of people getting “subscribed” to your list in one hit would place a huge load on their servers.
If your looking to use Co-Registration, I suggest you look at both GetResponse (Auto Responders) and GetSubscriber (for Co-Registration services).

These websites actively support each other so you can be sure there are no issues using them both together.

Co-Registration could just be the jump-start your website needs, so I suggest you check out these websites and read up on Co-Registration services.

I’ll be back yet again with yet another web traffic lesson for you soon.. Stay tuned!

You may have read that online classified ads were dead or just a place where spammers live, but I am here to tell you they are alive and kicking. You just need to use the right classified websites (no surprises there).

Still don’t believe me? Well what if I told you that eBay, the premier and largest auction site in the world has launched Classified Ads as part of their service? Getting interested yet?

They offer full multimedia options (video and audio) as well as regular text/html and are happy for you to link out to your website and show an email address (all of this stuff is not available with regular eBay auctions, well at least not if you want to avoid potentially getting your auctions closed down).

I’m sure you will agree that eBay would not launch a new service unless they felt they could make money out of it (and lots of money!).

And heres the kicker, search engines absolutely love eBay and you can be confident that your link will be found by the search engines very, very quickly (and you site indexed/re-indexed in next to no time).

Thinking laterally you could use this to launch a website and get your website indexed in a day or so by the search engines. Contrast that with how long indexing can take with using other methods (weeks and months in some cases).

Now because it’s relatively new, only certain categories with eBay currently allow Classified Ad’s but you can be sure this will grow over time.

The great thing about them is that you pay a fixed price for the classified ad to have it listed for around a month (or you can define a shorter period).

Potential customers fill out a form on your classified ad page and the details are forwarded to you, alternatively you can have a link to your sales page and the customer can navigate directly there.

Remember to get their email address and name as soon as you can on the landing page (where they arrive upon clicking your link).

Check out eBays classified Ad’s, they are very cool and you can be sure the vast majority of your opposition is not aware of them, or have discounted classified ads together.

Either way there is an opportunity for you, so look into doing this now! Why would you not tap into a website with millions and millions of customers I ask you? You can absolutely bet that there are lots of eBays customers looking to buy the product or service you are selling, so give them what they want!

Of course eBay is not the only classified Ads site, pretty well the biggest site for classified Ad’s is http://craigslist.org/ (incidentally eBay owns a 25% stake in this company).

Craig Newmark (the owner) started the site in San Francisco (indeed when you surf over to http://craigslist.org/ you start off in this area of the site.

However it has grown to include all states in America, as well as many countries including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and many more.

Once you hit the website you can easily select the area you want to focus on.

Millions of people use http://craigslist.org EVERY day so this is a huge opportunity for you, and the really cool thing is many posts are free! There is a charge for job postings in some areas, but a lot of the site is free.

Again thinking laterally if you find out a classified ad in a particular location is not free on Craigslist, then try another location, you should eventually find a free one.

Now don’t think you are going to be able to do one classified ad on Craigslist and post it in every location or serve it up for everyone to see, it doesn’t work like that. And if you start posting the same thing over and over to multiple areas of Craigslist the ad will get pulled.

So you need to be smart about this. Remember I have harped on and on about relevant great content? No differences to be found here, make sure your post is giving useful content and relevant information, and that it’s posted in the correct location/section of http://craigslist.org.

If you’re selling computer equipment don’t post it in Beauty Services (even if you think your computer is a beauty like mine is).

Now duplicate content is frowned upon and will likely get your Ad’s deleted, but that’s not to say you can only post once.

Post to multiple areas by all means, but mix your content up and make it different. Although you can probably get away with just changing the subject and reposting, it’s far better to actually change the main text as well, so that if a potential customer reads both your classified ads they wont see them as the same classified ad and report you (in which case both classified ads will likely be deleted).

Craigslist also allows pictures, and of course a link to your website, so this could be a good opportunity to do some testing by placing a variety of ad’s (with a different URL) and then gauge how many clicks you are getting to work out the good versus the bad ads.

Most of Craiglist classified ads stay online and available for up to 45 days, so you get great value in leaving them up. And just like eBay, the search engines love Craigslist as well, and you will find your website is indexed VERY QUICKLY after you post.

The other useful thing is that you do not need a login to post, you can post anonymous classified ads on Craigslist, however the processing of creating, editing, and deleting ads, as well as re-posting them is a lot easier if you do have an account, so I recommend you get one (free by the way).

Guess what else Craigslist has? A forum. Hopefully you have read the Forums chapter and seen that this is another great opportunity of more traffic, so why not use the Craiglist forums to increase your traffic again (check the Chapter on Forums for specifics of how to use forums effectively).

The other great thing about Craigslist is that there is a “reply” facility where you can get a response to your ads. Craigslist has built in anti-spam where they use a temporary Craiglist email address and then redirect to your actual email address. Very nice!

In relation to how you go about posting, make sure you use prominent headings and spend time on creating a decent Ad, Spell check and test, test, test.

Craigslist has some important posting rules you need to be aware of, so be sure to read the help section so you know exactly what the rules are.

Make sure the link you are displaying actually works, if your showing an email address, make sure it’s live, and that you are checking it regularly.

The good thing about Craigslist is that unlike most other classified Ad websites, they place NO LIMIT on the space you can use for your ad, so get creative, get your text rich and compelling and get people pumped up to click your link and find out more about you.

Make sure you are using your main keywords/keyword phrases in your ads so the search engines can associate your site with these keywords, this can only help to get you higher up in the search engines.

Now we have discussed eBay Ads and Craiglist, as to me they are two most important places you want to be listed, but there are literally thousands of other classified ad websites you should consider.

There is even software out there that you can buy that will automatically post your ad to hundreds of classified ads (although I personally don’t use software like this).

If you have any experience in a particular product please drop me a line, and I’ll incorporate your findings in a future version of this e-Book to benefit all readers.

Don’t ignore classified ads; they can generate great traffic to your website!

Until next time, keep pushing those web traffic techniques, you will get results you are after. I’ll be back in the next few days with another lesson for you.