Tips and advice on how to get the most out of your classifieds

The title of your ad is arguably the most important aspect as this is what people see in the categories and search results and that is what is clicked on in order to view the rest of your ad.

By default, when somebody runs a search, it's your ad title that is searched so your title must contain descriptive words that describe what you're offering.
If your ad title doesn't describe what you're advertising, it can't be returned in the results when somebody runs a search.

Your title should be short and concise and should accurately describe what is being offered in your ad.

Bad titles include generic phrases such as "For Sale" or "Best Offer" as titles like those give potential buyers no idea what you're offering so they will be unlikely to click on your ad to view the rest of it.



Having a good description can be the difference between making the sale or not making the sale.

It's important to try and put yourself in the position of the kind of person you're trying to attract to your ad and ask yourself what information you'd like to see in the ad if you were the person looking to buy.

Short ads with little information rarely perform well while the most successful ads are the ones that include lots of information and descriptions and clear photo's which answer people's questions before they ask them.

It's important to include as much information as possible and include details such as shipping terms, costs, your returns policy if you have one, the total cost, when the buyer can expect to receive the item, if you provide tracking information etc.

Generally speaking, the more information the better as this helps the buyer make an informed decision without having to contact you for clarification on anything that you may have overlooked when creating your ad.

For more information on What makes a good ad?
The most successful ads are usually ones that have a clear concise title, a thorough and accurate description with good punctuation, clear pricing, excellent im...


What to avoid when creating an ad
When creating an ad you should avoid adding any irrelevant information that doesn't relate directly to the content of the ad as this can confuse buyers. Spelli...

Using appropriate images in your ads
Having a premium membership or a Photo Pack allows you to upload up to 12 images to each ad. Uploading multiple images of the item you're advertising allows yo...

My ad is getting a lot of views but not many replies
If your ad is getting a lot of views but not many replies, that's a good indication that you've created an ad with a good title which is attracting people to cl...

My ad is not getting many views
If your ad is not getting many views, it usually means that you've either placed your ad in completely the wrong category so the potential customers browsing th...

You can go here:
">classifieds to buy, sell or advertise anything!

Good Points Inspire

While doing a bit of research I ran across a Hub Page Title: Fifty ways to bring traffic to your website and blog. After reading the list, which had suggestive notes, I read the comments which were all pretty positive until the last one by someone named Thomas and I quote: "Your SEO tips are what people think are what needs to be done, but you're wrong, sorry.

It seems as though all you did was copy and paste a bunch of stuff and you have no idea what it means.

Alt tags in images? - No, worthless to search results

Proper SEO means 'making some adjustments' to your site? - No, SEO is a full time job, not a wave of a magic wand

Submit to search engines? - No, waste of time unless by this you mean submitting a proper sitemap

Link exchange? - No, takes too long to get each link and they normally amount to nothing worthwhile. Reciprocal linking is dead.

Here's some things you said that are true, but you don't know why they are true do you?

Organised internal linking? YES, but what does it mean?

Using sitemaps? YES, but what is a proper sitemap and what do you do with it?

Using robots.txt? YES! But how? Why? What is a 'robots.txt'?

You're not giving the reader anything useful, just spitting out keywords to get clicks."

Thomas

I'm not sure why Thomas had such a gritty tone but I get his point. I would guess he is an underworked, broke SEO.

With so many people trying so hard to "be seen" on the web; who's funds are at a minimum, it is a good time to ask How, and Why and What is. Since this blog is dedicatied to the "technically challenged" I think it would be a good time to start explaining some of these things. But not at this minute, I have two deadlines to meet!

But first I want to thank Thomas for great things to write about so I can save everyone that reads my posts some time and money!!

Google Checkout store gadget (experimental)

It's about time! For the life of me I have not understood why Google with all their experience and expertise hasn't offered this before. Yes it might be experimental but hey, you have to start somewhere, right?

I'm excited about this because it gives all of use and EASY way to put a shopping cart on our blogs. You have choices now within your blog for placement and size etc.

Overview
The Google Checkout store gadget allows you to quickly and easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet.

No complicated coding or technical tasks are required. You can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes.

Get all the power of the Checkout shopping cart in just three easy steps:

Sign up for a Google Checkout merchant account
List the products you want to sell in a Google spreadsheet
Embed your new online store in any website

Get the details here

Meta Tags for Newbies

When you are new to putting up a website you may not know about Meta Tags. I'm not so sure if it is absolutely necessary to know all the gory details about Meta Tags as it is important to have them on your website. I've posted an Advanced Meta Tag Generator for you in the side bar. The tool is from SEO Chat. It is all "no charge" information. You will find it helpful in regard to your traffic and building and updating your website(s). There are other tools and analysers to help you there; far more extensive than I can elaborate on here. In case you don't know the meta tags go in the Head of your web page. They identify you and the content of your website so the search engines can find you.

