Blog of an Internet Marketer

I have successfully completed three years as a freelancer. I started on ScriptLance.com. I won the first project on ScriptLance.com on 10/5/2005 at 20:26 EST.

I started with a veiw to get programming jobs as I know Visual C++ and some other programming languages. Eventually I have switched to internet marketing. Now I no longer offer programming as I can’t manage time for programming. At present I am offering online advertising, search engine optimisation and data entry services.

Although I started on ScraiptLance, now-a-days I get projects from various sources and I no longer participate in bidding on ScrptLance.

Craigslist ad posting service is the single most service which brings me a lot of fortune. I am trying to expand my services by offering new services day-by-day.

By this time my team has also grown. Initially I started alone. Then only a few guys started to work with me. Now about 10 guys work with me. I am considering to expand my team further.

I express my heartfelt gratitude to my valued clients who used my services. A lot of thanks to all who provided me valuable information and suggestions time to time.

I hope more young guys from Bangladesh will start working as a freelancer like me and earn some foreign currency for the country.

Following is a country-wise list of popular online free classifieds:

• USA: craigslist.org, kijiji.com, backpage.com .  More free calssifieds of USA.
• Canada:  craigslist.ca, kijiji.ca, Classifieds.Ca . More Canadian free classifieds.
• UK: gumtree.com, craigslist.co.uk, adzooks.co.uk, adoos.co.uk. More free classifieds on UK.
• Australia classifieds: gumtree.com.au, craigslsit.com.au, ozfreeonline.com
• India classified ad posting: quikr.com, craigslsit.co.in, kugli.com, webcosmo.com, locanto.com, vivastreet.co.in, olx.in
• Japan classified advertising: kijiji.co.jp, craigslist.jp
• Spain local classified websites: loquo.com, spain.franglo.com,
• New Zeland classified websites: gumtree.co.nz, auckland.craigslist.org
• Singapore free online classified sites: www.gumtree.sg, craigslist.com.sg, olxsg.com
• Italy classified advertising:  www.kijiji.it, italy.franglo.com, italyclassifieds.net
• French local classifieds: www.kijiji.fr, frenchclassified.com, paris.franglo.com
• Germany classifieds: kijiji.de, locanto.com
• South Africa classified sites: gumtree.co.za, orangepages.co.za, youpost.co.za
• China online classifieds : baixing.com,  shanghai.craigslist.com.cn, www.locanto.cn
• Philippines free classifieds:  manila.craigslist.com.ph, classifiedsph.com
• Russia : www.slando.ru, ru.anuncioo.com
• Poland : www.gumtree.pl
• Hong Kong:  gumtree.com.hk, hongkong.craigslist.org
• Thailand: craigslist.co.th
• The Netherlands: www.marktplaats.nl, amsterdam.craigslist.org
• Mexico: craigslist.com.mx, www.mexonline.com, mexico.zeezo.com
• Brazil: rio.en.craigslist.org, redeparede.com, brazzilads.com
• Argentina: buenosaires.en.craigslist.org,
• Switzerland : zurich.en.craigslist.ch, market.local.ch/en, www.kijiji.ch
• Belgium: www.kijiji.be
• Austria: kijiji.at
• Czech Republic: www.slando.cz
• Slovakia: www.slando.sk
• Hungary: www.slando.hu
• Ukraine: www.slando.com.ua
• Turkey: www.kijiji.com.tr, www.turkeyclassifieds.com
• Taiwan: www.kijiji.com.tw, tw.anuncioo.com

Feel free to share popular free classifieds of other countries here.

Like craigslist.org in USA, craigslist.ca is also very much popular in Canada. Craigslist has implemented phone verification for Canadian cities too. So it’s time to seek other sites like craigslist for Canada. Following are some popular online free classifieds sites of Canada I frequently use:

1. kijiji.ca : In Canada Kijiji is as popular as craigslist. In some cities kijiji is even more popular than craigslist. Kijiji has many more Canadian cities on it’s list than craigslist.ca
2. backpage.com : Although very popular in USA, backpage has only a few Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal
3. Red Leaf Ads: New but nice free ad site. Try it.
4. http://www.adpost.com/ca/
5. Tradepoint : Tradepoint is Canada’s free online classifieds network for used autos, cars, used trucks, boats, computers, Canadian real estate, antiques, furniture, electronics and much more.
6. Oodle free classifieds : free classified site as well as free classified search engine.
7. http://www.cdncc.com/
8. Classifieds.Ca a premiere free classifieds ad network of Canada
9. Adoos Canada
10. Canadaclassify.com Canadian Online Local Classifieds Service
11. BuyAndSell.Canada - Canada’s National Free Classified Ad Network.
12. btcanada.com - Free Ads - Canada Free Classifieds
13. OLX Canada
14. http://www.sellitbuyit.ca/
15. http://www.classified.ca/
16. Canada’s bargain city
17. Kugli local classifieds
18. Hoobly free local online classified site.
19. Locanto Free Canadian Classified Ads.
20. Post an AD is a FREE Online Classifieds Website for Canada.

Marketing of a new website is not an easy task. A lot of new websites are coming into existetance everyday. Only a few of them can catch significant amount of traffic. While quality content is a must for an website to be popular, a good website with unique quality contents may fail to catch expected amount of traffic due to lack of proper marketing strategy.

