Maria Gudelis | As Seen on TV, Entrepreneur, Author, Marketing and Real Estate Expert

In this blog post, I’m going to focus on another one of my rants on marketing mistakes.  Part 1 of marketing mistakes to avoid, I went over a big one, not getting pro hosting and your own domain.

Part 2 – Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 3 minutes or less

Well, this one ranks right up there with that blunder. Free advertising.

Now, before you jump all over me and tell me that not all free advertising is worthless, I already know that. Article marketing, which is one of the best forms of advertising, is absolutely free.

However, there are many forms of free advertising that aren’t worth the time to spit at. I’ll give you a few examples.

FFA Posting. This is a real dog. I don’t understand why people bother doing this unless they know a few tricks that I teach in my advertising book. But to just post ads to these FFA sites is insane. The sites do not get indexed by the search engines and nobody goes to them so you’re not getting any traffic in any manner shape or form.

Banner Exchanges. This is another waste of time. The studies are in. Nobody clicks on banners anymore. Oh sure, there are things you can do to get people to click on your banners, which I also teach in my advertising guide, but a plain banner might as well not even be there.

Classified Sites. The problem with free classified ads (other than craigslist) is that most of the people who go to classified sites are not looking for business opportunities. They’re looking for a pet or a used motorcycle. People who post business opportunities to classified sites are totally wasting their time.

I could go on, but my point is not so much with the type of free advertising that people use. My point is that most people feel that they shouldn’t have to spend any money to promote their business.

Do you know what my monthly advertising expense is each month for just one of my companies? It’s $300. That $300 is responsible for bringing me in over $2,000 monthly. If I didn’t spend the money, that company wouldn’t make as much as it does.

So to decide that you’re not going to spend money on advertising either because you feel you shouldn’t have to or worse, because you “can’t afford it” is totally insane and one of the biggest marketing mistakes you can make.

 Next post in part 3, I’ll go over another big marketing mistake that really drives me crazy.

Enjoy, Maria Gudelis