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More Advertising & Traffic | Article #18 : FFA HOSTING

Back in the early days of MY SECRET PROGRAM when the primary method of advertising was using traffic exchanges, there was one section called FFA Hosting. I remember the first FFA site I joined was Monster Traffic. Here it is 4 years later and I'm still a member of Monster Traffic. But I didn't stop there. Since joining Monster Traffic I have joined a number of other FFA sites. While FFA hosting isn't as effective as it was in the good old days, it is still a viable form of promotion which brings me a sizable check each month.

For those who don't know what FFA Hosting is, I will try to explain it in simple terms. But first, a little history.

Back in the good old days of Internet marketing, a site by the name of FFA Net came up with an idea. The idea was simple. Put up a site where people could come to post their FREE ads, regardless of what they were for. FFA Net set up a number of categories too including business, computers, education, entertainment, etc. And people would post their ad to the appropriate category. Then, other people who came to the site would see the ads and possibly go to the advertiser's web site. It was a great system. The only way to go to these sites was to actually physically go there.

How did FFA Net pay for the site since the ads posted were free? They did this in two ways.

The first way was in the form of outside advertising. Outside vendors began to see this as a viable form of advertising. So what FFA Net did was to start to rent out advertising space on their site. The advertisers would usually put up large banners, when banner advertising was the cool thing to do. This is one way the site itself made money.

But there was another way, and this is what ultimately exploded the FFA Hosting industry.

One of the requirements of people being able to post their free ads to the FFA Net site was that they had to agree to get 1 email from each site they posted the ad to. Now, in the beginning, this was no big deal. FFA Net had only 1 main page so each person got only 1 email.

But then FFA Net came up with what they thought was an ingenious idea. Why not offer memberships to people so that THEY can have their own FFA page and send their OWN emails to each person who posted to the site. They could them email them THEIR opportunity. Well, that's exactly what they did and the signups couldn't come fast enough.

Well, when other businessmen saw what was going on they saw the potential in it and started putting up their OWN FFA sites, also offering membership at a small monthly fee to anyone who wants to send their emails to all posters at the site.

To make a long story short, the number of FFA sites on the Internet literally EXPLODED. The posters could no longer go to each site in order to post their link.

That's when some genius got the idea to create software that would post the ads for them. All they had to do was start up the software, type in their ad and link and hit the submit button.

Instantly, millions of ads were placed all over the Internet. These people were now looking at the possibility of having millions of Internet users see their links.

The reality was much different.

Because of the software that was created, people actually stopped going to these sites. They didn't have to. With one click, their ads were posted. As a result, because nobody had to go to the sites any longer, no ads were being seen. The whole posting process was destroyed.

In the meantime, the guy who created the blasting software and all the imitators since him, were cleaning up charging as much as $49 or more for this worthless software. To this day, Ad Blaster, which goes for about $29.95, is still one of Clickbank’s top selling products. People just don't get that FFA posting is worthless.

But wait. What about the FFA Hosters?

We forgot about them didn't we. They're still out there, still hosting these sites. And with people still foolishly posting to these sites, that means plenty of email messages are going out from all the hosters to all the posters. That means the potential for some significant sales at a very reasonable cost.

You can host an FFA site for as little as $5 a month. The premium sites go for about $20 to $45 a month, and even that is a drop in the bucket considering how many people you can reach daily.

Of course, the problem with FFA Hosting, like e-zine advertising, is that it involves email advertising. So you still have the problem of poor email delivery and spam complaints. Even if you use an FFA site that has a web based mailer, meaning they email the ads for you, you still have to hope that your ads get delivered. Having said all that, if you write compelling subject lines and ad copy and spam check your ad copy, you can make a decent number of sales per month, provided you host a number of FFA sites. Because they are not too expensive, you can host about 10 or 12 sites for under $200.

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