Business Tools
Traffic Exchanges
The web has an abundance of free tools for building your business. This page will feature the best ones I've found and personally used. I'll also be providing information on the many ways that you can build a web presence for your business. For more products and services, visit the next page, Growing Your Business.
Safelists
What Is A Safelist?
A safelist is a group of people willing to receive each others' e-mail promotions with the common goal of generating more business. One drawback is that everyone is trying to sell and no one wants to buy but some do buy, especially when it comes to signing up for your business opportunity. Ideally, you have a product that other "marketers" want or need. There are thousands of members on safelists and some are more effective than others.
Every single safelist member had to agree to receive your email. This avoids accusations of spam through mass-mailings. Safelists are termed what is known as "opt-in:"
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People actively choose to receive your ads by signing up and confirming that they have signed up
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People can opt-out or unsubscribe from the list at any time
The best type of opt-in list are known as double opt-in lists. The difference is that after a person signs up for the list, they MUST reply to an email to be activated. This cuts down on programs spamming the list with false emails and also guarantees that someone DID actually want to sign up. Some opt-in lists even use a "captcha." A person must enter characters into a box to prove that they are a human being and not a machine, cutting down on those who join to spam or hack the list. Drawbacks aside, safelists enable the marketer to get their message out to thousands of potential customers on a daily basis without being accused of spam.
Adboards
I only recently learned about these. They appeared on a few traffic exchanges suddenly and in succession. The general opinion seems that they're the next big thing in marketing and advertising. Text ads generate more click throughs, so this may be true. My Free Adboards, the one I joined, came with a number of ads in each category and a few paid sponsored ads. As a free member, I was allowed to add three of my programs but I have yet to find where they are showing them. Clickbank ads come with the board in a format like Google Adsense ads. It seems that some of the classified ads are sent to the board in the same manner. They look almost identical. I just stated promoting mine and it had about 20 hits the first day. From what I've read thus far, it seems that these could have come from other Adboard members. This one took longer than I anticipated to set up but I think that it's more attractive than the others I've seen. Feel free to post your Free Classified Ad and to get your own Adboard as well.
