Hosting classified ad sites is also an excellent way to advertise your business or affiliate products and services for free. Hosting a classified add site means that you are the operator of the site and you provide the classified advertising service for other entrepreneurs who use it to advertise their own products and services.
You can set up a classified ad site by using a special script program installs the site through your web hosting account. If you perform an Internet search query for classified ad site scripts you will find many free and fee based classified ad scripts from which to choose. After the classified ad site is installed you have to configure the appearance, ad categories, and various administrative options that control how the site operates.
Once the set up is completed you would have to advertise the availability of the site to potential advertisers. The best way to do this is to submit your site to as many classified ad site directories as possible and you can find them by performing a simple search engine query.
OK, now here’s the fun part. Once your site is established in the classified ad directories advertisers will begin to post their ads and supply some basic information required by the posting process such as name, email and location. The classified ad script will require email confirmation before the ad is activated so you can be assured that the email addresses are valid.
Essentially, your classified ad site will become a list building machine allowing you to legally email information about your products and services to the people to advertise on your site! If you set everything up correctly your list will grow into the thousands a few months. You can also place banner advertisements on your classified ad site for more free advertising and traffic!
Now, I understand how this can sound very complicated if you have no experience but it really is very easy to set up! In fact you can have your own classified ad site set up and running within a few minutes of getting getting the right script.
I used a free script created by a company called Becanada to set up my classified ad sites. Becanda also has a classified ad directory service that will list your site with hundreds of directories free of charge. You can see one of my classified ad sites by clicking the link following this video.
It does not look like much but I’ve gotten several thousand high quality free leads from it since I set it up a few months ago. I also get free traffic from my banner links.
You can get a copy of the of the script at this link:
If you have read other articles on this blog you know I use web site hosting services by Hostgator. They have a great service but they don’t offer unlimited bulk emailing and they a couple of my classified ad sites were disabled because they were sending “too much” email.
So I have been migrating my classified ad sites to Global Virtual Opportunities HostThenProfit hosting service because they have a
marketer-friendly bulk email policy. They also offer unlimited web site hosting accounts and unlimited autoresponders with their
Titanium account. This is perfect for setting up multiple classified ad sites from which to harvest free leads.
As I mentioned before, setting up a free classified it script is very easy but if you are not comfortable with working with cgi scripts I am willing to set up your classified ad site for free! If you are interested in my free classified ad setup service just
contact me for details!
Here are some additional tips for effectively marketing to the leads that you capture from your classifieds ad sites.
Although the script has a built-in email feature, I would recommend that you copy the leads and import them into your own bulk email software. This will allow you to filter duplicate email addresses and personalize your messages with subscriber information. I use a desktop email program called Mail Loop that I purchased many years ago. It works very well for me but if I did not have it, I would choose
Autoresponse Plus.
The classifieds ad leads are active marketers promoting some business of their own and this means that they are excellent prospects for you. However, instead of promoting your own business opportunity directly to them, it would be more effective to promote affiliate marketing tools and services that will assist them with their business. Promoting
GVO marking tools would be perfect! Your messages could also include passive references to you own business using a signature link for example.
When performing a bulk email broadcast, your goal should be to get prospects to subscribe to your regular newsletter/autoresponder. To accomplish this you will need a well designed and tested lead capture page with a powerful incentive to encourage prospects to subscribe.
Not matter how good your lead capture page is, most prospects will not subscribe because the response rate will be in the range of 0.01% to 2.0%. Therefore your messages should include a signature with a cloaked link directly to your favorite affiliate program to take advantage of the possibility that a prospect who does not subscribe to you list may be interested in your affiliate offer.
Bulk emailing should be conducted infrequently relative to your regular newsletter/autoresponder series. Once or twice a month is good. Your messages should include an explanation to remind prospects that they are receiving your message because they used your classified ad service.
You should have a way to track your click-through and subscription rates so that you can measure and improve your results.
Make sure your messages are Can-Spam act compliant and contain a list removal link and enjoy using classifieds ad sites as an unlimited free lead source!