Follow are some marketing strategey which should be considered to market a new website:

1. Advertising on free classified sites like craigslsit, backapge, kijiji etc.
2. Exchange  links with relevant sites. Don’t exchange links with spammy sites.
3. Bookmarking on social bookmarking sites like digg.com, stumbleupon.com, delicious.com etc
4. Blogging on free blogging sites like wordpress.com, blogger.com.
5. Comment posting on relevant blogs
6. Posting on forums
7. Directory submission
8. Offering affiliate program
9. Advertising on local newspaper, TV, billboard and other off-line media
10. Submitting press release
11. Article submission
12. Sponsoring news letter
13. Marketing through social networking sites like MySpace.com, facebook.com etc.
14. Advertising on Google’s AdWord and similar other advertising network.
15. Search Engine Optimization
16. Publish RSS feeds and submit your RSS feeds on feed directories.
17. Publish videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites.
18. Promote on Yahoo Answers
19. Make a custom 404-error page so that you don’t miss any traffic. You can provide a link back to your main website or directly redirect to your home page.
20. Put a “Tell a Friend” feature on your site so that anyone can easily refere other people to your site.
21. Promote on Yahoo Groups and google groups
22. Offer free news letter.
23. Buy traffic
24. Participate in traffic exchange programs
25. Put your website address on your business cards, brochures and flyers etc.
26. Use twitter.com to send regular updates of your site.
27. Make a lense on squidoo.com

Following steps may help you to get maximum response from craigslist posting:

1) Put all necessary details in description but keep it as short as possible. Use short description with phone number, if applicable. But don’t use your personal email address. Use anonymous email feature if you need to receive email queries from the visitors. 

2) Use image whenever possible. In the categories where you can’t use external image and need to upload the images, image size is restricted to 300×300 pixels. If you upload images more than this size, craigslist will downsize. So it’s better to use image not larger than 300×300 pixels.
3) Use attractive titles which clearly describe what you are offering. Avoid using excessive symbols and capitals. Lenght of title is limited to 70 characters only. If you title is more than 70 characters, craigslist will discard the extra characters which may make your title meaningless. Be careful not to use titles longer than 70 characters.
4) Use your webpage URL in description, if you need traffic to your webpage. Use multiple domains if required. Free URL forwarding services like tinyURL.com will not work. So you must register your own domain to redirect visitors to your webpage.
5) Post the ads on appropriate time. Proper posting time varies depending on service or product.
6) Post the ads under the appropriate category and appropriate locations. Posting ads under wrong category or location may compel the visitors to flag your ads.

Available methods of advertising on the internet:

• Pay per click advertising like google’s AdWords
• Buying text and Banner advertising on other sites
• Email advertising
• Social media advertising
• Advertising on free online classifieds
• Sponsoring news letter
• Search Engine Optimization
• Sponsor listing on SERP, directories, yellow pages etc.

Advertising on free online classifieds is getting popularity very rapidly. Online free classified sites are catching good numbers of visitors. So advertisers are showing more attention to advertise on free online classifieds. Since advertising on those sites are mostly free and yet giving good number of targeted traffic, there is strong competition among the advertisers to post ads on popular free online classifieds websites. craigslist.org is the most popular free classifieds site and pioneer in the field of free online advertising. Competition of advertising on craigslist.org is so high that some categories of the big cities like New York or San Francisco get thousands of ads. craigslist authority try hard and fast to reduce number of ads posted to acceptable limit. Phone verification is the latest attempt by craigslist to reduce number of postings.

The main reason free classified advertising is getting popularity is that posting ads on them are mostly free although some of those sites have featured listing option and these free classifieds produces quick and geographically targeted traffic. I guess in the future more and more advertiser will give more importance on advertising on free classifieds instead of expensive PPC advertising.

Every month, a lot of local free classifieds and specialized free classifieds are coming into scene. For example:

• http://www.yourny.com/ is a free classified site only for New York and http://www.bostonfreeclassifieds.com/is only for Boston city.
• http://www.petclassifieds.us/ and http://www.petsads.com/ are only for posting pet related ads.

These sites will play vital role in the internet marketing field in the future.

I frequently face a question from my potential clients whether ad posting on free classifieds sites will help in Search Engine Optimization. Well, before answering YES or NO to this question let’s examine what happens when ads are posted on free online.

Most of the free classifieds sites including craigslist.org and backpage.com allow hyperlink to other website in ad description. So getting one-way backlink from free classifieds advertising is quite possible. The problem is that those backlinks aren’t permanent. Each post has a certain life span ranging from 7 days to 6 months (popular sites have lower life span while new sites have longer life span for the postigns). Postings will expire after that time and the link will no longer exist. So one time posting will not be of much help in the long run. In case of continuous  posting on a weekly or monthly schedule, search engines will always see some backlinks from those sites and will index those pages. So to get benefit from free classifieds sites for SEO, continuous ad posting is required.

Some sites like vivastreet.co.uk allows to reposting and the URL of the original post doesn’t change upon reposting. In such cases getting almost permanent link is possible provided the ad is renewed regularly.

Another option of SEO is also available. Although it is also transient  in nature, sometimes  it is highy effective. It is possible to post an ad whose body is filled up with targeted keywords in high density. Search engines like google picks the posting pages from popular free classifieds sites like craigslist within 24 hours (even earlier). And postings on craigslist and other popular free classifieds get very high position on SERP. So it is possible to reach google first page for some specific keywords within very short time with this method. But when the ad is expired, you loose everything.
Finally, it can be summarized that ad posting on free classifieds may be helpful in SEO but primary purpose of free classified advertising is not SEO. Getting targeted traffic quickly is the main purpose of free classified advertising.