Which is more effective--paid or free advertising--and why?

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3950 votes
Bob Moore, Aff (California, US) Top Author Forum Guru 10/24/2013 7:16 pm
Affiliate since: 01/05/2011, Power Rank: 36 | Read Bob's 135 other Ask SC answers
Personally, I love Free Classified Advertising. It is a forum where
I can develop my ads and test them before moving on to paid advertising.
I use free advertising as proving ground to test Keywords, subject lines,
ad script (description) and photos.
It does take a while to develop a good list to work with.
SFI provides a starter list for you.

Once you have established your proven advertising portfolio,
paid advertising provides a much stronger activity
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3862 votes
Ingrid Bernard, Aff (Trinidad And Tobago) Top Author Forum Guru 10/27/2013 1:48 am
Affiliate since: 07/28/2013, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Ingrid 's 138 other Ask SC answers
It really a matter of choice which advertising you want to use and the amount of funs you have at your disposal.

Free Advertising:
The goal of all advertising is to get your name out there. And when it's free, it's even better. You can use free advertising to showcase your knowledge about a product. If you are simply putting free ads on a website, you have limited space to show how your business can help customers.
Depending on the type of free advertising you are receiving,
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3848 votes
Stefan Auerbach, Aff (California, US) Top Author Forum Guru 10/28/2013 3:30 pm
Affiliate since: 03/27/2013, Power Rank: 5 | Read Stefan's 93 other Ask SC answers
There was a question just like this not long ago and I posted an answer there. I will paraphrase what I stated prior since the questions are identical.

This is an simple question to address for those whom have capital to use in their business to bolster their SFI marketing and build their business.

Both free and paid advertising are great resources and you should capitalize on both methods if you can. However, if you want advertising that converts well and have the marketing
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3809 votes
, () Top Author Forum Guru 10/21/2013 1:23 pm
Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999
According to me, both kind of advertising (paid and free) are effective.

The advantage of free advertising is, an affiliate who is new in the business and has some financial challenges (especially in the initial days), cannot afford to spend money for paid advertisement. He can build his team by using free advertising. This will be a learning experience for a new affiliate about how to build a strong team and do right kind of sponsoring without taking any risk. But the disadvantage is,
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3805 votes
Jeannette Gerrard, PB (District of columbia, US) Top Author Forum Guru 10/25/2013 4:27 pm
Affiliate since: 11/13/2001, Power Rank: 17 | Read Jeannette's 241 other Ask SC answers
Both free and paid advertising are effective, and neither one is any more or any less. You have to work hard at it, no matter which way you choose. It takes investment of much time to do free advertising, but you may still find good affiliates and customers. You must invest much cash when doing paid advertising, but it is just as effective. The reason is you never know whether people will really be committed to this business or not, and you never know whether people will become your customers
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3801 votes
Bryan Hammond, Aff (Washington, US) Top Author Forum Guru 10/22/2013 8:15 pm
Affiliate since: 02/04/2013, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Bryan's 47 other Ask SC answers
This depends on your advertising goals.
For short term, paid advertising is the best. This will get you the most traffic to your website or gateway in the shortest amount of time. You can target the exact prospects you're interested in and the exact segments you want to look in.

The downsides to paid advertising are the cost and the longevity. The cost can be quite expensive. The price will vary depending on where you're advertising, the length of time you want to show your ad and
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3795 votes
Sebastian Aitken, Aff (South Africa) Top Author Forum Guru 10/22/2013 9:19 am
Affiliate since: 08/21/2013, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Sebastian's 3 other Ask SC answers
Generally, Paid Advertising would be more effective.

Do not get me wrong though. There are some very good and effective Free Advertising options out there.

I say Paid is better because 9/10 times, free advertising would be very limited and restricted.

For example:
a free solo ad- you can send that ad once a week to 1000 unique people
a paid solo ad- you can send that ad every 3 days to 10 000 unique people

Free hits- you can get 100 unique visitors
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3792 votes
Mujibur Rahman, Aff (United Kingdom) Top Author Forum Guru 10/21/2013 6:31 pm
Affiliate since: 02/15/2022, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Mujibur's 13 other Ask SC answers
There is no such thing as free advertising!

You still have to put in your most valuable resource (time). We all have a limited amount of time.

If you have a lot of time to spare, I would suggest that you create a blog and start posting articles related to SFI, Triple Clicks and the ECA program. Also post general articles related to making money online and residual income...

Place your links to SFI to the blog articles and also on different parts of your site (Header,
...more
3777 votes
Abdul Aziz Abbas, Aff (Singapore) Top Author Forum Guru 10/24/2013 3:27 pm
Affiliate since: 07/12/2013, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Abdul's 2 other Ask SC answers
Paid advertising will be more effective the reason why is, you can target what demographics or countries that you want to advertise to.

This is important as your ad is laser targeted to the certain group of people that you want your ad to get to. General untargeted ads are good too but targeted ads are more effective and more bang for your buck.

Another reason is Paid traffic will be faster than free advertising. Traffic will be pouring in through your links that you want to
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3771 votes
, () Top Author Forum Guru 10/21/2013 2:18 pm
Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999
I would say 'Both'.

If I recruit someone in my team, I will always ask them to go for 'Free advertising'. This will give my downlines some time to settle in the business without taking much risk. Usually people hesitate to invest in the initial stage. If you ask a new affiliate to invest some money for 'Paid advertising', there is a high chance that he/she will disappear forever.

But once they get some hands on experience and also confident about SFI business, we can always
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