Free Online Classified Advertising is in a new stage of evolution and revolution in terms of having non-competitive online resources to multiply your effectiveness in getting results from advertising. Online advertising is dominated by Craigslist which sets standards, and perhaps too many standards. The community control of the separate ad boards on Craigslist often ends up rules that make absolutely no sense like free pet advertising where pets cannot be listed for sale and if they are those ads are flagged and removed. Everyone who uses the craigslist service knows how trolls have positioned themselves in various sites to flag and remove anything that displeases them and apparently for no reason whatsoever. There is a kind of moral guidance for what is appropriate and inappropriate in almost every craigslist category in major cities where Craigslist really has become the nexus of free advertising. Other factors such as Craiglist charging fees for some ads like help wanted ads and for automobile advertising makes people think that there is a formation of yet a new monopoly in classified advertising on a local level that used to be controlled by local news paper oligarchies and monopolies.
The New revolution in online classified advertising is that Craigslist is not the only game in town. If you cannot advertise pets for sale on Craigslist because some self -appointed community trolls have special views feelings that it is not politically correct you now have an amazing array of new options beyond Craigslist that are becoming as effective or more effective than Craigslist the dominant player. Besides the Politically correct community trolls and censors that populate Craiglist, people placing ads have also noticed that Craigslist readers tend to be notoriously flaky. A lot of people will answer an advertisement on craigslist and completely flake out. This flaking out can happen as fast as returning a phone call to them or replying in an email. The Craiglist junkies also tend to be people expecting virtually everything advertised there to be an absolute bargain or completely free of charge. This is not to minimize the importance of Craigslist as the market leader and main online free ad facilitator. Without Craigslist we would be back in the days of $4 per word newspaper classified print ads or Classifieds 2000 which was one of the first successful “newsgroup” entry order system classified ads systems now defunct.
The method of placing a truly free classified ad in any category you can imagine now is not to rely on craigslist exclusively but to use a multiplicity of services. Some of these free online classified ads services grew in popularity just simply because of Craigslist unfortunate prohibitions such as fee based employment ads, no sales of pet or other animals, trolls , flakes, pseudo political correctness, arbitrary whim of Flaggers who remove ads for no good reason. Sometimes a craigslist ad is just removed because someone interested in the ad wants it removed to they can be first to get the item without competition from others or because they are the competition and they want to sell an identical item before you do. One never really knows but one suspects. Craigslist may be the first place you place a local ad. You can make the local ad go international by entering the URL for that craigslist ad on open source search engines and google and other search engines automatically do pick up craigslist ads for the period of time they appear. It not known if every thing gets cashed Google since the content of the ad expires on Craigslist. If the ad is flagged and removed or proves ineffective and useless not much is wasted with the Craiglist ad trial because you have a lot of other options and they are growing in popularity particularly where Craigslist is failing. Here is a short list of other free classified ad sites that not only expand you free advertising options but expand your audience beyond the Craigslist Everything should be free and PC mentality population. Some of the other sites are more business oriented where there is a sense that things can’t all be free of charge or at rock bottom prices as give aways. That audience can be a more valuable one to advertise to. Surprisingly Walmart has entered the market for free classified ads in a big way but it is boxing itself in with political correctness pandering such that one is not supposed to advertise pets for sale there. Walmart cannot be ignored even though it is not really the ad service provider.
There is yet another revolutionary dimension to free online classified advertising and that is the local newspapers are being forced to compete against craigslist , in particular, to allow their readers to post free online classified ads. An example is here in Portland , Oregon where both The Oregonian daily newspaper offers free classified ads online, not all subject areas there are free but should be, though https://kiwiads.co.nz/ . Willamette Week , a weekly counter culture magazine offers on line free advertising on it’s site. These have miraculously become effective advertising venues on the local scene because they do an existing large audience that scan their ads on a regular basis. The simple way to find free classified ads in your city or area is to goto google and type in the name of your town or city , state , country and the words free classified ads. There is a good chance your local newspapers are being forced to offer free services online too.
Here is a list on online free advertising sites you should get to know besides Craigslist. Most do not require any complicated registration forms be filled out and most are really just about as easy and in some cases easier than posting an ad on craigslist. The real trick to free online classified ad effectiveness is to post a multiplicity of ads on various sites for the same items or services because the disparate sites have separate and overlapping audiences. It would be nice to have a site that automatically posted to all of these sites including craigslist with one entry form after a short registration process. At the moment no such service exists so you have to do each one manually.
