The internet is now the primary source that customers go to find any service provider. Studies have shown that over 80% of all those looking for a home contractor turn to the internet to find one. Having and maintaining your own website in these times of financial insecurity. If you are not on the list of home contractor’s in your local area you will lose valuable customers to those who are on the internet. History has proven that the absolute best way to improve your business is to have excellent referrals. If you provide quality work to your homeowners, they will pass the word on to your friends and relatives who will pass it on to their friends and relatives. What you are doing is to provide a steady stream of work for your company. Offering promotions in your ads is also a good way to snag customers. In these tough economic times all consumers are looking for a good deal. By providing an incentive to customers you will get more people interested in your service. That is why you have to understand the importance of advertising during tough times.

It’s getting almost predictable, but there’s more reaffirming reports about the good health of Internet advertising. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the first six months of 2006 delivered tremendous growth in online ads with nearly $8 billion spent. This 37% increase is not only a record but also hints at a permanent shift towards online advertising. It should dispel lingering doubts as to whether our industry is looking at a second dot-com bubble. Advertisers are plowing money in. Period.

Websites which gather classified ads tend to be organized as a traditional directory, this means that all the information and websites listed are organized by category or using a tree-like method. One clear benefit of classified ads is said to be traffic due to the fact that people who read those classified ads are already looking for your products or services and want to get the best deals possible. Locating websites which classify your advertisements in the most relevant category for free, are of great help when it comes to marketing your site and can also be used to for search engines optimization purposes.

The newspaper advertising scorecard then becomes the tool that provides balance when it comes to the KPIs being used to monitor the overall performance of newspaper advertising. As expected, the metrics used in the industry would differ from one newspaper company to another. This is because the metrics used would be in line with the corporate goals and objectives that each newspaper company has. However, here are some of the common metrics used by many companies worldwide when it comes to newspaper advertising.

To name but two, archaeologists search for the Holy Grail, (which may or may-not be fictional), and NASA scientists and other interested parties are searching for signs of Extra-Terrestrial life, (which again, may not exist).

In relation to the business world however, this elusive item that is sought after by all attempting to make a living for themselves online is the concept of ‘Free Advertising’!

Does it exist? The short answer is ‘Yes’. The long answer however is more complex. A quick summary of the long answer would be; ‘Free advertising does exist, but in most cases it fails to build success for those that utilise it’.

Allow me to explain this further.

Many of you with a website to promote (be it your own or an affiliate link to a product you will earn a commission from) may have undertaken Viral Marketing in some form or another. I have personally used this fabled advertising method for many of my own promotions. None of the Viral Marketing sites that I have used have led to any success for me.

I feel that there are many reasons for this, the first and foremost being that the majority of people that visit these Viral Marketing sites that your business advertisements’ are placed upon aren’t looking for what you are selling. They are instead looking for ways in which they too can advertise their business at no cost. Because of this, the only promotions that will generate interest from the viewers of these Viral Marketing sites are those relating to, and offering, free advertising itself. Your business promotions will more than likely end up trapped in obscurity if you pursue nothing but Viral Marketing methods as a means of promoting your business.

Those that achieve success from Viral Marketing advertising are those that are promoting other Viral Marketing sites instead of their own business promotions. It may seem that I am stating that Viral Marketing does work, due to me referring to the success that can be had from it, but before you come to that conclusion, consider what you have just read, being that;

In order to gain success from Viral Marketing, you will need to advertise other Viral Marketing (or free advertising) sites. Advertising your own business won’t gain you much success at all, (if any)! Let us now consider what will happen when someone does click on one of your links that advertises another Viral Marketing or free advertising site.

Will you place your business advertisement on this site?

If you did, would it be successful? The chances are that it wouldn’t, simply because it would, in effect, still be the same as if you were to advertise it on the first Viral Marketing site instead of the Viral Marketing sites you advertised for!

Those people that take an interest in your adverts for free advertising or Viral Marketing are only interested for one reason; to advertise their own promotions at no cost! This is the case for the vast majority of people that view Viral Marketing sites. They aren’t interested at all in your, (or anyone else’s), business promotions. They are only there to advertise their own promotions, something that, if they just took some time to think about their own reasons for visiting the site, (to advertise their own product, NOT to look at other people’s promotions), they might not undertake this task due to it being a futile one!

If everyone had the same motives when they visit these Viral Marketing sites, (and the majority of people do), no-one will ever pay attention to the business promotions advertised. They will instead just look for those advertisements that pertain to free advertising and other Viral Marketing sites that they could themselves use to promote their business ventures on. Viral Marketing is, in actuality, a Merry-Go-Round. In order to gain success from your Viral Marketing campaigns, you must advertise other Viral Marketing sites that you also advertise on. The advertisements that you place on these other Viral Marketing sites must then also be about other Viral Marketing sites if they are to be successful. At no stage in this non-stop, Viral Marketing cycle can you advertise your own business venture as this would just be glanced over unless it offers free advertising in some form or another!

The cycle never stops!

There are however other free advertising methods out there.

Advertising on Free Classified advertising sites can lead to success for your business, and has done for me in the past. This method does come with its’ own problems however!

There are so many Free Classified advertising sites out there, to advertise on them all would take too long, more time than you actually put aside to advertise for your business anyway! There is a way around this though. You could pay money to one of the many submitters out there and they will then submit your advertisement to the vast majority of these Free Classified advertising sites for a small fee each month. Using this method is how I have gained success from advertising on Free Classified sites, but it isn’t technically free advertising anymore if you pay someone to do it for you, is it!

What I am trying to say here is that, while it is possible for you to advertise your business on these Free Classified advertising sites, and make a success out of these advertisements, it does become extremely time-consuming if you wish to do it all absolutely free!

The time it takes you to advertise your own business on these Free Classified sites is time that you should have spent on other aspects of your business.

In conclusion, free advertising methods do exist, however, in most cases they fail to make your business any more successful than it was before you undertook these free advertising methods. Sadly, it appears that in order to achieve any sort of success with your online business ventures, whatever they may be, you should concentrate the majority of your time, effort and budget on proven and effective advertising methods such as Pay-Per-Click advertising or, in some cases, ad submission software.

Please note that if you intend to make use of any ad submission software, find someone that has gained success from a particular one in the past and use the same one. There are many scams out there that will just take your money and never submit your ad to sites that get searched by people. They will only be searched by automated machines so as to give you the impression that people are viewing them.

I hope this article has helped to clear up some issues that some of you may have had regarding methods of advertising online, and I wish you the best of luck with your future business endeavours.