When you have a limited budget, it also greatly limits ways to gain exposure. Some of major search engines are now ranking according to link popularity or how many dollars you can pay them to be listed. It's getting harder for "little guy" to get into game without a second mortgage on grandma's gold teeth. The argument for and against paid submission I won't explore now.

Have you ever come across those sites that offer to submit your URL to 8,567,291.1 sites for FREE? Then no doubt you have probably heard term FFA, as this is where majority of your submissions will go.

So what is FFA?

FFA stands for Free For All site. They have been in existence since around 1995. These are pages with sole purpose of listing links. Practically anyone can post their "ad" on these pages for free. The ad usually takes form of a descriptive link and a one to two line description. These listings are usually limited to around 50 and constantly rotating. A once off submission will last, if you're lucky, around one week. These pages are hosted around world.

While trying to keep up with information regarding what search engines are doing and investigating other options for promotion, I have been discouraged from using FFA sites to promote mine on a number of occasions. A couple of weeks ago, curiosity got better of me, I ignored advice and visited my friendly neighbourhood FFA blaster (a site dedicated to submitting to thousands of FFA pages).

After navigating through a series of pop-ups, I was presented with a form to fill in requesting my details, my site's url and description. With one click of my mouse button, I had supposedly submitted my url to around 8000 other sites. The whole process, from first click to FFA site, navigating to submission form, filling out form and submitting it, to exiting click from site took around 10 minutes.

Did I get traffic?....some, but nothing to get excited about..... As I mentioned earlier, link lists are constantly turning over. On some of FFA pages, my link lasted approximately 15 minutes before it was pushed down then off list by new submissions. On some pages that I have located, link has been visible for 6 days.

Too many people are creating free e-books that tell you same thing. Worse, most of them are trying to sell you something or are just trying to make you click on their affiliate links so they can make money off you.

Most free e-books contain articles you've seen dozens of times on other web sites or on popular article announcement lists.

And unless an e-book has something very unique and valuable to offer, it will be no different from thousands of free e-books already available for download.

In a way, novelty of free e-books has worn off.

More than year ago, I was creating one free e-book after another. They were great giveaways and they did drive traffic to my sites.

But that was a time when free e-books were not yet heavily used as viral marketing tools.

Sure, there were already hundreds of free e-books in circulation back then. However, take a look at many e-zines and web sites today. What's most common thing they offer?

A free e-book.

Creating and offering free e-books is now too common.

Many will still continue to create free e-books, but most of these e-books won't have an edge anymore.

So, while everyone else is creating free e-books left and right, take a different approach.

Create a free e-mail workshop, and let it distinguish your business, e-zine or web site from rest.

What's an e-mail workshop? It's a type of e-learning method. Instead of encompassing a wide area of study or learning, it is focused on a specific skill, and is aimed for a specific group of people.