You can use "Free For All" link pages to advertise your site. These are exactly what
name implies: a whole bunch of links on a page with very little order. You can add links to an FFA page by typing
information about your site (see some of
example pages below), or you can use an automated program or service to submit to thousands of them at once.
Because so many people are posting to FFAs using automated tools, they do not tend to be extremely useful as an advertising medium. You will find that your links stay on
page for only a short time (sometimes just minutes) before being kicked off by newer links. This makes it a complete waste of time to hand-submit to them.
Years ago FFA lists were a very useful part of any web sites promotional strategy. This was in
days before automated tools and sites which exclaim "submit your site to millions of directories" (which are invariably millions of FFA pages). In their attempts to be "useful", these tools have actually reduced
effectiveness of FFA lists to practically nothing.
Because FFA lists are so widely touted as a useful promotional technique, I have spent many hours submitting to them and measuring
results. How are
results measured? It's very simple. Create a special "welcome page" for each FFA list. Submit each welcome page to a different list. After a period of time (a few days) check your server logs (or hit counters) to see how many hits you've got for that page.
The results for submitting to FFA lists? Virtually no hits at all. I attempted hand submission and found that I received zero hits in a one week period. I also attempted automatic submission using Submitwolf and some of
other automated services. A couple of additional hits here and there were
result.
That being said, some of
FFA lists that I have defined to help advertise this site are listed below. Go ahead and visit them to get an idea of how these things look and what they are about.
ffanet.com http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/lnkinlte.cgi?l=.ffanet multilinks.net http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/lnkinlte.cgi?l=.multilinks 1stclasslinks.com http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/lnkinlte.cgi?l=.1stclasslinks FantasticLinks.com http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/lnkinlte.cgi?l=.fantasticslinks
Once you decide to submit to an FFA list, DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR MAIN EMAIL ADDRESS WHEN YOU ENTER YOU SITE INTO ONE OF THESE PAGES, ESPECIALLY IF YOU USE AN AUTOMATED TOOL. This is very important. You see, each site sends you one or more emails confirming your addition to
site. This email is NOT spam, since you requested it (this is part of
FFA list's terms and conditions) and it's
primary reason why people create FFA lists in
first place. If you use your primary email account, that's exactly what you will get - lots of [mostly useless] advertising messages.
I did this once (and only once) and I received over 2,500 emails in one evening. Fortunately, these sites are usually set up to only send one email, so
damage is not permanent, just annoying.
You MUST use an email address of some kind, however, so get one of those free email accounts and use that address. Personally, I've never found anything useful after examining over a thousand of these emails during
past year, so I tend to just delete everything without looking. Some of
free email accounts allow you to set up rules to automatically delete messages (see http://www.internet-tips.net/Email/autodelete.htm) - it can be useful to take advantage of this capability.
So far, we've discussed
advantages (few) and disadvantages (many) to submitting to an FFA list. Now comes
interesting part - You can create your own lists. When you do this, you can set up your page with one or more autoresponder messages of your own. This means that everyone who posts to your FFA list will receive one of your emails. This email can advertise anything that you want.