Make Money Online Selling Affiliate Products In The Classified Ads Section of Your Local Newspaper
Here is an idea that I believe can work for you. The idea is to make money online selling affiliate products by promoting them in the classified ads section of your local newspaper. Do you want to talk about traffic? People tend to think that Google and other search engines are the hot spots. While this is true, there are quite a few other hot spots as well and some even have a lot less competition. One of these hot spots that come to my mind is the classified ads section of your local newspaper. Here is how I would suggest running some affiliate marketing campaigns in your local newspaper.
First off, let’s identify the costs involved. The cost to advertise in newspapers will vary from city to city. For instance though, the cost to advertise in my local town’s newspaper is only a few dollars for one week. Additionally, there a is a very popular trader magazine that allows people to advertise for free as long as the product being sold is less than $250 dollars. As you know, most affiliate products fall well below that price. All in all, no matter where you live, the cost to advertise in your local newspaper is going to be very low.
With that said, let’s talk about a domain name and cheap web hosting. I would suggest purchasing a domain name for this project. The domain name would need to be something very short and easy to remember. Keep in mind, when people read the newspaper, they will physically have to type the web address into their browser to load the page. If you create a classified advertisement in your newspaper and include an affiliate link, the URL is going to be too long and hard to remember. I would suggest ordering a domain name such as: ReviewsbyDavid.com or JansProductReviews.com.
Having an easy to remember domain will make your ads look more appealing and also easier for people to type the address into the browser. Also, this enables you to promote multiple products using the same domain name. I would suggest installing a blog that way when people visit the link they can also see some of the other reviews you have written in the past.
When you create the advertisement in your local newspaper, I would suggest using a simple permalink structure. Let’s assume that you are advertising a quit smoking product. Your URL would then need to look something like this: JansProductReviews.com/quitsmoking or ReviewsbyDavid.com/stopsmoking. By doing this, people who are interested in buying the product can easily remember the web site address.
Once again, I would suggest putting all these products into a review form using a blog. The blog would have a sidebar that displays your previously published posts. That way you can effectively give your previously written post double exposure. When people come to your page that gives information about the quit smoking product they will also see all the other products being sold on your site.
As always, it will take work no matter what you do to make money online. I hope that this article triggers some ideas for you. What are some other creative ways to promote affiliate products? Drop me a comment and share your thoughts.
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This may or may not work depending on how serious you are. The price to run a small, almost illegible ad in my local newspaper is $70 for just one day.
However, community papers are less expensive and can reach almost the same audience.
Chris Jacobson
19 Oct 08 at 11:33 pm
Nice! I may have to look into this, the community papers in my area have a HUGE readership.
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Dennis Edell
20 Oct 08 at 9:05 am
I think that too often people forget that you can still make money in the offline world. This is a good reminder of that.
Fred
20 Oct 08 at 9:12 am
Its good if your product has a low entry or free trial and then upsells and continuity
Colin Klinkert
20 Oct 08 at 10:50 am
I’ve actually had some success doing this with fancy dress costumes locally, but it was actually too time consuming for the money I was making. I was actually buying the costumes wholesale and sending them out myself which is different from what you’re suggesting. Wish I had read this post a couple of days ago, I would have got an advert out in time for the inevitable halloween rush.
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Clog Money
20 Oct 08 at 12:18 pm
I never really thought the newspaper would be effective, but after thinking how much people live in LA county…I may rethink
However, the price is costly!
-Mike
Mike Huang
20 Oct 08 at 5:03 pm
Hi Chris,
Very true… even if one is Real Serious, it wouldn’t matter if the price of the ads were too high. You have to find cheap ad prices. Also too, it would be a good idea to run ads in newspapers in surrounding cities. Thanks for the comment.
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:19 pm
Hi Dennis,
I am glad that this sparked an idea for you. Good luck and when you run some ads, come back and let me know how things went for you.
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:19 pm
Hi Fred,
I think you are right. I have a local trader magazine in my area called, The Peddler and in this magazine, you can advertise just about anything you want for free as long as the price is at or below $250.
Depending on what you are selling, you may have to pay money, but even still it is less than $20 dollars. This trader magazine is hot. Everyone reads it. I used it a few times to sell used items on mine and my phone was ringing off the hook for a week.
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:25 pm
Free trials and low entry cost is always a plus. However, in the situation where you are running an advertisement in the local newspaper, I am unsure if “Free Trial” would attract customers. But then again, it is hard for me to say, because I just know through experience when I see the word “Free Trial” I get skeptical. You could very well be right though and I appreciate the thought.
Does anyone have thoughts on running ads that say “Free Trial” ?
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:28 pm
Very cool, that is good to know. So if you were to duplicate what you did in the past, but phase out the part with you being in charge of distribution, this would be much more effective for you.
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:30 pm
Hi Mike,
I am sure that the price would be costly. But my thoughts are on choosing to place ads with newspapers in other towns and cities that have a lower cost. You would never want to do this if the cost of the ad was too high because then you would be fighting to just draw even. I guess one thing to consider though is how high the success ratio is. I mean if you spend $100 on a newspaper ad and in return that ads makes you $1000 then there is nothing wrong with that. I’d start testing the water with lower cost ads first though.
Garry Conn
21 Oct 08 at 12:32 pm
I am actually going to start looking at using my local newspaper classifieds and other classifieds for list building. You could probably get a lot of people to your squeeze page that way, and once they opt-in give them your offer. This way you can sell to them more than one time, and make your dollar go further. This is certainly an untapped market! Great point, and thanks as always for the amazing content!
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Paul Counts
24 Oct 08 at 11:43 pm
This may be great timing Garry. With the newspapers trying to re-gain their readership and sponsorship classified ad rates should be pretty competitive right now. Many local classified ad rates include both print and online versions.
Brian D. Hawkins
7 Mar 09 at 10:15 pm
Great idea – here in the UK we have a lot of magazines which allow free ads for low value items. I also like the idea of a dedicated site such as a blog, which points people in the right direction. A good way to tempt people in might be to offer a free report / 10 top tips etc, and put the affiliate ads in that.
I also put PPC ads on my affiliate pages – I take the view that some people will click out almost straight away – some of them might click on a sponsered link and earn me a few pennies. Every little helps!
Pat Testing
9 Sep 09 at 5:08 pm