Major Marketing Scams - Be Wary

Online marketing can be conducted in many unique and interesting methods. However, three methods that are used the most are nearly worthless. They don't draw visitors or if they do draw some visitors they aren't the ones who are likely to purchase your products. Therefore it is important not to waste your money on useless methods and instead focus on those that will really build your traffic.

FFA Sites:

Advertisers promise that they will put your advertisement on tens of thousands of FFA sites so that you can draw lots of visitors to your page. Basically FFA sites are like free for all links that anyone can place a one sentence clickable line in a massive directory. The problem is that almost no one every looks at these directories.

The other problem is that most of these FFA sites are used by all the available online software that also submits to these free sites. There is a reason why they are free. So as you are submitting your information a few thousands others might be doing the same thing. Even if your advertisement makes it onto the site it will only do so for a few minutes before others replace it.

The absolute worst part about FFA advertising is that your email becomes the recipient of thousands of spammers. Spammers and other disreputable companies will use these FFA sites to market their products to new businesses. Since FFA sites seem to attract new visitors they have a pre-defined market to collect all the emails and use them for their own marketing methods. Don't waste your money.

Surf for Clicks:

Surf for Clicks sounds like a great idea. You search through other people's sites and you will earn credits. For example, if you earned 10 credits from surfing through other people's sites you will then have 10 visitors to your site. Certainly if you are willing to put in the time you will be able to increase your visitors.

The problem is that the amount of time you spend on your surfing isn't likely to produce a great amount of visitors that will lead to sales. Visiting 10 sites to get 10 visitors is just a clunky and inefficient way of doing business. It is easier to find visitors using other types of advertising.

The visitors that come to your site through Surf for Clicks programs are also doing the same thing that you are doing. They are surfing through your site to get more visitors. They aren't a motivated buyer that would be even remotely interested in your products. They are not targeted visitors, aren't going to buy your products and are wasting your bandwidth space.

Automatic Search Engine Submissions:

A number of years ago these search engine submissions did a great job for their cost. Even today there is a tertiary benefit that increases the time frame for getting your site listed. However, don't expect floods of traffic coming from them because most search engines don't rely on submissions.

Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves are the largest of the search engines and these are what counts. Most of them automatically log sites that have a few links. Once your work has been linked on another site these major search engines will automatically spider their way onto their page. It is much more beneficial to focus on making your site search engine friendly than to actually submit to search engines.