Free Internet classified services such as Craigslist have become an effective tool for the Real Estate and Finance industry. I have been using these classified services for over a year now and I can tell you they bring in business. I wanted to share a few tips for placing your ads on one of these classified services. For the demonstration I will be working with Backpage.com. Below I have taken the basic steps of adding a simple flyer for my advertisement.

Step 1 – Design a flyer

Below I have designed a flyer using Photo Shop that advertises Real Estate Loop. This is the ad I will use in our classified listing. If you already have your business card or flyer finished then you are one step ahead of me.

Step 2 – Upload your flyer

I have uploaded my flyer using a web site called Photobucket.com. This site allows me to upload my flyer and provides me with the necessary html code needed for the advertisement.

Step 3 – Placing the ad

Now that we have our flyer ready we can go to Backpage.com and take the necessary steps for adding our web site flyer. I will first select my city and then choose a category where my ad would be the most effective.

Step 4 – The description

The description allows us to use HTML code for our advertisement. It is time to grab our flyer from Photobucket. Open a second window and log into your account. Highlight the HTML code for the image. You might want to use a word editor such as notebook or ms word. Copy the code in your editor. Here is the code below I have copied.

<a href – This is the link the user will go to when he or she clicks on the flyer image. Let’s change this to say http://yoursite.com. Place your URL address inside the quotation marks.

Copy and paste your new code into the description area of Backpage and add any additional information. Phone, email, name…etc

Step 5 – Activate your ad
Backpage will then send an email verification letter to your email. Once verified your ad will be displayed LIVE! Here you can see my ad up and running on Backpage.

Here is a list of some Free Classified Services.

Craigslist.com – The largest of all the free classified services.

Backpage.com – Offers a very clean interface and free of too many listing rules.

Loop Classifieds – Of course I had to give my own classified site a plug. Anyone can list their business or properties free here at Real Estate Loop.