How much time do you spend on free classified ad sites? I used to spend a lot of time sitting in front of my computer submitting ads to every site I could find.

Like most "newbies" my marketing budget was a basement figure. The one thing my budget did allow was time which, as it worked out, I had plenty of. But that's a different story for another day.

The point is, the amount of time I spent in front of my computer resulted in only 35 responses over a 3 week period. The sad part is none of them bought anything. This was rather disappointing to say the least.

The marketing "gurus" I was listening to had said that free ads were the way to go when starting out. Maybe that is one of the reasons why there are so many who come online to join this "new frontier", get discouraged and quit before they realize any success.

After I got over the disappointment I decided to investigate what had happened. Following is what I found.

* With the development of submission software, SPAMMING of the free classified sites has been taken to a whole new level.

* Those folks who are actually visiting the sites are, for the most part, there for just one reason. To place their ad and move on to the next site.

* On the other hand, those who are reading the ads are not there for what you'd think. They are there for just one reason and that is to collect email addresses for you

Know what.

That last one became painfully obvious to me because every time I placed ads, it wasn't very long before I was getting so much SPAM I could hardly find the email I really needed to attend to.

If you want to continue using the free sites there are some things you can do to protect yourself.

* open a free email account like Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) or Bigfoot (www.bigfoot.com) to use as your email return address. Set the filters if you like or just delete everything that comes in there.

* what you are advertising can be presented using the cyber two step. You know, have your ad direct your prospect to a sales letter on autoresponder which then directs your prospect wherever. (autoresponders don't do SPAM)

* use a submission program so you don't end up using so much time. There is a good one that is free at http://www.buruseontheweb.com/adwizard32.exe.

Arming yourself with these techniques will hopefully help you to avoid the SPAM I endured. Now if only you can get results... we can talk about how to do that another time.

----------
Article by Bruce McCullough, aka, Buruse of Buruse on the Web. Buruse on the Web is dedicated to bring regular folks clear, concise information about marketing, associate programs and anything involved with working at home with your computer.
http://www.buruseontheweb.com
mailto:BuruseontheWebzine-subscribe@topica.com