We all agree that placing ads on the Internet is an
essential and important part of the exposure and
promotional process that is so unique to CyberSpace.
There are a great many different locations where you can
place ads on the Internet. Literally, there are several
hundreds of thousands of such FREE Ad sites, and you
can find both FREE and Fee based online publications.
We have even set up a web site that links you to almost
12,000 of the more popular sites that are available with
almost 100 sites detailed individually to ease posting:
http://emailexchange.org/freeads.html
But before you jump into posting ads online, especially if
you opt to pay for an ad, you should establish a clear-cut
plan to chart your responses.
The only way to chart your responses accurately is to "Key"
all the ads you place, whether online or in off-line publications.
Once upon a time, the simplest manner to "Key" any ad was to
write, Dept. No. 1234, or whatever number/letter combination
you might want to use, and this allowed you to know from
where you were receiving your responses.
Whether an ad is FREE or paid for, if you know if it is drawing
responses then you can make informed decisions about
continuing to place ads at those particular sites or publications.
Afterall, it does not make any sense to keep posting ads in
sites or publications where you never receive responses.
Such an effort is a complete waste of your valuable time.
Those sites that do work for you can then become the focus
of your online ad campaigns.
All it takes is a working "Key" chart.
For those of you that are spending the monthly fees to receive
web space, email aliases, etc., the solution can be as easy
as setting up individual email aliases for each account or each
of your different ad sites or publications.
For example, you place an ad at ABC Ads and you "Key" them as
abc@whatever.com. or 123@whatever.com, etc. That is the beauty of
being able to control the "Key".
Otherwise, if you request respondents to your ads to "write"
ABC, or 123, they might easily forget to do so and then you
will not be able to tell where the response is coming from on the
Internet.
If you know HTML, you might be able to set responses using the
"Quotation Marks" that go before an email address to "Key" your
ads. Or you can code the URL in the ad with a question mark,
like: http://emailexchange.org/sig.html?ad5
Reviewing your logs will show you how many people actually
accessed your sig.html document from the placement of Ad
number 5.
For those of you that do not have access to code a web site
or the luxury of email forwarding aliases, you can employ
the use of FREE auto-responders to code your various ads.
Most of the FREE auto-responder services now available will
encourage you to set up as many as you need. You can set
up one for ad1@autoresponder.com, ad2@autoresponder.com, etc.
Access a FREE list of auto-responder services for this use at:
mailto:freeautoresp@emailexchange.org
Either way, you just need to keep a log and list your "Keys"
in an easy to follow manner, such as 123, abc, a100, etc.
along with which sites or publications they correspond to.
We currently use a list of just over 100 FREE Newsletters
and Ezines that we have found give us consistent responses
to our ads. Access a FREE copy via Auto-Responder at:
mailto:newsletters@emailexchange.org
Having been online for over eight years, as of this month - :-),
we have seen many Ad sites and publications come and go.
That is the current nature of the Internet; one of constant change.
Placing a "Key" in your ads is the only way to keep track of all
the movement that comes to take place as a result of your hard
efforts to promote your product or service or lack of response.
So make certain to make every ad posted count and
"Key Your Ads"!
About the Author
A.T.Rendon is an entrepreneur and published writer.
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