Ads De-Classified: How to Boost Traffic for Free

I’ve been working on some other areas of my business in the last couple weeks, mainly looking into ways of increasing traffic and boosting my conversion rates. One of the income streams I am working on includes an online “property finding” site for people looking to rent a room or a whole property – they visit my site and input details about what they’re looking for and this information is then sent to landlords and agents to match up what they have available.

Each “lead” earns me a certain level of commission – whether or not the user actually buys from the agent or not. So, the key is to get a high volume of good quality leads so that both my users and business partners are happy. Now, at this stage it would be almost impossible for me to go down the PPC/Google Adwords route, as each click on my advert would cost around $2 / £1.25 and we all know that a 100% conversion rate from Adwords (or similar) is pretty much an impossibility.

So, I needed to find another method of advertising and driving traffic to my site that wasn’t going to cost me more than I was making in fees….

After trying out article writing, forum commenting and social media I decided I needed something a little more immediate. All these methods are great if your aim is to build a brand and develop networks, but unless you can dedicate months of continuous development, they are not particularly great for SELLING.

Which leads me on to CLASSIFIED ADS.

If you take a look online, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of FREE classified sites out there. The vast majority are quite uninspiring though, so you will need to be satisfied with the site’s layout and usability and you need to check each site’s daily traffic as well. What you’re looking for is a site that is attractive and easy to use and has a decent level of daily traffic (at least sub 30k in Alexa Rankings – preferably sub 5k ranking in your own country).

The reason you want good traffic on your chosen site(s) goes without saying really – you shouldn’t expect more than about 2-3% of a site’s users to actually LOOK at your ad (let alone visit your site or contact you) so the more people the better.

Once I found a few sites that had exactly what I was looking for, I posted a few ads that told users how to visit my site or get in touch with me and hopefully help them find a rental property to move into. I also checked the “wanted” sections that matched with my service, and sent out messages to posters inviting them to take a look at what I had to offer.

Within 24 hours my site went from 15-20 daily visitors to over 120 unique visits each day- and I’ve managed to keep that pretty steady for the last week or so. On top of that around 35% of my visitors are completing my sign-up page, which is a fantastic result! Based on previous research and metrics I was only expecting a 10-15% conversion, so you can imagine that I was pretty pleased.

So How Does it Work?

Once you’ve found a few free classified sites that match what you’re looking for you need to start designing your ad. There are a few simple pointers you should include:

1. Catchy Title - chances are there are hundreds of other ads in your category, so make sure your title attracts visitors. A good way to do this is to make it clear what you’re providing and include a very clear call to action, along with a hint that your offer isn’t going to last very long. Eg, “click here for X, only available for the next 7 days” or something similar.

2. Short and Sweet Ad Copy - don’t give away everything in your actual ad post! The most effective ads are no more than 5-6 sentences long and hold back some of the most important information to encourage people to find out more by visiting your site or contacting you. You also need to make it very very clear what a user has to do next – otherwise people will get confused and move on. Eg “to find out more about X, click on my site www.example.com or contact me using the “reply” button below”.

3. Include Photos - this is extremely important! Even if your product/service doesn’t really have scope for you to include a picture, try to find a suitable image anyway. It doesn’t have to be a photo of an actual product, but you will generally receive 2-5 times more inquiries if you include images of some sort. Why? Because people have very visual behavior! Even a bog-standard stock image is better than nothing – as long as it’s vaguely related to your content. For free stock and royalty-free images I use SXC.hu (non aff) which I’ve found to be extremely useful.

4. Keep it relevant! Most classified sites will remove your post if you put it in the wrong category or location, so make sure you post in the right place. This is beneficial for you as your visitors will be more targeted and more likely to convert.

5. Don’t Spam. Ever. I Mean it! Even though I contact several dozen “wanted” posters each day, I make 100% sure that my messages are relevant, clear and not spammy. I make sure I tell them exactly where I got their contact info from and quote them my privacy policy as well. If you spam you will be removed! Don’t do it.

6. Repost - many sites offer you the ability to re-post your ad every week or so. This is great, because you don’t have to spend ages writing new copy or copying old copy into a new post. If your ad is still relevant, make sure you take advantage of this feature if offered.

7. Include Links to Your Site - many classified sites don’t let you include any URLs in your post, but if you find some that do, make sure you include one. Users are far more likely to click a link than they are to bother emailing you, so make sure you take advantage of this. For sites that don’t allow URLs, you may want to consider setting up an email autoresponder which does include a link so that people who email you receive clear instructions without you having to manually respond each time.

8. Spread Yourself Out - try to post in as many RELEVANT categories and locations as possible. Many sites will only allow you to post one ad per category, so if there are any other similar categories available you should post there too. You should also aim to post on several different sites, to take advantage of the extra traffic. I personally post on around 5 different classifieds sites and have several live ads on each. As long as your ads are relevant and not spammy, this works well. Make sure you read and stick to each site’s posting rules to make sure you don’t get blocked.

Conclusion & Discussion

And that’s it! If you spend about a day putting up a good infrastructure, you should see continuous traffic flowing from this method. After that, around 45-60 mins of follow up each day ensures a steady flow of high quality traffic to your site. Just make sure you stick to your chosen sites’ posting rules and you should see some good success.

Has anyone else had some experience (good or bad) using classifieds?

Thanks everyone!

Tagged as: ads de-classified, free traffic