Advertising
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 24, 2010
A few months ago I wrote about backpage.com adding the nofollow attribute to outbound links. Well, shortly after writing that post I discovered sponsored ads still weren’t using NoFollow on outbound links. So I decided to look into sponsored ad links a little more.
I discovered that backpage actually offered some some really great advertising opportunities. Besides the free classified ads, they also offered of reasonable sponsored ads, and the ability to auto-repost your advertisements regularly.
Both of which I already knew about, but didn’t really pay that much attention to before.
Some great benefits of the sponsored advertisements are:
- Ads are shown to the right of regular ads, as well as within them too
- Ads are shown in multiple categories, and on every page of the selected category
- Allows you to post in multiple cities
- Outbound links are followed
- Ads are more likely to show up higher in the search engines
Sponsoring an ad is actually a lot cheaper than I expected. I can sponsor a listing for one month in Seattle, and have it auto-post to the top of the regular listings every 7 days for under $5. Seattle just happens to be one of the most expensive cities, so it is actually a bit cheaper to buy sponsored ads in other cities.
For that price It was a no-brainer when I decided to start purchasing these ads for all of my clients. At the same time, I wouldn’t pay for them if they cost much more. I think what they charge is just right for what you get.
In smaller cities or niches these ads perform fairly well in the search engines too. Just choose an appropriate title and add plenty of unique content, then you should be expect to grab search traffic with your ad too.
Right now backpage is offering 10% discount when using promo code: 2010THANKS. That works locally, nationally, and for sponsor upgrades. Try a Sponsored Ad for Yourself!
And let me know what you think.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 17, 2010
A few weeks ago when Google changed the name of the Local Business Center to Google Places they also introduced a few new features. One of those features was the ability to enhance your local Google maps listing with a sponsored advertisement which they call tags.
These yellow tags and corresponding links cost $25 and are a great way to make your business listing stand out. Depending on the type and completeness of your business listing, you will have some of these tags available to you:
- Website for your business.
- Photos of your business.
- Videos of your business.
- Coupons for your listing.
- Menu for your restaurant.
- Reservations page for your business.
- Driving directions to your business.
Google says that sponsored tags won’t increase your business’s search engine rankings in Google Maps. However, I’ve worked with one client who paid for a sponsored listing so far and his rankings did indeed increase about 5 pages within just a few day. But, it’s tough to tell whether that had anything to do with paying for the sponsored ad or not. We have been working on improving his Google Maps listing potion for a couple of months, which appears to have a penalty applied to it. Shortly after we paid for his tag in Google Places, his company listing went from middle of page 11 to the top of page 6 in Google maps. But, he’s the only client I’ve worked with so far that has paid for a sponsored link.
We started his sponsorship on May 11th, 2010, and I notified him on May 14th that his listing had jumped five pages. It could have even sooner, but I can’t remember if I checked it between then. His listing had been sitting on page eleven for over a month.
Tracking Tag Activity
Google also allows you to track the performance of your tag separately and experiment with it as well. You can find tag settings by clicking the “View Reports” link under the specific listing on your business listings page.
Overall, these sponsor tags seem like a great way to make your local business stand out right now, but how’s a sponsor listing going to remain distinctive when more and more businesses start using them?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 10, 2010
Some of you may recall a few months ago I told you about the $100 free pay-per-click promotion Business.com was offering if you submitted through my promotional link. Well I signed up for the promotion as well, through someone else’s link and received my $100 in free clicks.
I received plenty of leads through there, and now I have more business than I can handle. I’m not implying all of that business was from them, but in general, I’m very busy right now. So paying for PPC ads hasn’t been high on my priority list for awhile. And, so far I still haven’t purchased a single click. Now, all of the sudden I receive an email from them telling me that if I start back up I’ll receive another $100 in free clicks!
Reactivate by 5/31/10 and get a $100 credit towards a new PPC campaign!
So far that would be $200 in free PPC advertising from them total. You just can’t beat that deal. With no obligation whatsoever. OMG!
