Online Advertising - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly!

As I'm sure you have noticed, if you have done any internet surfing at all, most of the websites that you run across are offering ways to advertise your online business with either free or paid types of ad venues.

These advertising programs are essentially making money from your advertising efforts whether it is classified ads, solo ads or traffic exchanges. There are plenty of free advertising resources available to the savvy internet marketer ie: Craigs List and USFree Ads as well as some that will actually pay you cash back for advertising with them. These can be used with a certain amount of success.

The important thing to remember when using these services is to read their terms of service and NOT violate them. These are very highly visited sites with Craig's List being the 6th most visited site in the world. That's important because if you are using the proper keywords in your title and in the body of your ad, it will appear extremely high up on the search engines and potentially draw some much needed traffic from that high placement. The same is true for other highly ranked advertising sites as well.

Regarding E-Mail advertising, there are some email blasters that can be purchased for a minimal amount, usually in the $10 to $25 range that claim to blast your email ad out to millions of people every day. I have tried several of these blasters with little or no success and would advise not wasting time or money on them.

The other email marketing method that I use is safe list solo ads. A safe list is a group of people that have double opted in to be able to advertise their opportunities to each other with the worry of spam complaints. These safe lists require that you have two different email accounts. One for a list address (where tons of emails come in) and a contact address for the admin of the list will send you their emails.

The only problem that I see with a safe list is that most of the heavy volume of emails going to your list address are just deleted by the other members simply because there are hundreds of emails a day. The other option that I use is purchasing a contact solo ad from the safe list owner to go out to all the contact addresses. This has proven to be fairly productive as the safe list owner generally has more than one list and access to other lists.

The prices range from just a couple of dollars for a single send up to near one hundred dollars depending on the program and how responsive the list is. Generally you can buy a contact solo to run every other day for a month in the $20 range, which is pretty reasonable.

Another source of free or even paid advertising are the traffic exchange. These are basically website rotators that will show your website in exchange for you viewing others websites. They mostly use a system of credits that you earn by "surfing" other peoples sites and then exchange those credits for showing your sites to others. Most traffic exchanges are free to join and advertise on and most have up grades, which offer more services and credits each month. One of the newest innovations to hit the online marketplace for your advertising needs are sites that will actually pay you while you advertise with them.

These sites usually have some sort of pay plan that requires one to build up a down line of people in order to get paid from your advertising with them. This is a good way to go if you have a fairly good following or a sizable list of contacts to market the advertising program to. To sum it all up, Make sure you check and read terms of service so that you stay within the guidelines of the advertising company.

Definitely DO NOT SPAM when using email advertising and do a search for problems with an advertising service to find any scam reports on them. There are a lot of companies on the Internet that will take your money and not provide the services that they offer. It's one of those "buyer Beware" situations that we all struggle with each and every day. That being said though, there are plenty of reputable advertising sites that you can use to promote whatever your products or services are online.

For Cash Back Advertising resources or to contact the author directly, please call 800-420-9948 or visit his site Who Is Tom Munson and Mountainswest.com