Http://www.walmart.oodle.com is allied with Http://www.oodle.com as it’s free ad service provider. It is a tested effective free place to place the ads allowed. Walmart is helping oodle.com grow it’s audience fast. An ad placed on Oodle might not also appear on the Walmart version of the site?
Http://www.hoobly.com is yet another place to post your classified ads to especially if you are getting nowhere with craigslist alone. It is an easy to use site,
Kijiji ( http://www.kijiji.com ) is associated with Ebay. It is a site modeled on the original Craiglist pattern with a lot of international local ads sites.
www.olx.com is yet another free ad site not to be ignored. It maybe bigger in India than it is in the USA.
http://superads.com is one more useful site that lets you post up to ten pictures in each free ad. Http://www.inetgiant.com offers basic free ads that can be helpful too. Not all services at inet giant are free nor are they necessarily so on the other sites. The pay for services can just be ignored and that is advised for keeping online advertising free! One does not want to encourage advertising sites to charge money by paying them even as much as a dime! Added payed services may suit your needs under various cirucmstances but should be avoided for the sake of the revolution. The local ad companies offer to put your ads in print for an additional charge. The problem is that as an online free advertiser you really prefer that there be a critical mass of online audience that will do online free advertising searches using key words. Print ads still appeal to people who still have no computer and read classified ads the old fashioned way with a big magnifier glass and old age reading glasses. That audience maybe just what you need to sell your service or item in which case it will be worth the added fee.
Effectively one can reach an audience that is far larger than the original percentage or margin of newspaper circulation readers. Not all people who subscribe to a newspaper or magazine actually ever bother to look at their classified ads that is what puts them on the margin. Some people subscribe to a newspaper just to clip out coupons or to read the sports section and throw the rest away without ever reading even as much as the front page. The revolution of online free classified advertising that began with newsgroup ads and then Classifieds 2000 and then became the Craiglist phenomenon is the ease of using key words to search though ads or to scroll down pages of ads only having to read the title index. These factors have made back page classified ads a lot less marginal and a lot more popular. Not only has critical mass appeared online since Craigslist to make online ads an ongoing success story, but it has expanded the size of the entire free pie of the market. The pie diameter grows so there are more free slices for everyone. Everyone is eating free pie. This in tern may actually be expanding the entire economy. For those concerned about recycling. Free classified ads are probably creating wealth in our society by not forcing people to just up and throw things away when they can list them as available on a free online ad. The best may yet be coming where almost all needs and wants maybe easily matched and it really will be a form of realized science fiction. At the moment there are an infinite number of stores online that cost nothing more than the maintenance of a computer by an individual.
Multiplicity of free online classifieds is worth exploring by simultaneously posting your ads or links between your ads to these various main sites and to your local competing newspapers if they too are in the business of free advertising. Again here is a list of sites not to be ignored especially when Craiglist flakes out on you: (there is no proper order and you can google more free ad sites and can add them to your own list. Also if you are looking to buy something you can also use the independent search engines of ebay and amazon.com and find what is for sale to check the local prices and compare the competitive online super store prices etc.)
Free Online Classified Sites to Post Ads in Multiplicity:
http://superads.com
http://www.kijiji.com
http://www.oodle.com
http://www.hoobly.com
http://www.walmart.oodle.com
http://www.inetgiant.com
http://www.olx.com
There are lots more niche free advertising sites online just google them or yahoo them with the keywords added such as “free classified ads pets.” beware some of these sites have big audiences but they require credit card registration or other complexities. The ones listed above are tested , some of the biggest best , most frequented by an audience and least intrusive on your time and privacy. It helps before placing an ad to search for similar ads already posted. You might even respond to someone else’s ad to see how the complete system works. Most like Craiglist will hide your identity and foreword the replies to you. For more effective advertising you should put your phone number(s) in the ad or address if it applies for something like a garage sale , as an example, to facilitate business and not to have to reply to the inevitable where are you located questions or how do I reach you by phone. One or more of the sites listed may eventually become bigger than Craigslist. It might put some of the competitors out of business or combine them. Some will introduce more pay for use services others will rely on ads place on their pages to keep them in business. As some start to charge new free advertising competition should appear to compete with them or offer niche subject pages. Don’t encourage these site to charge for classified ads by paying for services if you don’t need to.
