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The Cost of "Free" - Are You Losing Leads from Ads on Your Free Site?

Everyone loves free stuff. After all, why pay money for something you can get without forfeiting any of your hard earned cash? I am not the first to say this, and certainly will not be the last, but FREE always has a cost - maybe not a direct monetary cost, but a true cost nonetheless.

Competitor Ads on Your Site For example, do you use a "free" internet service to promote your listings? If so, you may be surprised at all the little extras that "free" comes with. Like competing advertisements on your listings, limited features and usability, and unnecessary time consumption. It makes no sense for a business to give away their services without getting anything in return... there is always a return.

How many leads, what amount of sales, and how much money might you be losing from visitors who click away from your listings to visit a competitor's advertisement? It makes no sense for you to let competitors advertise in your area, yet this is what you may be doing by using a "free" site or service.

Oftentimes, businesses or services will provide free features with some sort of purchase or membership. While this isn't purely free either, they are tools that are available to you at no extra cost, whether you use them or not. The monetary cost to you is disclosed up front, so you know exactly what you are paying for -- this type of "free" is great and should be taken advantage of!

Be sure to research where you put your time, effort, content, and listings, and evaluate the value of your free service. If it is an acceptable cost, you may have found your spot! If not -- if you are losing leads, sales, traffic and credibility -- then get out of there fast. Run away and place your assets where they will pay you back.

TRUE VALUE is always better than FREE.

I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing distribution to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer blog profile syndication, widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members.

Posted by Candis Hidalgo on 07/16/2008 07:27 PM

Comments (7)

cost of free, free services, no free lunch, classified flyer ads

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7 Comments on The Cost of "Free" - Are You Losing Leads from Ads on Your Free Site?

JUL

Candis - This can be true of the widgets that we use and the places that we put our portfoloio. It's often a double-sided sword.

JUL

Candis I hear your point loud and clear but do you ever click on those adds in the sidebar? I know I never would. For the most part they look like garage, spam, whatever.

Candis - you generally get what you pay for. I learned a long time ago about the cost of a free lunch. Best wishes!

Erik - That's a good point. There are lots of tools and services that are promoted as free, and actually don't cost any money, but do cost in other ways (ie. traffic, leads, etc.) which eventually translate to money in the end. Not all widgets and sites are this way, but it is definitely good to look into the one's you are using and evaluate if it is the best choice for you.

Hi Bill - It is true that probably you or I would not click on those ads. We work with and around this type of stuff all day, and so can spot it from a mile away as a paid ad. But what about the consumer? I haven't done enough research on the topic to know how effective they are (and I suspect it varies depending on the topic and other factors), however, I assume that the free sites that use these (and other types of ads) do generate revenue from them, which means people are clicking on them.

However, if you have had experience with this and don't feel a considerable loss, then perhaps it is worth it. That's the challenge... evaluate the cost and value, and if it's worth it, then great! It would be interesting to be able to track something like that with solidity.

As always Bill, thanks for stopping by and dropping your 2 cents into the discussion.

IMNJ - Ah yes, that darn "free" lunch! It can end up costing you more than a steak dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House ;)

You're right, you do generally get what you pay for. Every once in a while, something will pop up that is pleasantly valuable and free (I like the Wordpress free blog platform, for instance), and also every once in a while, there will be a service that charges a lot but delivers little. It is really up to people to do a bit of research and evaluate the value of where they put their time, assets, and money, instead of jumping onto the "free" wagon.

Thanks for stopping by!

JUL

Hey Bill - you would be surprised at how many people actually click on those ads. We offer a trial version on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com that allows people to create 2 free flyers. The 2 free flyers display adwords at the very bottom of the flyer under all the content and the very last place people look. Believe it or not these ads at the very bottom actually get clicked and we make enough money off these to support the cost of our free trial. Do we like displaying these ads at the bottom? Nope, but in order to support the free trial and cover our costs we do. Of course or non-free versions are ad free.

Ads that are placed to the left or right and appear more within the page get even more click throughs. If ads are not getting clicks then 1.) the pages are not getting enough traffic, 2.) the ads are not properly targeted to the content in the page or 3.) it's not the correct platform for adwords. For example - adwords on ActiveRain are don't do well because there is very little consumer traffic on AR but there is consumer traffic on Real Estate listings.

Sorry for the overdrawn explanation but I think many discount just how many clicks these adwords really do get.

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