This article is intended to help you to expand your marketing area by using online advertising that will get your message out to the masses very effectively and very inexpensively (many times FREE).  We also want to enable you to optimize you wesite position in the search engines.  We want to talk about both, but first lets talk about classified advertising.

We would suggest that you take the time to go online and become familiar with the various classified sites available to you and your business.  The good news is that you have probably used your local newspaper to list a product or sale in their classified section.  You will find that there are many classified sites online and the concept is very similar to the newspaper.  We want to talk about establishing a method of listing your ad that has proven very effective for many people.  We feel that it could be as effective for you as well.  The most important thing to remember is to test, test and test you copy for the greatest results. 

By the way, at the end of this article we will include a list of classified sites that are available for you to use.

As you know, when advertising, repetition is very important.  With radio, it is said that a listener has to hear and comprehend your ad seven times before they take an action.  The same is true with newspaper.  Seven time seems to be the number that works regardless of the media in use including the internet. 

So, let's develop our marketing strategy concerning online classified ads.

1. When posting an ad on most classified sites, your ad will be place in the number one position at the top of the page on the classified site you select.  It will stay in the number one position only until the next person places an ad at which time your ad will be pushed down to number two.  Your ad will continue to be pushed down until you again place you ad at which time you will again be in the number one position.  
   
2. You will want to establish an email address that is used only for your classified ad campaign.  You will find that when you place classified ads, others will use you email address to mail you their offer.  Therefore, you need to get an email address that is separate from your main email address.  You will be able to find many free web based email including Netscape.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, and Hotmail.com  among others.  We personally use Netscape.com and Yahoo.com
3. We recommend getting a different email address for each day of the week.  This allows the use of some strategies including a method of measuring which ad is getting the best results and which site is bringing the most responses.
   
4. Our goal is to be seen as often as possible, so we recommend that you ten sales messages to be placed on the different classified sites.
5. Now, using one of the email addresses place the ads, all ten of them, with the same subject lines, but place them in different categories.  Do this on Monday, as we present a five day (Monday through Friday) strategy.
6. On Tuesday using your second email address, place the same ten ads, but this time use different subject lines and place them in the same category on your classified sites.
7. Wednesday, we will use your third email address and place ten ads with different subject lines and in different categories.
8. Thursday, we will use your fourth email address to place 10 ads with 10 different subject lines.  These ads may be fore products that you haven't advertised before.
9. On Friday we will use the last email address to place ten ads with 10 different subject lines in whatever category you wish as we as whatever form you wish.  This is kind of a open topic day just to see what happens.  If it produces results then use the ads that produce the best results in other parts of our strategy.
10. Over the weekend, take time to analyze your results to see what is generating results and what isn't.  Discard those ads that are not working and replace them with new ads.

What we are trying to do is generate the best response possible and that will require testing.  Your subject line are the first thing that your potential customer will see, that is your first impression so make it good.  We also want to know what copy works best.  Does it make any difference if you use large print or small print.  How about the page color.  After the first week, we will have an idea what works and what doesn't.  We will take the best results and use it as our control for the second week.  The new ads will be in competition with the control ads and at the end of the second week we will again do our analysis to see what worked best and replace those that at least meet our control groups results.  By doing this, you will be refining your efforts and finding those products, subject lines and copy that worked the best. 

One other thing that we have yet to mention is the importance to optimize your website for search engine placement.  One of the critical factors that search engines look at is how many other site are linked to your site.  The more that are linked, the higher you could be placed in a given search engine.  Using the various classified sites listed below and others you may be aware of will increase the number of times you site is linked to.  This will definately help the listing of your site. 

One other thing you need to be aware of is the possibility of fraudulent purchases.  Yahoo offers this information:

1. Avoid Fraud

Unfortunately, there isn't a single surefire way to identify fraudulent buyers, however, we've listed some of the warning signs of fraud below. Please note that none of these signs is a definitive indicator of a fraudulent buyer. They are only factors to help you identify high-risk transactions. Likewise, there is no guarantee that if a buyer does not meet any of these criteria, it's a legitimate buyer. If you are suspicious, it's a good idea to do some research.

Country of Origin Buyers from Romania, Macedonia, Belarus, Pakistan, Russia, Lithuania, Egypt, Nigeria, Colombia, Malaysia, and Indonesia tend to have a very high incidence of fraud, and often have unverifiable addresses. Unless you have a lot experience with international orders, you may want to decline to sell to these countries, even if the buyer offers to use a U.S. cashiers check.

Untraceable Email Address In many fraudulent orders, the customer's email address is provided by a free email service, which is often relatively untraceable.

Unrecognizable Area Codes  Be cautious of area codes that you don't recognize.  Individuals may try to deceive sellers into calling international numbers resulting in phone charges.  If you are uncertain of an area code, check your telephone directory or call the operator to determine the location prior to making the call.

Expensive Items Be wary when selling automobiles or high-end electronics equipment, such as computers.

An order that meets one of the above criteria is not necessarily fraudulent. However, if an order has multiple warning signs, you should investigate it carefully. As a general rule, you should never sell a valuable item unless you can verify the information.

Now that we have our strategy in place, you are now ready to start posting.  Listed below, you will find some classified sites to begin marketing your products and store.