Online Strategies For Offline Businesses - Part 3 Of 3

Make sure you don't leave social media out of your lineup for marketing strategies for your offline business. Building a following on services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest can help you promote your special offers and sales.

Remember social media is about being social first. Develop relationships where you have people liking, rewteeting, sharing and pinning your content about topics that are of general interest. Share how-to-videos, helpful hints and current news items that may have some relationship to your business or just a personal hobby. Popular topics like fashion and beauty, celebrities and travel destinations are just a few that you can add to your social media accounts to connect with potential customers whether around the globe or around the corner.

Please feel free to add comments on this post or forward questions. Also let me know if you liked this series and want to see more. Thanks for reading!


Sondra Carpenter
Internet Advertising Consultant
Ebizz Free Ads

Online Strategies For Offline Businesses - Part 2 Of 3

Another strategy is to have a contest where you give away a freebie. Collect business cards as entries. The winner will be the owner of the business card you randomly choose.

All the rest of the business cards are now part of your mailing list and they've given you permission to contact them. Using your autoresponder add the email addresses into your list.


Send an email blast to your list thanking them for participating and announce the contest winner. Also mention some type of special offer to get the remaining list members interested in your business.

This is an easy and fast way to build your list, have fun!

Please feel free to leave comments about this list building method or any questions.


Sondra Carpenter
Internet Advertising Consultant

Online Strategies For Offline Businesses - Part 1 Of 3

Lots of brick and mortar businesses have been implementing online advertising strategies to get exposure for their promotions. Often it can be a challenge to narrow their target market to their local area. After all not every company that has a website has a global reach. Or they may be service businesses that are looking for clients within a certain mile radius of their storefront.

These are a few online strategies that businesses can use to get the word out to their local customer base.

The first is getting a listing on Google Places For Business. Prospects will be able to find your business on Google Search, Google Maps, Google+ as well as mobile. Your listing can include your location and contact information including hours of operation as well as have clients post reviews. Google states that 97% of shoppers are now searching for local businesses online, so it's definitely worthwhile to get a free listing.

You can get started with Google Places For Business by clicking here.


Sondra Carpenter
Internet Advertising Consultant

Happy Independence Day, Everyone!

Happy Independence Day to everyone, not only in the United States, but across the globe. Take the day to enjoy the celebration of freedom for all.



Sondra Carpenter

Make It Short!

Lots of Internet marketers use URL shorteners for affiliate and other long website links. Would like to hear which ones you use and prefer.

I've tried a few different services, some claim they pay commissions when you use their service. A couple that I tried went out of business leaving me with the annoying task of updating lots of links that were no longer any good.


Currently I use either bitly, a redirect service, or ViralURL, which is a cloaker, to shorten links. In my experience they have both been reliable and also have tracking so I can see where my traffic is coming from.

Feel free to comment on your favorite service for shortening links. Thanks for visiting.


Sondra Carpenter
Internet Advertising Consultant

25 Top Classifieds Sites Where It's Not A Waste Of Time Posting Your Ad

Although Classified Ads are very effective for promotion and can get you lots of targeted visitors, there are tons of them out there to choose from. The resources on this list are reputable Classified Advertising Sites, not link farms or spam sites.

You'll get an opportunity to show your products and services to lots of real prospects. They all have Alexa rankings of no more than 150,000 so these are classified ad sites that receive lots of traffic.

1. http://www.craigslist.org - The big daddy of classified ads sites.

2. http://www.backpage.com - The next busiest classified site after Craigslist. 

3. http://www.gumtree.com - Odd name but this site is one of the busiest classifieds sites around. This high traffic classifieds site is focused on UK ads.

4. http://www.oodle.com  - This classified site partners with ForRent.com in the US and Autotrader UK.

5. http://www.ebayclassifieds.com - The official classifieds site for Ebay.

6. http://www.olx.com - This board has a presence in most countries and can be read in English or Spanish.

7. http://www.usfreeads.com - A popular US focused site with a large business opportunity and pet section.

8. http://www.classifiedads.com - Classifieds focused on the English speaking world. US, UK, AU, and India.

9. http://www.inetgiant.com - A green board not only in color but in their ads. They have a well represented area for green products. The site is translated in most languages. 

10. http://adpost.com - Board with presence in the United States, Singapore, Canada, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Philippines, Ireland, Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

11. http://adlandpro.com - Well established board with a strong focus on internet marketing as well as business opportunities.

12. http://www.classifiedsforfree.com - Well organized worldwide classifieds board.

13. http://www.salespider.com/online-classifieds-free-advertising -  Classified ads are only one part of this business site. They have forums, sell leads, and offer business tools for online businesses.

14. http://www.yakaz.com - An uncluttered board which reads your ip and directs your ad posting accordingly. 

15. http://www.thefreeadforum.com - High traffic site which is gets lots of promotion from the owner. He does PPC and SEO promotion for each category. 

16. http://www.domesticsale.com - US classifieds site which allows car dealers and other heavy advertisers to bulk upload large amounts of listings.

17. http://www.pennysaverusa.com/classifieds/usa/index.html - This is the online version of the old Penny Saver newspaper which was a very popular print newspaper with discounts and classified ads.

18. http://epage.com - This site has been in business since 1994. That is before we had Google. It looks somewhat like Usfreeads.com but with less emphasis on business opportunities. They have an affiliate program with over 34,000 affiliates. This means if you post your ad here it goes out on a feed to over 30,000 other sites who run their ads. This means more exposure for you. Many of these sites have programs where other websites run their feeds. This gives you quite a bit more exposure.

19. http://www.recycler.com - Simple easy to negotiate classifieds board.

20. http://www.webcosmo.com - US based with worldwide advertising possibilities.

21. http://www.hoobly.com - The cleanest looking classifieds site so far. Just the ads. No clutter at all. It must be working for them since over 15,000 people have clicked their like button.

22. http://www.freeadlists.com - They do it all: personals, cars, pets and they do it all over the world though they are US based. 

23. http://www.sell.com - They have been running online classifieds since 1999. Their advertising engine has been used by big business directories such as AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.com, newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, and niche online properties such as sellhomes.com. Sell.com is a part of a network of advertising properties. Again, if you advertise on many of these sites your ad will simultaneously run on thousands of other partner sites.

24. http://www.bestwayclassifieds.com - Gets good traffic and they have a nice classifieds site worth posting to.

25. http://www.webclassifieds.us - Well designed board with a .us domain name. 

Even though these sites are great for marketing, it'll take quite awhile for you to post your ad to each one. This can be a very time consuming task, you may be interested in a Classified Ad Submission Service like the one I use, Classified Submissions. They will automatically submit your ad to over 500,000 ad sites monthly including search engines, classified ad sites, message boards and more.

Click here for more details.

Feel free to post comments or questions. Also you can add your favorite classified site if you'd like to share.

Sondra Carpenter

Internet Advertising Consultant

Ebizz Free Ads

APSense Business Social Network Helps You Market Your Brand

The more I look around my Apsense account the more tools I seem to find to help me promote. I'm networking with lots of other business owners and marketers, I'm able to earn credits for solo ads that go out to the member base, have set up a Brand Page for my blog as well as my APSense Business Center (A.B.C.) where I can display products and services I have to offer. 
APSense Business Social Network is free to join, you can get backlinks from updates and posts as well as articles you submit. There have a helpful and responsive liked minded community which is important for exposure as well as branding your business.
Click here to find our more about APSense and sign up now.

Sondra Carpenter Internet Advertising Consultant