Yep, you read right. There is NO such thing as FREE Advertising. The only kind of advertising you can get is inexpensive or expensive, good or bad, but you can’t get FREE advertising.

Why do we say there's no such thing as FREE advertising?

Because you’re advertising is paid for with either time or money. You either pay someone for advertising OR you take your time putting advertising up.

Whichever way, you’re paying for your advertising. There are some things you need to consider when advertising, whether you’re paying in time or money.

Groups Advertising - Is group active? Do group rules allow advertising? Is group targeted to your target audience?

Signature Lines Exchanges - Does other business compliment yours? Are they in different groups than what your in so you get more exposure.

It needs to be understood that most paper and card is manufactured for a specific purpose, so that whilst corn-flake packet may look smart it is clearly not something destined for archives. It is made to look good, but only needs a limited life span. It is also much cheaper to manufacture than high grade card.

Paper can be made from an almost endless variety of cellulose based material which will include many woods, cottons and grasses or which papyrus is an example and from where we get word ‘paper’. Many of these are very specialized, but preponderance of paper making has been from soft wood and cotton or rags, with bulk being wood based.

Paper from Wood. In order to make wood into paper it needs to be broken down into fine strands. Firstly by powerful machinery and then boiled with strong alkalies such as caustic soda, until a fine pulp of cellulose fibres is produced. It is from this pulp that final product is made, relying on bonding together of cellulose into layers. That, in a very small nutshell, is essence of paper making from wood. However, reality is rather more complicated. In order to give us our white paper and card makers will add bleach and other materials such as china clay and additional chemicals.

An further problem with wood is that it contains a material that is not cellulose. Something called Lignin. This is essential for tree since it holds cellulose fibres together, but if it is incorporated into manufactured paper it presents archivists with a problem. Lignin eventually breaks down and releases acid products into paper. This will weaken bond between cellulose fibres and paper will become brittle and look rather brown and careworn. We have all seen this in old newspapers and cheap paperback books. It has been estimated that most paper back books will have a life of not greater than fifty years. Not what we need for our archives.