Surprisingly, my PPC campaign with Business.com was much better than expected. I definitely got more bang for my buck – or for free I guess I should say – than from a similar campaign in Google AdWords.
If you didn’t get your $100 in free pay-per-click ads from Business.com last time I told you about the offer, you can also sign up here.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on April 5, 2010
It had been several months since this last happened and I thought the problem had been fixed, but apparently it is not because last week some time ALL of my Backpage ads were “community removed”!
I have been using Backpage.com’s free classifieds for a couple of years now, so I am well-versed in their “terms of use”; and I don’t believe any of my ads were in violation. But even so, they were all removed again.
There were actually several more than just the ones shown in the image above.
I’ve dug through the forums, but mostly there is just a lot of SPAM and people giving each other a hard time in there. I also emailed support a few months ago, they replied asking for additional details, but after providing the details I never heard from them again. So I figured I’d write this post to see if anyone else was having the same issue, and maybe together we can figure it out collectively.
Beyond some of the typical tactics that would get you banned from any website(which I wasn’t employing), here were some of the site specific reasons given in the forum for an average user who might get their posting removed:
- Don’t post an ad multiple times within a 7 day period
- Don’t post the same ads in multiple cities
- Posting advertisements in the wrong categories
It couldn’t have been the first reason because I only post my ads once every two weeks just to be safe. There is a possibility it could be the second reason since I did post similar ads in multiple cities, but only one ad ever two weeks. Meaning if I posted an ad in Seattle this week, I waited two weeks before I posted a similar ad in Tacoma. So that doesn’t seem like a very logical reason to me. And last all of my ads were posted in the appropriate category, as far as I can tell.
The one thing I did different this week was post a commercial add in the clothing for sale section. I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate or not, but after seeing about 90% of the ads in there were commercial listings, I figured it must be okay. Most of the ads listed there now are for commercial websites too!
According to this line under User Conduct:
17. Posting free ads promoting links to commercial services or web sites except in areas of the Site where such ads are expressly permitted;
All of these ad postings could be in violation of their Terms of Use. However, I don’t see where on the site it says commercial ads are or are not permitted, do you?
In any case, and whatever the reason, I don’t see why that would cause all of my ads to be “community removed”? Shouldn’t only the one ad and any “duplicate” ads be removed? Many of these ads were completely unrelated. Plus how would the community know which ads I had since always selected the radio button “No, do NOT show links to my other postings”?
And it definitely wasn’t link-SPAM, it wouldn’t help anyway now that Backpage has added NoFollow to free advertising links.
I think something else is going on. Maybe it’s just that their software is buggy, I don’t know.
Is anyone else having the same issue or know what is causing this?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on March 23, 2010
Recently I added a few affiliate links to this website. One of which is BOTW.org, which requires no additional affiliate code to track referrals. Technically speaking, it should be getting its full share of link juice. I have always recommended Best of The Web Directory to my readers and my clients, and was blogging about them in a positive light long before I ever added them to the sidebar. So here’s my question for you: should I fear being penalized if I don’t use NoFollow on the outbound link?
Using the NoFollow attribute is unnatural for me. I have never recommend a company to my readers that I wouldn’t use myself. I think the only NoFollow attribute I use is in the comments and in the footer of this blog; and that is only because I don’t know much about the company who created this template. However, at the same time I feel kind of bad about that because in my eyes they’ve earned a DoFollow link by creating the very template that i like and use for my website.
I don’t actively sell links on this blog, and when anyone has contacted me to add a DoFollow link to their website through a product reveiw or similar, for compensation, I have denied. In some cases, if they had a product that I felt might be a good fit for my readers, I have offered to let them write a guest post with a DoFollow link as long as the post was informational and not promotional, and the links complimented their message. Also I’ve said they could put one non-promotional link in their author bio at the end of the post.
What are you’re thought on using NoFollow? When and where should it be used when putting advertisements on your website? Am I doing it properly on this blog?
