More Mostly Free Classified Ad Sites

This is the companion article to “Classified Ads Free And Not So Free” which began a discussion of effective and affordable advertising sites for the home-based Internet entrepreneur. For more than 12 years I struggled to find ways that I could afford to bring prospects to my businesses. Finally, I realized a detailed plan of search needs to be in place, and any decisions based on the results must be applied on a continuous basis, whether paid ads or free.

How we search for qualified classified ad sites
To provide such a plan , I returned to the SFI Forum and several related training articles, and this information is the basis for these articles. These two articles share my findings with you, hoping to save you a lot of research time. All searches were limited to two Google pages, about 20 listings.

Alexa is used extensively to determine the traffic ranking so we can exclude all sites over the 20,000 threshold. Remember that higher numbers here mean less traffic and lower numbers mean more traffic. The idea of using these rankings with the classified sites is the presumption that more traffic to the main site has to mean greater traffic to the advertisements as well. The other feature we used was the “Sites Linking in” data. Some Websites have thousands of other URLs linked to them; I chose the high traffic links in the first 20 for each advertising site; there usually were not a lot of links allowing ads, and a few of these were eliminated because they cost over $500 USD (a limit I set), or they do not accept the kinds of ads most Internet entrepreneurs will use. You will soon realize the need for a personal domain to get around some restrictions imposed by a few of the better sites�this could be the subject of another article, but we will not mention it further here, just be aware.

After saying there are no sites higher than the 20,000 Alexa level included, there are several exceptions you should know about. The reason is..
they are different from the rest of the Websites because they are online home business magazines. Just because they are not normal ad sites, and they provide a lot of information about all kinds of home based businesses, they could be just the place for effective prospect attraction.

Keyword Search Results
I used some search terms recommended in SFI Internet Training Lessons #23 and #24. The search term “sideline business” turned up Home Business Connection Magazine. In addition to the online magazine, they mail 100,000 copies each month to readers who have specifically requested information on business opportunities. Rates posted on the Website are a bit pricey for many startups, but you should request a media kit for the complete advertising story. See the Nationwide Advertising site listed below for a way to advertise in Home Business Connection Magazine. The Alexa traffic rank for this magazine is 408,320.
A related site is Nationwide Newspapers Advertising for Home Business Connection Magazine. Here you can place a 20 word ad in the magazine for $225.

NationwideAdvertising.com is a site offering many very reasonable advertising rates in over 21,000 newspapers with a total circulation in excess of 100 million every week. They also offer affordable magazine advertising and many other ways to get your message before large numbers of prospects with sources listed in the left sidebar. The site has an Alexa traffic ranking of 34,316.

Another Nationwide site offers classifieds on their pages as low as $5.
A site that turned up during this search is much better than the others here with an Alexa traffic rank of 4,961. It is DirectMatches, a Website combining business and social networking in a system that lets people find everything from business contacts to online dating. With this kind of emotional attraction, it seems a very likely place to find good prospects. Their classified section is free, but you will see some other services that charge some kind of monthly fee.

The search phrase “business sites that offer advertising” found Home Business Magazine classified section with an Alexa traffic rank of 64,921. This is one of those I’ve included simply because it is an online magazine, which makes it quite different from a simple classified site. Posting classifieds is free, but it does require registration.

Home Business Magazine also has online advertising available () starting as low as $26. A rate schedule is available here.
The last search phrase used was “free classified ads,” and it found many Websites. We have searched the attached links for all of these classified sites. Some have several good links not specifically found by search terms for “free classified ads.” Most of these require a fee for the ad, so they are expected to be much more productive than any of the free sites. I only went through the links for the free classified URLs whose Alexa ranking was below 20,000; there are enough of them to keep most entrepreneurs busy trying them and tracking results for many months. However, if you really feel the need to find more places to advertise, continue to follow the links of this group, and, if you still want more, follow those links, and do this until you get to the point where there aren’t any more places for your ads. I hope what you find in this article will do the job for you.