Can Free Classified Advertising on Craigslist Improve Your Business?
There is certainly an opportunity to gain financial benefit through free classified advertising on Craigslist
. Advertising for all products and services is free on Craigslist making it cost effective.
Additionally, Craigslist already receives extensive traffic with approximately ten million visitors generating four billion page views each month so there is no need to drive traffic to the website.
While Craigslist offers so many free classified advertising benefits, these benefits may be wasted if the advertiser does not do his research or evaluate the competition.
Research before Posting Free Classified Advertising on Craigslist
Advertising on Craigslist is similar to advertising in other forms of media.
Despite the existing heavy traffic flows to the website, successful marketing campaigns require extensive research. This research should provide the Internet marketer and his staff with insight into where post the advertisements to most effectively reach the target audience, how to word the copy of the advertisement to make it most appealing to the target audience and which relevant keywords should be included in the advertising copy to make it likely for members of the target audience to find the advertisement easily when searching for products and services offered by the company.
Thorough Research of Free Classified Advertising of this capacity can be conducted either online or offline.
One of the most effective forms of this type of research is to have members of the target audience fill out market surveys.
The answers provided by the participants should give the marketer a good idea of what the target audience is seeking. Incorporating this information into the marketing campaign can make it noticeably more successful.
Evaluate the Free Advertising Competition on Craigslist
The search feature on Craigslist gives an Internet marketer an excellent way to evaluate the competition.
Studying the competition is important because it can help you to learn how you can be more successful.
This increased success can be a result of determining successful aspects of the competitor`s marketing strategy and implementing these strategies as well as determining faulty aspects of the competitor`s marketing strategy and avoiding these strategies.
To get a good idea of the competitors who are advertising on Craigslist, use the search feature to search for keywords relevant to your own products and services. You will likely receive search results including advertisements from competitors.
Next, carefully analyze these free online advertisements to determine how your can not only create better products and services at more affordable prices but also write more engaging advertising copy.
Many wise Internet marketers have the reasoning skills necessary to properly analyze the free classified ads for competitors but they often falter when taxed with the dilemma of creating better advertisements. This is when the services of a professional sales copywriter with search engine optimization (SEO) skills becomes a vital part of the equation. This writer can use his SEO training as well as his knowledge on the subject of writing advertising copy to effectively entice members of the target audience to either purchase products or services or at least investigate these products or services further.
Online Affiliate Marketing Advertising through Craigslist
What is Online Affiliate Marketing?
Online Affiliate marketing is essentially a marketing campaign in which the online business owner only pays the affiliate based on performance. Unlike conventional marketing campaigns where the business owner pays for the advertising regardless of the results produced by the advertisements, in affiliate marketing the business owner only pays when a specific result is achieved. Online Affiliate marketing usually takes place in the following three forms:
- Pay Per Click
- Pay Per Sale
- Pay Per Lead
In a pay per click online affiliate marketing campaign the affiliate places a coded link on their website and each time a visitor to their website clicks through the link to the sponsor`s website, the affiliate receives a sum of money.
The amount of money they receive is based on an agreement between the sponsor and the affiliate. This amount can be cents, dollars or even a fraction of a cent.
In a pay per sale campaign the affiliate is not compensated when the visitor clicks through to the sponsor`s website unless they also make a purchase when they click through this link.
Again the amount of money the affiliate receives will depend on a pre-determined agreement and may be a specific amount or a percentage of the sale.
In a pay per lead program the affiliate receives monetary compensation when a visitor clicks through the affiliate link and performs a specific action such as registering at the sponsor`s website or requesting additional information.
Using Craigslist to Find Potential Affiliates
Business owners who are interested in finding affiliates to promote their website may use Craigslist for the purpose of finding these affiliates.
It may seem logical to post affiliate opportunities in the jobs section of Craigslist but it is important to note this is against Craigslist`s job posting policies.
Review of the policy for posting jobs on Craigslist will verify these requirements. Therefore those who are interested in finding affiliates will have to take advantage of other areas of Craigslist to find affiliates.
Unless you have devised a method to escape the Craiglist spider….
Please refer to Craigslist Formula for more discussion via video to explain how it is possible to advertise for prima facia “prohibited subjects.”
Visiting discussion forums related to your business may be one way to find potential affiliates. However, when using the discussion forums, care should be taken to avoiding spamming the discussion forums with links to sign up for your affiliate program.
Such spamming techniques are likely to not be taken seriously by potential affiliates and may incur more severe penalties by Craigslist moderators.
The best way to find potential affiliates is to make logical contributions to discussions and get to know other participants offline or to include a link to more information on your affiliate marketing program whenever you post.
Using Craigslist to Find Opportunities for Online Marketing Affiliates
Those who generate a profit from acting as an online marketing affiliate for others can find new affiliate opportunities through Craigslist.
Although posting these opportunities on the job boards are prohibited it is possible for advertisements of this nature to appear either because the original poster was not aware of the restrictions or because they deliberately ignored the restrictions.
These types of advertisements are likely to be removed when discovered but they may exist for a short time without being noticed. Please refer to “Craiglist Formula” for in depth review of what is obtainable using Craiglist marketing.
Those who act as affiliates can also find potential leads by placing advertisements in the services section or the resumes section. They may also find potential leads by networking with those in the discussion forums.
