Much like a newspaper Classified Ad section, there are
hundreds if not thousands of places online you can submit a
“website promotional” classified Ad to promote your business.
Unfortunately, the format of these things simply invites severe spamming as a few hundred webmasters out there will continuously spam each single Ad millions of times, sometimes daily, to the same directory!
You may have never seen one of these things because they are hidden away where human eyes would not likely go. They are most usually stumbled upon from the other side, when some scam artist sells a newbie an “Ad Blasting” or some similar ploy guaranteeing that the poor guy’s listing will be posted in thousands of different places.
On the bright side, such a listing is placed in a category so that any resulting traffic would be semi-targeted. Also, Ads are instantly posted to these automatic boards, so any traffic would be instant as well.
But that’s where my enthusiasm ends. Since there are so many Ads coming in, yours will only stay on the top page for a few seconds, if that long. To my knowledge, no one has ever read one of those horrible, spammy ads and no one in their right mind ever will.
Search Engines avoid these locations like the plague and being found in them can actually HURT your Search Engine rankings! Quite likely, these listings will likely do more harm for your site than good.
I highly recommend keeping your distance.Craigslist is a hugely popular classified Ad site (a true exception to the other classified ads on the web) that started out as a simple bulletin board to be shared between a few friends in San Francisco. It has grown so large and so varied that it reached #24 in Alexa last year! (Currently # 46)
It achieved this by offering a no-frills simple classified-ad listing that was Specific to your Metropolitan area. If you go and visit Craigslist.org right now, you’ll get to choose your nearest big city… Naturally a lot of advertisers feel that it’s not worth their time to place ads to one city at a time, so it really helps promote a spam-free atmosphere.
Placing your classified ads on Craigslist actually works pretty well, all things considered. You may have to place your ads in the top 5 or ten largest cities, all by hand, one at a time, but it clearly had brought a steady albeit skimpy stream of traffic that sticks around for weeks.
If you’re curious, go to the main page and click under the:
“Your City Craigslist” > “small biz ads” –This is the only clearly marked area
that you’re allowed to post Ads in, although you see them often in other areas as
well. Below is a list of the January 2007 top 20 most-trafficked subdomains at
Craigslist, according to Alexa.com.
• sfbay.craigslist.org - 14%
• newyork.craigslist.org - 10%
• losangeles.craigslist.org - 9%
• seattle.craigslist.org - 4%
• boston.craigslist.org - 3%
• sandiego.craigslist.org - 3%
• vancouver.craigslist.org - 3%
• orangecounty.craigslist.org - 3%
• chicago.craigslist.org - 3%
• portland.craigslist.org - 2%
• denver.craigslist.org - 2%
• washingtondc.craigslist.org - 2%
• phoenix.craigslist.org - 2%
• atlanta.craigslist.org - 2%
• lasvegas.craigslist.org - 2%
• toronto.craigslist.org - 2%
• minneapolis.craigslist.org - 2%
• dallas.craigslist.org - 2%
• sacramento.craigslist.org - 2%
• austin.craigslist.org - 1%