Own Your Own FFA or Free Classified Site
This one almost sounds usable on the surface - it is only when you think about the real meaning of the idea that you realize it is NOT GOOD.
When I first heard about this one, I was experienced enough to spot the flaws in the theory right off. Not everyone is though.
It goes like this: Since you hate going to FFA or Free Classified sites because of the spam that you get, why not own one instead, and SEND email to all the people who sign up!
The problems with this theory as an open marketing venue are numerous. Try some of these on for size:
This type of site takes a huge amount of work to maintain. You have to either check EVERY post, or you get overwhelmed by auto-posts by site spammers.
If you choose to check every post, to keep your site clean, you'll spend hours of time each day deleting spam posts - if you want to run your site as a directory, and as a real business, fine, but if you are looking for a no-work option, this is NOT it!.
If you do not take the time to delete the spam posts, your site will be banned by the search engines, and will be classed as a "bad neighborhood" by every site that you could legitimately promote it on.
If your site gets classed as a bad neighborhood, you'll not be able to get the traffic you need to make anything off it.
Even if you could harvest email addresses from it, you'll have a range of problems with that strategy.
Emails harvested will have a high percentage of forged and invalid email addresses.
If you send emails to the people on the list, many will not recognize you as being someone they authorized to send them emails. You'll get accused of spamming, and risk very severe legal consequences.
Even if you tell them what they are signing up for, there will be so many forged email addresses that you'll get accused of spamming by the people who really own the email addresses that are used.
The whole thing is not a simple and quick way to fall into a large email list. It is a huge amount of work to create such a site, takes a huge amount of time to market it to get traffic to it, and the potentials for abuse of it are so huge that this is not a viable business in any way shape or form anymore.
Every benefit that someone might consider getting from owning a Free Links Site, or a Free Classified site will be blasted into discouraging oblivion. If it gets off the ground in the first place, it will fail fairly rapidly, and end up being a colossal waste of time. There is no legit way to "harvest" email addresses.
Save your efforts for something more real, and something that has fewer built in traps.
Alternatives include:
Build a directory site, and operate it as a real directory. Choose a tight niche, and target your marketing closely to businesses who might need it, and people who want to use it. The key to a successful directory is in choosing a niche that needs it, which is not already saturated.
Establish a niche "trade association". Again, choose a tightly focused niche, and figure out what real benefits businesses in that niche need, then offer them in a membership site. Key to this is to choose a niche that NEEDS certain benefits, and then offer high value benefits at a group rate.
Promote a quality eZine or newsletter directly to build a list. Don't mess around with "list building" programs, or other time wasters.
Contributors: Laura Wheeler
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