Copyrights

While viewing Sue Runyon Designs I noticed a small picture at the end of the page. After clicking on it I found a remarkable resource for copyright information.

If you are going to do some article writing to promote your site(s) you might find this helpful itscopyrighted.com If you are creating jewelry or writing articles make sure you are not violating copyrights. There is a hefty fine for doing so. Ignorance is no excuse!

What we have here is a Lack of Communication!

Feel the need to communicate your expertise? Need Traffic? Need Links?
Try: http://www.buzzle.com/ With categories covering everything from animals to tourism, Buzzle.com is your complete source for news, articles and information. Get the latest buzz, interact with authors and other readers on message boards, or add to the buzz by becoming a Buzzle.com author.

Here is another great way to get "your words" out: Ezine Articles

EzineArticles For Authors
Submit Articles
Members Login
Benefits
Expert Authors
Most Emailed
Most Viewed
Article Rating
Read Endorsements
Send Testimonials
Editorial Guidelines
Author TOS

This is an enormous site, well organized with very helpful information. You can communicate 'til your heart is content! Give and Get Back.

Easy Thumbnails

Easy Thumbnails is a great tool for taking any number of photos and making thumbnails is litterally a flash. Since I am totally redesigning two websites with vast amounts of photos that need to be used as a visual index (one picture is worth a thousand words)I needed a quick and easy way to make thumbnails.

I found Fookes Software, It is Great!



Easy Thumbnails is a popular free Windows utility for creating accurate thumbnail images and scaled-down/up copies from a wide range of popular picture formats. An elegant interface makes it a snap to find your images and select them for processing individually, in groups, or in whole folders, using a simple file selector and built-in image viewer. You can use slider controls to rotate images and adjust their contrast, brightness, sharpness and quality, and check out the results with the built-in viewer.



Thumbnails can be created in any existing folder or a new folder, and you can identify them clearly by adding a prefix or suffix to their filename. If you're an image-processing enthusiast, you'll enjoy having a choice of eleven resampling filters for the best possible results. You can convert small batches of images inside Windows Explorer from the File menu or with a right-click of the mouse, display thumbnails in your browser, and even take advantage of command-line switches to generate thumbnails seamlessly from other programs. You can also save your thumbnails to a Web page using a HTML template that you can easily customize to create your own layouts, and there's helpful documentation that includes full instructions and some useful tips.

Easy Thumbnails is a genuine freeware product that will not annoy you with advertising, intrusive spyware components or nag screens. It comes from the developers of the award-winning NoteTab text editors.

If you need to make thumbnails, I highly recommend this and yes I have used it many times. I give it a 10 out of 10!

Getting the Word Out about You

Some of you might be interested in publicizing your product, service or whatever you are all about. You might consider checking this out.

Big News.biz

The purpose of this site is to give businesses, individuals and journalists a trusted venue to post news and press releases. Our goal is to provide quality content from sources that are accountable for what they submit.

Every author / publisher who posts to this site is vetted through the double opt in registration. They also time-stamp and record their IP address during registration confirmation as well as for each submission. Under every approved article you can see the contact information for the publisher account and the person that submitted the article.

All content is reviewed prior to publication and must include a URL for a Web site that pertains to the article. Approved content is then published online and made available to the media, the public, search engines and other Web sites on behalf of the publisher.

Guidelines for the types of press releases and news articles we will accept are available on the -Terms of Service- page. For more information, see: http://www.bignews.biz/?go=terms

BigNews.biz is a registered LLC in the State of New York. The founders have over 30 years of experience doing staff and freelance work for major media such as Newsday, The Los Angeles Times and the AP, covering both U.S. and International stories.

BigNews.biz LLC
16 Heath Place
Garden City, New York
11530-3005 US

http://www.bignews.biz/blog/

Link Referral Update

If you are unhappy about reviews, your rating or any other problem you can remove your listing by going to the "contact page".

You will see:

"I wish to discontinue mailings or retire my account: login to your account and change your preferences and follow the instructions."

However, if you want to share your reviews you can post them on your site, html will be generated for you so you can copy and paste the reviews. If you scroll down on the side bar you will see and example.

Link Referral

The Linkreferral Concept (from Linkreferral website)
We (linkreferral.com) are striving to provide an affordable alternative to search engines and banner ad campaigns which give sometimes slow results. Our four pronged approach to developing free traffic for our members is described below:


Members directory traffic - By joining, you will be included in our members directory which is visited by our community of over 200,000 members, and thousands of outside visitors on a daily basis. You'll have the opportunity to earn a ranking at the top of your category, absolutely free! Receive valuable feedback from visitors of your website, network with your peers, and give your opinion on other websites in the directory. The more you participate, the more you get in return!

