Monday, December 29, 2008

Free Classified Ads: What You Should Know

By Alex Wu

You have something you want to sell, or maybe something that you want? You do not want to pay to advertise it in the local paper. Well there are a few papers that let you advertise for free, and there are many more online sites that let you advertise for free.

You can place many types of ads on the Internet free classified ads sites. They are open to all, and they usually have great results. This is often a better way to sell items for people who want to avoid fees as you would get from the local classifieds or on e-bay.

Personal ads can be listed, autos for sale, pets for sale, or anything else that you want to advertise. Many of the newspapers have online classifieds so you do get more exposure, but, for free exposure you cannot beat that. The profit is all yours. That is unless they let you advertise for free and then want a percentage of what you sell, but most do not work like that. They earn their money from the advertisers that place ads on the classified pages, like click ads.

When you decide to place a free classified ad on the Internet, do your homework and find out which ones rank highest on the search engines. You can use Alexa toolbar 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 ten results as these will be your most looked at classified ad websites. You should advertise on more than one.

If you have smaller items you may want to hit a larger audience. So advertise in local and global. The choice is yours just make sure you add shipping into your price. Read other ads to get a feeling for how they should read. See how fast the ads move, that is to say how quickly items sell. This is important for you to know what to expect.

Be precise in the method of payment that you require, and never send your item without payment first. PayPal and Money Orders are two methods that are good. If you accept checks make it clear that no item will be sent until the check clears. You have to protect yourself. There are people who are out to scam others just like anywhere else.

The ads can run anywhere from 7 to 30 days depending on the website, so it is worth checking into it. If they have any stats as far as how fast people are able to sell on their read them, if here are testimonials read them as well.

When you decide on the website that you will place your classified ad on, look into the terms of service and use. Make sure you know of any costs that they charge, and for what they are charged. Know what restrictions they have as far as what you can advertise on the website. The ads usually run between seven and thirty days, know what yours will run for. Do your due diligence so you can profit from using free classified ads. - 15431

About the Author: