Affordable Advertising on Craigslist

The advertising on Craigslist is certainly affordable. In fact there is no fee for the majority of posts made on Craigslist. Craigslist began as a non-profit organization but in 1999 it was converted to a for profit organization. However, operating costs are supported by charging nominal fees for help wanted advertisements placed on the San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City Craigslist websites. Additionally, there is a fee for brokerage apartment listings in New York City.

The vast majority of those posting advertisements on any of the Craigslist over 300 websites are not paying a fee to do so. This definitely makes posting advertisements on Craigslist to be worthwhile from a financial standpoint. While the advertisements are free care should be taken to post these advertisements judiciously because although there is financial loss, poor posting can result in a loss of time and resources if it leads to poor profit potential.

Why Craigslist is Free

Although the founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, was approached in 1997 about the possibility of running banner advertisements on Craigslist to generate a profit, he made the decision to keep Craigslist as a noncommercial website. Even after Craigslist was converted to a for profit organization commercialization did not infiltrate the website. The points listed in the Craigslist mission statement demonstrate why Craigslist has remained noncommercial:

• Giving each other a break, getting the word out about everyday, real-world stuff
• Restoring the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment
• Keeping things simple, common-sense, down-to-earth, honest, very real
• Providing an alternative to impersonal, big-media sites
• Being inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised, democratizing…
• Being a collection of communities with similar spirit, not a single monolithic entity

Advertising on Craigslist vs. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another type of marketing which many business owners find to be both worthwhile and affordable. For many the appeal of affiliate marketing is the affiliates are not compensated for their efforts unless the business owner sees some type of gain from the advertising. This gain may be in the form of website traffic in the case of pay per click marketing, in the form of sales in pay per sale marketing or in the form of potential leads when a website visitor performs a specific action such as registering with a website or signing up for an offer.

While affiliate marketing is very appealing there are others who prefer advertising on Craigslist. The advantages Craigslist offers to advertisers is, of course, that the advertisers never pay for their business advertisements and the community receives a great deal of website traffic already so driving traffic to the website is not a concern.

Why Free Is Not Always Better

However, there are some specific instances where free advertising is not the best type of advertising available. Consider a product or service for which Craigslist does not have an appropriate category. In this case advertising on Craigslist may not be worthwhile because although the advertisement is free, it is also not likely to receive a great deal of attention from members of the target audience. In this case, advertising on Craigslist may be a waste of resources.

Another example of an instance when Craigslist may not be a great advertising option is when the market is already saturated with competitors’ advertisements. In this case it can be difficult to sway customer loyalty so it might be more worthwhile to pay for advertising in a less crowded market.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Five Qualities For Affiliate Marketing

More and more people these days are turning to one of the most popular businesses around - the business of affiliate marketing. In this business, there are no bosses, deadlines to meet, or piles of work that have to be finished by the end of the day.  In order to succeed, you only need the necessary tools.

There are basically five things you can’t do without if you want to make it in the business of affiliate marketing.  Below, you’ll find each quality you’ll need.

1.  Desire to learn

The first quality you must possess is the desire to learn, coupled with the willingness to be trained.  Treading through unfamiliar territory is tough indeed, especially if your lacking the right knowledge. This is a combination of the right frame of mind, coupled with a strong work ethic.

When starting out, you’ll need to be willing to keep your eyes and ears open, using the experience of others to learn more as you go.

2.  Invest time and effort

The second quality you must have is the willingness to invest time and effort in helping your business grow, even if you don’t see immediate results.  Even though weeks may pass without hearing good news, it’s very important for anyone who wants to get their foot in the business world.

3.  Determination

The third quality you’ll need is determination.  If you want to make it in the world of affiliate marketing, you must possess to push yourself forward.  The ability to push yourself to greater heights will determine what type of future you have.

4.  Discipline

The fourth quality is self discipline.  If you teach yourself to work everyday with all of your heart and soul, you’ll be that much closer to reaching your goals and making your dreams come true.

5.  Optimism

The last quality you must have is optimism.  Bad attitudes should never discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing their dreams in order to make life better for themselves or anyone around them.

The attitude you have towards the business should always be good, because you’ll have to realize that you’re the captain of your ship and your the one steering it towards destiny.

If you put the above tips to good use, you’ll go farther than you ever thought possible in the world of affiliate marketing.  You’ll need these qualities to succeed, as affiliate marketing can be a cutting edge career.  With the above qualities, you’ll do just fine in the industry.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Making Money with Articles: The Best Place to Put Affiliate Links on Your Website

Where you place your affiliate links on your website can really make a difference on how many clicks you end up getting and, since every click means a potential sale, this is an important aspect of internet marketing.

Research has shown that the most effective affiliate links are text links. Yes, plain text links. Not big flashy banner ads like most affiliate website are filled to the brim with. What happens is, you write a great article (or have one created) about the product or something related to the product and stick the link into your text. This allows interested readers to see the link as they are reading and click on it.

Of course, your article and your link have to work effectively together to make this happen. A bad article and an unrelated link to an unknown product are not likely to make the profits roll in.

So the next time you are out to choose an affiliate link, try placing a relevant link in a great article that is well optimized for search engines and see how it works out for you.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a derivative of Internet marketing where the advertisement publisher gets paid for every customer or sales provided by him. Affiliate marketing is the basic for all other Internet marketing strategies.

In this type of marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers and third party vendors are effectively utilized to use E-mail Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, RRS Capturing and Display Advertising for the success of the product. The web traffic can be traced with the help of a third party or own affiliate programs. A lot of work is involved in this process. At first marketing by this method involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc. But, after the invention of complex algorithms and advance security this has been regularized to make it safer for doing business and shopping online. This even led to the better scrutinizing of the terms and conditions by the merchants. Affiliate marketing became more profiting with the opening of more opportunities but at the same time it also increased the competition in marketing.

Due to this pressure in house affiliate programs for merchants became a thing of the past and were replaced by out-sourced programs. The companies that offered this service have expert affiliate and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques.  These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help them with the advertising part.

Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com who had music oriented websites. They placed list of music albums on their site and they paid others if they put those links in their websites when a visitor bought their album through their site. The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records. Two months later, Amazon was offered by a woman that she would sell Amazon’s books on her website and she should be paid a certain percentage in return if she sold Amazon’s books through her site. They liked the idea and started the Amazon associates program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on other’s site and bought anything through it.

Since its invention, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, education, telecom, mobile, gaming, personal finance, retail, and subscription sites, the most common being adult and gambling sectors. In UK alone, affiliate marketing produced £ 2.16 billion.

The compensation methods used are Cost per sale (CPS), Cost per action (CPA), Cost per mile (CPM) and Cost per click (CPC). The first two are the more famous methods today. This is because in CPM and CPC, the visitor which turns up on a particular website might not be the targeted audience and a click would be enough to generate commission. CPS and CPA have a compulsion that the visitor not only clicks on the link but also buys something or signs up for some service after it which proves that he is among the targeted audience. Only in the above case the affiliate gets paid. So the affiliate should try to send as much targeted traffic as possible to the advertiser in order to increase his/her returns and for this reason affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing because it totally depends on the performance of the affiliate. The affiliate team can be differentiated from a sales team from the nature of their jobs. The job of the affiliate team is to drag targeted traffic to a point and from that
point it’s the job of the sales team to influence the visitor to buy the product or the service.

This is a very effective kind of method because the money is being paid only when results have been achieved. The publisher incurs all the cost except that of initial setup and development of the program, which is incurred by the merchant. Many businesses give credit to this method of marketing for their success.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Making Money with Articles: The Best Place to Place Affiliate Links on Your Website

Where you place your affiliate links on your website can really make a difference on how many clicks you end up getting and, since every click means a potential sale, this is an important aspect of internet marketing.

Research has shown that the most effective affiliate links are text links. Yes, plain text links. Not big flashy banner ads like most affiliate website are filled to the brim with. What happens is, you write a great article (or have one created) about the product or something related to the product and stick the link into your text. This allows interested readers to see the link as they are reading and click on it.

Of course, your article and your link have to work effectively together to make this happen. A bad article and an unrelated link to an unknown product are not likely to make the profits roll in.

So the next time you are out to choose an affiliate link, try placing a relevant link in a great article that is well optimized for search engines and see how it works out for you.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Successful Affiliate Marketing

There are hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there, all of which claim to be the best.  Many of them try to give you the impression that all you have to do is use their banners and links then wait for the money to start rolling in.  Although this can be the case, this type of scenario normally applies to large sites with a lot of web traffic.

Choosing banners
With most affiliate programs, you are offered a variety of banners to plan on your website, as very few of them will be effective.  The problems with most banners are their size.  If you choose a banner that is high in size, it will take a long time to implement and use.  Therefore, it’s recommended that you use banners no more than 15kb in size.  We recommend My Banner Maker for a place to cut your teeth on making a banner.  Also, a good place to advertise your banner(s) is 50KBanners.   Great value all around.

When you select any types of graphical advertising, you should try and keep the theme of your website in mind.  Even though graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch people’s eye, they shouldn’t be to the point where everything else on the page is completely ignored.

Pop ups and unders
A lot of companies will now give their affiliates the chance of using pop up or pop under ads.  In most opinions, pop ups aren’t the way to go.  They can easily annoy visitors and are normally closed before they even have the chance to load.  You should instead go for pop unders and those types that only display once per visit.  I have a good script that you can put on your page that will load another page on exit.  If you would like to see it, email me at FredRaley@GMail.com and ask for it.  It’s just a few lines of code.

Text link ads
Once of the most successful means of advertisting is text link ads.  They are easy on bandwidth, don’t use a lot of space, and they easily be implemented into most types of page layouts.  Good text links offer some information as to why your visitor should investigate your offers.

Email advertising
The direct promotion via email has really taken off over the last several years, although it has brought tons of spam with it. If you plan to use email as a method of advertising your products, you should stand behind what you sell and make yourself available to answer any questions.  Our blog category “Email Marketing” has tons of information all in one place on this subject.

Patience
If you feel confident that your site can generate great sales for certain company’s, you should contact them to negotiate an arrangement.  If they don’t seem to enthused to begin with, you should remain patient as companies are approaced every day with affiliates looking to make better deals.

The reality remains that most affiliates can’t deliver what they promise, and companies are aware of this.

You should always keep in mind that most forms of advertising will take time.  No matter what methods you plan to use, give it some time before you make any type of decision. Although something may not happen overnight - it very well could in a few days or weeks.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

5 Qualities For Affiliate Marketing

More and more people these days are turning to one of the most popular businesses around - the business of affiliate marketing. In this business, there are no bosses, deadlines to meet, or piles of work that have to be finished by the end of the day.  In order to succeed, you only need the necessary tools.

There are basically five things you can’t do without if you want to make it in the business of affiliate marketing.  Below, you’ll find each quality you’ll need.

1.  Desire to learn

The first quality you must possess is the desire to learn, coupled with the willingness to be trained.  Treading through unfamiliar territory is tough indeed, especially if your lacking the right knowledge. This is a combination of the right frame of mind, coupled with a strong work ethic.

When starting out, you’ll need to be willing to keep your eyes and ears open, using the experience of others to learn more as you go.

2.  Invest time and effort

The second quality you must have is the willingness to invest time and effort in helping your business grow, even if you don’t see immediate results.  Even though weeks may pass without hearing good news, it’s very important for anyone who wants to get their foot in the business world.

3.  Determination

The third quality you’ll need is determination.  If you want to make it in the world of affiliate marketing, you must possess to push yourself forward.  The ability to push yourself to greater heights will determine what type of future you have.

4.  Discipline

The fourth quality is self discipline.  If you teach yourself to work everyday with all of your heart and soul, you’ll be that much closer to reaching your goals and making your dreams come true.

5.  Optimism

The last quality you must have is optimism.  Bad attitudes should never discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing their dreams in order to make life better for themselves or anyone around them.

The attitude you have towards the business should always be good, because you’ll have to realize that you’re the captain of your ship and your the one steering it towards destiny.

If you put the above tips to good use, you’ll go farther than you ever thought possible in the world of affiliate marketing.  You’ll need these qualities to succeed, as affiliate marketing can be a cutting edge career.  With the above qualities, you’ll do just fine in the industry.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Successful Affiliate Marketing

There are hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there, all of which claim to be the best.  Many of them try to give you the impression that all you have to do is use their banners and links then wait for the money to start rolling in.  Although this can be the case, this type of scenario normally applies to large sites with a lot of web traffic.

