Advertising Methods To Avoid
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David
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February 20th, 2012
With every great advertising opportunity there are many opportunities that either don't work or are just setup to earn the company offering the service money with little benefit to you.
The methods listed below are very appealing because they are either free or at least extremely affordable. These types of websites prey on people who are new to online advertising and offer a bunch of false hope. The idea is to make some quick money off you and then once you realize the lack of value they move onto the next newbie.
Surf For Clicks
The first form of advertising that I recommend avoiding is called FFA advertising (Free for All). In my opinion, FFA relies on targeting new website owners, promising that they will put their ad on thousands of websites, often supplying the you with automated software so they can accomplish this with one click of the button.
Then their ad is placed on thousands of different FFA sites at one time. What they don’t tell you is that these pages your ad is placed on are never seen by the general public, because they aren’t listed in any search engines, directories, or any of the mainstream traffic locations.
To make matters worse, while you’re using the automated software to place your ad on a thousand FFA pages, millions of other newbies are doing the same thing. There isn’t enough room on these FFA pages for all the incoming submissions, so your ad may be on these FFA pages for 30 minutes max, and is then dropped.
The real scam behind these FFA sites is that you have to provide your email address in order to submit to them. These email addresses are a free for all for whoever wants to use them. Your inbox is then bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of junk emails each day of people wanting you to join their opportunity.
Free For All (FFA) Advertising
The next advertising method that produces less than desired results is the surf for clicks programs. While these are not half as bad as the FFA sites, they are about 99% ineffective.
Basically, the way the surf for clicks programs work is that you are required to view various websites for a short period of time, for every website that you view, you will earn a credit. If you look at ten websites and earn 10 credits, your website will in-turn be shown to someone else 10 times.
Let’s look at this surf for clicks logically. Who are you advertising to? You are advertising to other network marketers and Internet business owners. If they already have a business, then how many do you think will sign up for yours? What are they looking for? They are looking to get traffic, the same as you…they are NOT looking to sign up for another program or purchase a product.
You must understand that you need to put your opportunity in front of the general public. Where does 85% of all the Internet traffic come from? It comes from the Search Engines.
Buying Or Renting Mailing Lists
The problem with mailing lists is that you don't know the reliability of the source. The names or email addresses could be farmed from a source that isn't reliable. On top of that, you don't know how old the mailing list is.
Another problem is that you don't know how often those people have been marketed to so if they constantly receive marketing material either through the mail or through email it's likely that it'll just get thrown away or deleted.
Consider how you treat junk mail or spam email. It's probable that you don't even take a second look at it.
Now there are some reputable companies out there that sell valuable mailing lists but my recommendation would be to build your own mailing list. You can read more about this at email newsletters.
Spamming Of Any Kind
I don't think I really need to talk to much about this but I figured that I'd mention it. You probably hate receiving spam so you can see why sending spam isn't a viable option.
Obviously it works fairly well otherwise you wouldn't continue to receive it but it speaks volumes for those companies and in the long run does more damage than good.
Webmaster Forum
I invite you to visit my webmaster forum, it's a great place to discuss websites and ask questions to fellow webmasters regarding topics that you may still have questions on. FFA & Surf For Click Information Source: http://www.statssheet.com/blog/article41578.html