Assuming you have a good product that is reasonably priced, how do you market it to turn a profit. Some believe that if they "throw up" a web page world will beat a path to their door. Others follow no cost advertising route.

If you were walking down a dimly lit street, and someone you never met, walked up, and offered to sell you a valuable watch for $15. What would you do? If you're like me, you'd say, "thanks, but no thanks". Why do some people think they can do it on web and it will work.

In order to succeed in business on web, you must become known, and you are competing with some "heavy hitters", who have very deep pockets for advertising.

The web does one thing however for small entrepreneur - it creates a level playing field. There are plenty of niche markets where you can advertise at a very low cost.

We have a "free ad" section at our web site where people can place a free ad for their business. Ads are submitted weekly and published on web. Now, to place an ad, someone has to visit our web site and fill out a form containing their email address and copy of ad. We try to make it as easy as possible, but bottom line is many people are not serious, and don't have a clue as to how to run a business on web.

When ads are received, we send an automatic response to person who sent it. Perhaps one out of ten has an incorrect email address and response is returned as undeliverable. What a waste of time.

How do these people think that people can respond to their ad if their email address is incorrect?

Going through our archives, I found some real gems - what do you think about these offers?

"Join our MLM and earn beg income". This is either a typo or they are promising very little in way of earnings. This person obviously didn't proof their copy before submitting ad.

Another ad promised huge earnings, but gave no contact information. Not a web site URL or an email address to be found. Guess they figure it is so powerful an offer, we will find them - another waste of time.

"Make Money! Turn $10 into $40,000 CASH like I did" - but wait - this guy is using a free email account. If he's making all that money, wouldn't you think he could afford one for ten bucks a month - maybe he is saving all those $10 bills so he can earn $40,000 CASH with each one.