The Hidden Truth About FFA Sites

The Real Truth Of The Matter Is The Only Person Who Benefits From An FFA (Free For All) Site Is Its Owner...NOT YOU!

There are thousands upon thousands of classified ad and FFA (free for all) sites plastered across the internet, which on the face of it isn't all that surprising; after all FFA sites are an advertising platform and advertising is the backbone of ecommerce. Besides classified ad sites are merely the online derivatives of their real world counterparts commonly found in newspapers and magazines, right? WRONG!

In the real world people have to pay to post their ads in the classified section of a newspaper or magazine but that doesn't hold true for online classified sites which allow anyone who so wishes to post their ad for free. All told this doesn't make sense; why would anyone in the business of making money bother host a website that allows other people to advertise their own business for free? Well that is exactly the biggest yet little-known dark secret of FFA and classified ad sites. Read on to find out this ugly little secret of FFA sites!

FFA stands for "Free For All" and that is precisely what FFA sites are; online advertising platforms for all and sundry who wish to post a free ad. Let me add here that Classified Ad sites are basically the same thing as FFA sites save for the fact that on a classified ad site you can actually incorporate a bit more text in your ad.

But here's the sad truth about posting to an FFA site: NOBODY IS GOING TO SEE THAT AD!

Have you ever seen one of those FFA sites? They are peppered with thousands of ads all struggling to be seen! There are literally all kinds of ads, of all shapes, sizes and colors; ads that wink at you and ads that glitter so bright they'd make a supernova blush with shame!

The bottom line is that posting to an FFA site is an exercise in futility. Out of all those countless ads residing on that site what are the chances that yours is going to be singled out and reviewed? And as if that wasn't bad enough, did you know that when you post an ad to a classified ad site or an FFA site, your ad is only going to be displayed for one hour before it is displaced by the next batch of ads in that particular category!

Let me repeat that in case it didn't properly sink in. Ads posted to an FFA site are generally only on display for an hour or less! Talk about a waste of time and effort!

Which only begs the question, if nobody is going to see those ads where the heck do they all come from and who are all those people so intent on wasting their time by posting such ads?

Evidently the people who post ads to FFA sites have no idea that they are wasting their time. Thus following a path of logical deduction one can only surmise that the folks who fall in this category include newbie internet marketers and other clueless individuals who are desperate for traffic but have no idea how to get it (I should know...BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!)

As I said earlier, added to the fact that any ad posted to an FFA site is going to be one amidst thousands (talk about the proverbial drop in the ocean), compounding this already futile situation, is the fact that a single ad only gets displayed for about an hour before being displaced.

However for a fee it is possible to get premium placement of your ad. In other words your ad will be given the VIP treatment which either means it rotates with a few other premium ads at the top of the list and is constantly displayed unlike most of the other ads that are rotated off display after an hour or so.

Still as one talking from experience let me just say that even with premium placement of your ads (i.e., having paid a fee) the traffic generated from that premium ad is negligible to none!

THE MONEY IS IN HOSTING NOT POSTING

Okay, this entire scheme seems somewhat illogical. I mean NOBODY IS GETTING ANY WORTHWHILE TRAFFIC and on top of that 90% of those ads are posted for free. So what does the owner of the site get out of hosting such a website? I mean HELLO! Most of the people posting aren't paying a dime!

LEAD CAPTURE SYSTEM GALORE

The only reason why anybody creates an FFA site is to capture leads, period! Lead capturing is the sole purpose of Free For All sites which explains why the webmasters are more than willing to let you or anyone else for that matter post their ads for free!

So how exactly does the webmaster go about the business of capturing those leads? The system is quite ingenious really and basically operates according to the following guidelines:

In order for someone to post to an FFA site they have to agree to receive a confirmatory email. The confirmatory email is very important for a couple of reasons: 1) it proves that the email supplied is real and valid and not some bogus made-up one; 2) it acts as a safety net for the owner of the website in the sense that it proves that the email was so requested by the recipient and thus absolves the FFA site webmaster of any future accusations of spam.

More often than not the FFA site owner also incorporates an advert within that confirmatory email. But this isn't where the magic ends because, other than any ad integrated within the initial confirmatory email, another mandatory requirement that people wishing to post to FFA sites must adhere to, is to allow the site owner to send them an advertisement.

Finally, but certainly not least of all is the last requirement; which is that anyone intent on posting a free ad must reconfirm their wish to post by entering a special confirmatory code in a special link encased within the original confirmation email. In essence what has just happened is that the site owner has just collected a Double Opt-In Lead!

In case you don't know what kind of big deal Double Opt-In Leads are, suffice it to say that marketers are willing to pay a medium-sized fortune to get hold of them. However using this bogus traffic-generating system the FFA site owner gets to collect those Double Opt-In Leads for free!

BOTTOM LINE: If you are spending a lot of time posting to these sites in hopes of increasing your internet traffic, it is time to re-evaluate your marketing strategy, because all you are doing is pursuing an exercise in futility!