Choosing banners
With most affiliate programs, you are offered a variety of banners to plan on your website, as very few of them will be effective.  The problems with most banners are their size.  If you choose a banner that is high in size, it will take a long time to implement and use.  Therefore, it’s recommended that you use banners no more than 15kb in size.

When you select any types of graphical advertising, you should try and keep the theme of your website in mind.  Even though graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch people’s eye, they shouldn’t be to the point where everything else on the page is completely ignored.

Pop ups and unders
A lot of companies will now give their affiliates the chance of using pop up or pop under ads.  In most opinions, pop ups aren’t the way to go.  They can easily annoy visitors and are normally closed before they even have the chance to load.  You should instead go for pop unders and those types that only display once per visit.

Text link ads
Once of the most successful means of advertisting is text link ads.  They are easy on bandwidth, don’t use a lot of space, and they easily be implemented into most types of page layouts.  Good text links offer some information as to why your visitor should investigate your offers.

Email advertising
The direct promotion via email has really taken off over the last several years, although it has brought tons of spam with it. If you plan to use email as a method of advertising your products, you should stand behind what you sell and make yourself available to answer any questions.

Patience
If you feel confident that your site can generate great sales for certain company’s, you should contact them to negotiate an arrangement.  If they don’t seem to enthused to begin with, you should remain patient as companies are approaced every day with affiliates looking to make better deals.

The reality remains that most affiliates can’t deliver what they promise, and companies are aware of this.

You should always keep in mind that most forms of advertising will take time.  No matter what methods you plan to use, give it some time before you make any type of decision. Although something may not happen overnight - it very well could in a few days or weeks.

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Making Money with Articles: Niche Websites

Choosing a good niche subject to base your website around is one of the most important aspects of making money off of your articles. This will give you a foundation to build from and you can target one general audience with a pack of keywords that they are most likely to be searching for. You should take each one of these keywords and use it for the basis of one article on each page. This way, even though you are targeting one specific subject, you will be sure to interest a wide variety of people in that one niche. They may also find other pages that interest them, which will keep them returning to your site to learn new information about the niche subject.

The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase. Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then deicide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.

If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com

Making Money with Articles: How Much Can I Make?

How much you can make from placing articles and affiliate links on your website differs from person to person. How much you are able to make will depend mostly on how successful your site is. This means getting good search engine rankings through SEO efforts, making your site enjoyable and informative to read through engaging content, building your site around a great niche subject, how big your site is, and how many sites you have.

Some people claim to make as much as $10,000 per month ($120,000 per year) through building and promoting niche sites, however, most people should not expect this kind of success, especially if you are very new, as that kind of success usually only comes with experience and acquired skill. A reasonable income to expect from a niche site, after you have worked for months to gain traffic and are hooked up with good affiliates, may be $500-$1,000 per month. However this is recurring income, so you will make that much monthly off of the efforts you put into that one site, it is not a one shot deal.

After you have a successful site, most choose to continue to build niche sites. The more sites that you build, the better an income you can generate. Some also choose to build very fast and very short sites over sites that are slightly longer in length. It should be noted that the larger each of your sites are, the more income you will likely generate off of them.

When starting out, it is important to remember that your first site will always be your hardest, since you are just learning the ropes of the business, and that not everyone is cut out to market and promote niche sites. It may not work out for you and you may end up losing a little bit of money, but that is a risk that everyone in this business has to take.

The important thing is that you don’t give up without a good shot at it, if this is really what you want to do. Your first site may take a long time, the work may be tedious, and you may feel like throwing in the towel. However, if you give up too early, you will never know what could have been. And who knows, you may be the next great website marketer!

One excellent resource I use to expand the marketing effect of my articles is Unique Article Wizard See what you think about this! I am pretty sure you will love it.

As with all online marketing, I recommend strongly that you collect information from your leads in a good autoresponder system.   This one is is especially strong in ad tracking.  I use it for every ad I run and the ease of use is outstanding.   I highly recommend  http://www.trafficwave.net/members/fredraley/features.html for all of  your marketing needs.

Fred Raley
Woodbridge, VA
703 203 4648
http://www.EMailSalesExplosion.com