MOST FREE AD POSTING SITES

MOST FREE AD POSTING SITES

Posting classified ads may sound old-school, but don't underestimate its power (if posted at the correct place). Not all free ad posting sites weigh the same authority.

You would like to know that the ad will be viewed by prospective buyers who will be interested in whatever it is that you are advertising.

Here is a compiled list of the 10 most frequently visited sites where you can submit your ads to.

The sites below are listed according to their Alexa ranking on the date of publishing this article. They might be different if you check at Alexa.com today. 

If you post your ad on one of these sites there is a good chance that many people will view your ad, which in turn will lead to a positive response for your business.

You are a small business owner or marketing professional and your budget is limited. You need a free advertising solution that can potentially reach new customers. Therefore, classified ads are the way to go.

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presser was the first to include paid advertising in its pages. This advertising system allowed it to lower its printed price, extend its readership and increases its profitability and the formula was soon copied by other papers.

Digital media is the new print media, and nowadays classified ads are often free! Therefore you get free ads and a backline to your website as long as the ad is running (most free classified ads will run for 30 - 45 days, but the amount of time may vary). Some sites may charge you for what they call "premium" posting, but for the most part, you do not need to waste money on this.

Classified ads are a great way to get a backline to your website. Given there are no follow links, they are still good to have, so a user can get to your website, which in a sense indirectly helps with SEO and page rank as long as that person does not bounce (leave the site right away).

Let us take a look at some of the most popular free classified ad sites out there and examine each one closely.

1. EBAY

This American multinational company provides consumer-to-consumer and business-to-business sales service via the internet.

eBay operates in over 30 countries, making it recognized as one of the largest technology companies around the globe. 

This site is used for advertising goods and services locally and internationally.

eBay’s Facebook page in America has 9 236 719 likes! Their Facebook pages in the UKand Indiahave 1 678 126 and 3 684 823 likes respectively.

On Twitter, their USfollowing is over 591 000, in the UKtheir followers number 112 000, and in India their followers amounts 166 000.

2. CRAIGSLIST

Founded by Craig Newmark in 1995, Craigslist is definitely the most well known. Craigslist has sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, items wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Throughout the years, Craigslist may or may not have developed a bad reputation as being a site frequented by criminals and unscrupulous individuals, but this is just a small outlier. The majority of Craigslist users are just regular people looking for goods and services. Ads remain active for 7 to 45 days depending on the location.

Pros: Almost everyone has heard of Craigslist and they still get a lot of traffic to their site. They are often considered the number one classified ads site.

Cons: Craigslist only allows you to make two free posts a day for services per email account. There are A LOT of people using Craigslist, so popular categories such as Automotive Services, for example, can get quite spammy. Craigslist has also had a bad reputation in the media as a site frequented by dirt balls and psychopaths (ie: the Craigslist Killer), but the media hype aside, that was just one guy out of hundreds of millions of users. Therefore, I would not hold it against Craigslist.

Craigslist Pro Tip: You can add HTML Links in the Employment and Community Sections. You can also get away with creating more than one Craiglist account if you want to make more posts per day. This may get tedious, but if you are getting leads, then it it may be worth the effort.

Currently one of the most popular international free ad sites, Craigslist has sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, services, gigs, events, community,  résumés and discussion forums.

Even though its user interface can be considered outdated, it's still one of the leaders in classified ad sites. 

3. LETGO (OLX)

Hosting free user-generated classified ads, OLX is an international company that provides spaces for ads from various categories such as: cars, jobs, housing, pets, personals and others.

On OLX, sellers can personalise ads with pictures and videos as well as display selling and buying ads on social media platforms.

OLX’s various Facebook accounts around the world have over 1 million likes and their combined Twitter followers amount to almost 60 000. 

4. BACKPAGE

As of April 6, 2018 Backpage.com has been seized as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center. So unfortunately, you can't use Backpage anymore to post classified ads. Maybe one day, if laws change or if someone else takes over the website, we can use it again.

A little history about Backpag

If Craiglist spawned a child and if that child happens to be the black sheep of the family, then that is what you basically have with Backpage. As with Craigslist, Backpage also had its share of scandals, such as the recent closure of the Adult section. Backpage had to close this section because they lost a legal case involving prostitutes posting illegal services. In spite of all the negatives, Backpage has cleaned up a bit and they still get a lot of traffic to the site. Ads stay up for about 1 month and they send you an email to renew.

Pros: Backpage offered a more HTML friendly ad system and you are not limited to the number of ads you are allowed to post each day. They had an easy renewal system sent straight to your email.

Cons: The associated ads can be annoying because they have the box checked by default (this could really mess things up for you since it would show every single ad you've ever posted). Therefore if you are posting ads for multiple businesses, it can be a bit of a chore to un-check the box each time.

Backpage Pro Tip: Backpage was HTML friendly, so you can add as many HTML links as you want on your ads. These backlinks were a powerful tool to drive traffic to your website.

Backlink: Yes, no follow

UPDATE: I am sad to see that Backpage is no longer active. Before the legal issues with prostitution and the court system shutting them down, Backpage was actually one of the best classified ad sites to generate a backlink and for local citation building. According to BrightLocal's Citation Tracker, Backpage.com had a citation authority of 80/100 (which is really high).