Referral based traffic - You are probably familiar with the concept of network marketing, well this is a free version of that marketing method - by registering and promoting your linkreferral affiliate link, an exponential growth of 5 levels of referrals can be created (ex. you refer 10 people who refer 10 people each who refer 10 each....), potentially 10,000s of visitors/day all viewing your link prominently in the top spot of our 'Featured Sites' section on our home page for your referral ID. It works because its free, fast to register, easy to implement and no risk. People that are referred from your site will have nothing to lose and everything to gain, just like you.

Search engine traffic - By registering, you'll benefit several ways, including,

1) having your web page listing indexed more quickly - the major search engines continuously spider our site, and the sites listed in our directory.
2) Improved search engine rankings and SEO optimization.
3) Indirect search engine traffic via linkreferral.com. Pages such as your directory listing and your affiliate page listing feature your link and description, are picked up by all the major search engines. Your sign-up description, combined with our strong traffic base (a prime ranking factor for most major search engines) can pull in a significant immediate steady stream of traffic to your listing on linkreferral.com and then on to your web site.

Straight from Blogger Buzz!

Third Party Templates for Blogger

BTemplates.
A free directory of user-submitted templates, classified by type and/or features.

The Cutest Blog on the Block
Run by Becky and Ashley of 2 Moms Talk, this site offers free, premade layouts, as well as customizable backgrounds.

Blogger Styles
Gallery of submitted templates, ranked by visitors and includes detailed configuration instructions.

FalconHive
Conversions of WordPress templates upon request, along with archive of past conversions.

All Blogspot Templates
Templates in 1-, 2- and 3-column options. Also includes AdSense-ready templates.

Zona Cerebral
Spanish site with dozens of templates to choose from, including several converted WordPress themes.

Quite Random
A number of free templates, and several Blogger-specific tutorials regarding setup and layout editing.

ChicaBlogger
In Spanish, templates designed primarily for women.

Deluxe Templates
Hundreds of templates, including many converted WordPress themes. Also has a nice "tips & tricks" section for customizing Blogger.

Pyzam
Thousands of templates, browsable by category and sortable by recency or popularity.

Our Blog Templates
160+ free templates, all well-labeled for easy browsing to find the one you want.

eBlogTemplates
Combination of free and premium templates, and a wealth of tips for tweaking your Blogger blog.

You must understand blogger.com does not provide support for third party templates. When I imported the template for Wear My Blues I had great insturction from the website eBlogTemplates.

I also started with a blank Blog, I did not move anything. The entire setup was a breeze!

Free Image Hosting - Photobucket

Author: David Cowgill
Website: http://www.eblogtemplates.com

Finding a place to park your web images is fairly easy to do these days. The problem is there are dozens of sites out there so how do you know which one to use? If you pick the wrong one, you will usually find out pretty quick. After you spend hours uploading all your images and then linking to them from your website, all of a sudden your image links break and your site is broken with no images.

Most free blog template sites let you download their template but fail to mention anything about the images that go along with it. Some people don’t even realize that images need to be hosted somewhere in order for the template to work properly. They install their newly downloaded template and it just works. Other templates don’t host the images and include the images in a folder which you need to find a place for them to live. People get confused and don’t know what to do.

If you are one of these people or just want a place to drop off your images, then listen up. I’ve been using a great image hosting site called Photobucket ever since I started eBlog Templates. You can use their free service which is great for small sites with not a lot of bandwidth needs or upgrade to their pro plan which gives you unlimited bandwidth for around $25/year.

Here are some other great features of Photobucket:

Keep all your pics and videos in one place - room for up to 10,000 photos and hours of video!
Share with everyone you know by email, IM or mobile phone.
Make slideshows and mashups with music, special effects, captions, and more.
Link to your profile, blog or website. One-click posting, direct to your favorite sites.
I recommend at least setting up an account since it doesn’t cost you anything. Then upload a picture or two just so you’re familiar with how it’s done. If you are currently using a Blogger template that you downloaded for free, it’s probably a good idea to start moving all your images over as well. If you don’t, you’re leaving your images in the hands of someone else and they could delete, move or even put up adult images on your site by just changing the images on their server. Not good.


Ready to super charge your blog? Check out our professional premium blogger templates or make money by joining our blog affiliate program!

Google Tracking For You

We are not sure how anyone can sell this service when Google provides it free along with so many other services at no charge. This Fast Implementation is great, it's easy and we love it. We Rate: 10 out of 10

Go to the : Getting Started Page

You don't have to buy a kit, that is a scam.
You don't have to pay anybody to do this for you, it is truly simple.



You also have an entire section on help, the help describes and gives directions on everything you need to get the job done. If you use the information, read the reports, use the reference materials provided you will be amazed at how you can attract more traffic to your site.

As for the experts, well, we all have to start somewhere.