I’d love to hear your experiences and opinions. Thanks!
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 10, 2009
Recently I read about this great promotion Business.com is offering for new advertisers. If you sign up for PPC Advertising through these links you can get $100 in free clicks to your business website.
I signed up for it through someone else’s promo link about a month ago and have already received a few leads, at least one more client, and I’ve only used up $18 of my 100 bucks so far! This is such a great deal, I signed up for their affiliate program so I can pass this promotion along to you too. You’d have to be pretty lazy or just plain rich if you don’t take the 10 minutes to sign up for this promotion and take advantage of the $100 in free advertising. That’s like throwing away a one hundred dollar bill!
You don’t have to use it right away, but I don’t think there is going to be many, if any, better offers from them down the road. So you can at least sign up for this now and use your free PPC ads when you are ready. Just be sure to check their terms.
But, If you’re not interested in this coupon for free pay-per-click advertising right now, you can also get $50 off a directory listing. Business.com is SEO friendly and on my list of top web directories.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 25, 2009
It’s about 10:30 PM Pacific Time Tuesday, and Google Trends is showing about fifty percent of the hottest trends right now are searches that include Black Friday in the search term. I can imagine that percentage will be much greater tomorrow and the following two days.
So what is my point? My point is if you’re in retail and you don’t have an online Black Friday Deals ad, I’m not sure what they heck you are thinking, and you should be feeling a little bit sheepish right about now.
Black Friday, the day after the United States federal holiday Thanksgiving, is the considered by many to be the busiest retail shopping day of the year and marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
If the Google Trends information I noted at the beginning of this blog post doesn’t impress you, then check out some estimated traffic for this primarily affiliate website which comes up as the number one website in Google Search when searching for Black Friday deals.
According to Alexa BlackFriday.info is currently the 508th most visited website in the US, and rising quickly! And according to Compete’s estimates it had over 4 million unique visitors last November. That’s about 1.5 million more unique visits than Godaddy.com during the same month. Not to bad for an affiliate website, especially one you only have to update once a year.
I don’t know about you, but none of my own websites even get four million unique visitors in an entire year.
Does this site offer anything of value? Maybe a little, but most of us could put it together over the weekend between soccer practices and dinner.
Even so, they’re are making a lot of money by taking advantage of the Black Friday madness and what is has to offer retailers. All they have done was take a good domain name, build an over-the-weekend website and search engine optimize it. The best part about it is they only have to update it once a year.
As you can see, if you’re an online retailer and don’t have any Black Friday ads, you’re really missing out on a ton of business.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on September 11, 2009
The Craigslist Posting servers are currently busy. Please try again in 20 minutes. This is the message I have received every time I’ve posted my ads to Craigslist.org over the last several weeks.
I wonder if the constant slowdowns are going to cause Craigslist to change the way they offer their services and perhaps even start charging for more of them. While I know Craig Newmark has declined buyouts or charging for most ad posting services in the past, perhaps they wont technically be able to support it for much longer.
I’m definitely getting frustrated with continuous outages and have considered not posting there anymore. When I have to try over and over again to post one ad, it can takes up a lot of my time.
I think change is imminent and here are a couple of ways I see Craigslist changing their services in the future:
-Charging to post classified ads(even a minuscule amount can make a huge difference)
-Charging to post in more categories
-Delay between posts per account or IP address.
-Paid advertising throughout Craisglist and alongside free ad pages
Let’ be clear, I don’t hope they make these changes; I like my free services. I’m just saying they’re going to need to do something soon. Even if they beef up their servers, that’s going to cost money and that money is going to have to come from somewhere.
If you’re also having trouble posting to Craigslist at times, you can see if there are any outages by checking their system status.
I’m not complaining. The folks over at Craigslist have been offering us a great free service for some time now, and I’m appreciative of that. I’m just wondering how much longer they can technically sustain offering such a great service this way.
If it keeps up I bet more people are going to start using Backpage.com for their free classifieds.
