You can advertise for free online and start earning commissions. Although it will take a lot longer to see results, free advertising can be just as effective as paid advertising.
You should therefore expect to spend a lot of time in front of your computer if you decide to only use free advertising techniques.
Free advertising for small businesses is a great option if you have no marketing budget or are testing out new marketing methods that can be effective for your online business.
No-cost advertising is really not “free,” because you are “paying” for the advertising by spending time instead of money to generate targeted web traffic to your offer.
I highly recommend you invest some of your commissions into paid advertising when you start making money. Running an online business is all about having the flexibility to work whenever you want, rather than spending 16 hours per day advertising.
Advertise For Free Online Using These Effective 7 Methods
These are the most effective ways to advertise your online business if you have absolutely no money to spend.
#1. Manual traffic exchanges
You can use manual traffic exchanges to advertise for free online. A traffic exchange is a membership based advertising platform where you view other members ads, and in return they view your ads. You will earn a credit for each site you view, these credits are used to promote your own site on the traffic exchange.
Often, you can advertise for free on traffic exchanges in 4 different ways. For best results, you should use all 4 methods.
4 Ways To Advertise On Traffic Exchanges
- Banner ads (468×60 and 125×125)
- Full page views
- Login ads
- Text ads
Many people say that traffic exchanges don´t work. In my opinion, you can get excellent results from them if you know how to use the correctly. Read my post where I explain step-by-step how to use traffic exchanges to get new leads and sales daily.
#2. Blogging
Blogging is another effective way to advertise for free online. Starting a blog and publishing fresh content regularly is a long-term strategy. For every blog post you publish, you will create a new page on the Internet that has the opportunity to be found by Google and other search engines.
You can post about anything you like on your blog, but if you are looking to promote your online business, I recommend posting about topics that are closely related to that topic. Another important thing when it comes to blogging is something called “keyword research.”
In order to rank on the first page of Google and other search engines, you need to know the exact key phrase that people are searching for. The best key phrase has lots of searches and low competition.
To find the most profitable keyword phrases, those that have lots of searches and little competition, you need to use a keyword research tool such as Jaaxy (free).
Blogging is one of the best ways to build your brand and get a steady stream of automatic, highly targeted traffic from the search engines. I highly recommend investing in a domain name and hosting account.
If you have no money to invest in your online business, then you can start with one of the free blogging platforms and invest in a domain and hosting later.
Best free blogging platforms:
- LeasedAdSpace.com
- Blogger.com
- WordPress.com
- Wix.com
- Weebly.com
- Tumblr.com
- HubPages.com
- Strikingly.com
When you have published a new post on your blog, be sure to share it on your social media accounts as well for more traffic and backlinks.
#3. Social media
You can also use social media to advertise for free online. To get the most out of this advertising method, set up separate business accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can also use The Downliner to advertise on the most popular social media sites without using your own accounts.
Next, you need to start building your social media accounts with images and videos. Start following other people in your niche and participate regularly.
Advertising directly on these sites is not recommended (or allowed), but you can sometimes recommend a product or a service that you are affiliated with. This earns you commissions that you could invest in paid advertising.
#4. Classified ads
Classified ad sites are one of the best places to advertise your business. It is free of charge, you will get valuable backlinks to your site and also lots of traffic. There is only one downside to using classified ads, it is very time consuming. You need to submit your ad to dozens of sites and then renew your classified ads regularly.
Online business owners owner often use classified ads because they are so effective. Marketers have no time to manually post there ads to hundreds of sites, instead they outsource the whole submission process to ClassifiedSubmissions.com [REVIEW] (If you have a little money to spend, then you should definitely consider automating the classified submission process).
These classified sites also work great:
- FreeAdForum.com
- FreeClassifiedAds.com
- AdlandPro.com
- Global-Free-Classified-Ads.com
- ClassifiedAds.com
#5. Forums
Forums and discussion boards are another effective way to advertise for free online. Online business owners and Internet marketers use WarriorForum.com and DigitalPoint.com, but there are hundreds of other forums in any niche you can think of. People join forums to discuss problems they have and to find a solution.
You can join a forum in your niche and then start participating daily by answering and asking questions. The more you participate, the more you will be trusted. Trust is the key to success on forums. If you are seen as the authority, then people will want to learn more about you. They visit your site, sign up for your email list, and some of them also buy the product or service you recommend.
Advertising is not allowed on forums; blatant advertising can actually get you banned. Other forum members can visit your site by clicking on the signature link that is automatically added under each post you make. It pays to be active on forums; you will get a lot of free traffic but also valuable links back to your own website (or blog).
#6. YouTube
YouTube is a free and effective way to advertise online. If you already have an account, start making videos daily to build your following and make money. “How-to” and review-type videos are really popular and quite easy to make. You don´t even need to show your face if you don´t want to.
Here is a simple YouTube strategy that you can try:
Go to Clickbank and choose an affiliate product that pays a recurring monthly commission.
Next, browse around YouTube (and Google) to see if there is a review video made about that particular product. If there is, make a better one. If not, you can make one, and most likely you will earn some nice commissions in the next couple weeks. You can create your videos for free using Canva.com. Then advertise your YouTube channel using some of the other advertising methods in this article.
Another way to make money on YouTube is to simply upload other people´s videos. For instance, travel vloggers are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for someone to upload videos for them.
#7.Safelists and banner exchanges
Safe lists and banner exchanges are some of the best places to advertise for free online. One site that generated me lots of new signups and sales is called FreeAdvertisingForYou.com.(FAFY), read the review here.
You can sign up for free and add your banners and text links to the rotation. Another effective advertising method on this site are the email solo ads that you can send to the entire membership.
You can join this site for free, but you need to click on ads to earn credits that you can use to “buy” advertising on the site. FreeAdvertisingForYou.com gets over 260,000 visits per month; it is a good option if you are looking to get free traffic that converts into sales.
Conclusion – Best ways to advertise for free online
Personally, I use all the methods above to advertise my online business. I have been marketing online for a long time and know that some methods and techniques are more effective than others.
However, if you have absolutely no money to spend, then I would go for option 7. You simply join an affiliate program and post the banners in your account at Free Advertising For You. Then you just need to click on banners to earn credits that you can use to “buy” more banner views.
If you have a small marketing budget, then you should definitely focus on setting up your own money-making website and building your email list. There is a lot of useful information about how to get started. It is the key to making a full-time income from home online.
