If you have been around the internet for any length of time, you can’t fail to have seen the number of offers for free advertising. In particular, there are a mass of free advertising boards where you can place your ad (or several) for a set period of time. But are these offers genuine and do they work?
As a free ad board owner myself and someone who used to place a lot of free ads, I’ll try and answer both of these questions.
The first is relatively simple – yes they are genuine. Most of them work on an automated script and impose several basic conditions. Invariably, you are required to view an existing ad on the board. Then you are required to enter your name, email address and ad details. Your ad is then placed on the board for a period of time – set by the ad board owner – before it expires. Most commonly, you can expect your ad to run for seven days before you either renew or it is cancelled.
Depending on the popularity of the board you can expect around half dozen hits to your ad each week. Most boards also enable you to place several ads as long as you make a fresh application each time. If you have the time and inclination you could easily place say, ten ads each week and pick up around 50 hits – most of course are from prospective advertisers.
This takes us to the heart of whether free advertising works. If you are advertising something that appeals to prospective users of free advertising, then free ad boards present a useful opportunity for you. Offering something for free would be a good starting point as this is likely to appeal to the mindset of your audience. It is also worth considering that most of the audience are also likely to be internet entrepreneurs of one form or another. Logically, a free internet opportunity is likely to have the most appeal and generate the best return on your free advertising.
It also helps to have a little understanding of how these free ad boards work. Most are part of a network – a single master domain name with different member IDs for each board. Effectively, each ad board owner operates as a pro member of the network. And of course, as with all pro memberships, there are usually some useful benefits involved. Typically, the owner of each board will have the opportunity to place their ads in the most prominent positions for their own boards. They also get to place their own ads in the email confirmation and expiry notices sent to advertisers. Additionally, their ads also appear on other ad boards within the network, often signposted as ‘pro member’ ads.
Now, who do you think is getting the most benefit from free advertising? Quite clearly, it’s the free ad board owners. Their ads are displayed permanently. Their ads have the most prominent positions and the most clicks. Their ads also get to be placed across the whole network. Like it or not, the free advertisers themselves are simply the ad board owners target audience. And a good, well publicised ad board will produce hundreds of hits for its owner each week.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this revelation is that actually owning an ad board is very low cost. Typically, becoming an ad board owner costs only around $35 for lifetime membership. Okay, it’s not exactly free advertising for the free ad board owners but it’s incredibly cheap and frankly, offers far better value than simply being a free advertiser.
Simon Cooper is a successful internet entrepreneur and a free ad board owner.
http://www.freeadboard.com/index.php?pro=794
By: Simon Cooper