Backpage is found around the globe. From America it has spread to Canada, Europe, Asia, Australiaand Africa.

Their selection of ad posts covers everything imaginable; all subdivided into easily recognisable categories like, local places, community, buy/sell/trade, automotive, musician, rentals, real estate, jobs, dating, adult and services.

5. GUMTREE

This free ad site is available in a multitude of countries including France, The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Hong Kong,Poland, and Singapore.

Gumtree is famous for advertising cars, flats and houses, services, pets, furniture, merchandise, job offers and many more.

Gumtree has over 1,5 million likes on their Facebook page in the UK and South Africaand more than 70 000 followers on their various Twitter accounts.

6. CLASSIFIED ADS

Accessible at classifiedads.com.

This is a free classified ads site that is easy to use. All you have to do is click on "Post an Ad" and the site takes you to a page where you can post an ad first and fill out your account details later. The site is very clean and the categories are very well defined. The site is also very active with a lot of traffic.

Pros: It is quick and painless to set up a user account. You can add HTML to each listing, which means a backlink to your site.

Cons: Poor search engine. When I did a search in my city, I did not just get results for my city. The search results showed ads from all over the place, from Los Angeles, California, to Detroit, Michigan to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Only one of them was from anywhere close. This is annoying for someone who is impatient.

It's a free ad listing site. Its categories vary from advertising cars, real estate, pets, personals, items for sale, services, etc.

As seen in the screenshot above, it covers a huge variety of categories and topics, starting from vehicles, jobs, services, pets, etc. 

7. OODLE

Oodle is currently a large aggregator of listings from sites like eBay, Myspace, ForRent, etc. They also include advertisements from local newspapers and websites.

If you don't know what or who Oodle is, they are actually the one that powers Facebook Marketplace. 

Items that can be found on Oodle include, cars, real estate, renting, jobs, personals, merchandise, tickets, pets and a variety of other classifieds.

Oodle, Inc. is an online marketplace based out of San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2004 by ex-Excite executives Craig Donato, Scott Kister and Faith Sedlin.

On the surface, it seems like a really good Classified ads system, but when I signed up for an account on May 30, 2017, I had a bad experience. The very first post I made for a client got flagged even though I did not violate any of their terms of service. I sent in a dispute and they have so far not responded. If and when they do respond, then I will edit this comment.

Pros: Easy to use. It is integrated with USA Today, so your ads also appear on their site. As long as you manage to create an account and not get your account flagged for no reason, then it should be a powerful tool to reach new audiences due to its appearance on USA Today's classified section.

Cons: They do not offer HTML linking, so you cannot get a backlink to your site. The site is also either very buggy or it just did not like me, because it flagged my very first post and banned my account after I tried to make two more.

Oodle Pro Tip: Make sure your user account information is consistent with your social media profile. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe I know why my account was flagged. Oodle has an option where you can sign in with your Facebook profile. The moment I did this was when my ad was flagged. I had my Archmore Business Web company Facebook profile opened and not my personal profile. Since I signed up using my real name and when I clicked on the Facebook account link button, Oodle may have flagged my profile as a fake because the information did not match. Then again, I am not 100 percent sure, but it seems highly likely this was the case.

8. ADPOST

Adpost is another site for free classified ads. It is located in over 1000 cities in over 500 regions across the world including America, Australia, Malaysia, India, Canada, The United Kingdom and Singapore. 

9. HOOBLY

Hoobly has a very extensive range of ads displayed on their site. From event announcements, art, books, collectables, electronics, employment and careers, hobbies and crafts, home and garden, jewellery and gems, musical instruments and, pets and animals, to real estate and vehicles. A virtual A to Z of all you can think of.

10. SALESPIDER

Salespider has combined forces with big names such as Walmart,Macy’s, amazon.com, etc.,

When you open the site, you will find a free classified ad section where you can post your ad. 

It is one of the largest free social networks where business owners can find free sales leads and prospect lists as well as free business directories and free business forums.

11. ADSGLOBE

Found in America, India, South Africa and expanding into the rest of the world, Adsglobe is another advertising gateway for free classified ads including jobs, real estate, rentals, vehicles, services, items for sale, travel, events, pets, business and community.

12. YAKAZ

Yakaz aggregates classified listings from sites including Craigslist and Kijiji (A Canadian based free ad site). The results are presented in an easy to search format sorting items such as real estate, cars, jobs, etc., using features such as price range, location and date listed.

Yakaz operates in Americabut will perform searches in countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Chile.

Classified ads sites may or may not work for your business. In theory, classified ads are a great idea for free advertising, but you still have to keyword optimize your ads for full effectiveness. Sites like Craiglist have their posts indexed and crawled by Google, so keyword optimized ads also have a chance to appear in organic searches if you write the ad copy in an SEO friendly way. Keep in mind that the classified ads site itself also functions as a mini search engine for keyword optimized ads appearing on the site itself and if your ad is missing a popular keyword in the title, then people might miss it if they are using the classified ad site's search engine.

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