If you are looking to promote your business and are not sure if ad exchange sites will ever work, Free Advertising For You may be an option for you to try out. Well, at least it will help you get to know what an ad exchange is like. It's one of the typical but many, self-advertising sites particularly popular among old affiliate marketers.
When you first visit the site, your initial concern may be the awfully outdated design layout. I don't blame you, it is an old site, and it's probably never been updated. But it has plenty of help and support and it offers to give you extra credits for certain activities. The thing is, the whole idea behind ad exchange might be out of date. I hope this Free Advertising For You review will help you decide whether it's worthwhile using that kind of service at all.
Free Advertising For You Review | ||
Product Name: | Faststart 9 | |
Website URL: | freeadvertisingforyou.com | |
Type: | Ad exchange | |
Owner: | Jason Wise | |
Price: | Free to join | |
Rating: | ||
What Is Free Advertising For You?
FreeAdvertisingForYou.com (FAFY) is an ad-exchange service site where any entrepreneurs are allowed to join the membership for free and promote their business to other members. Like any other ad exchange, it's a two-way system. You are required to view ads and click the links placed by others to earn credits first. Then your credits can be used to display your ads in return. Several formats for ads are available including; banners, texts, full-page splash ads (which appear to other members as soon as they log in), and solo ads (which go directly to the members' inbox).
FAFY also offers to add some bonus credits such as a one-time "welcome bonus" when you first sign up, a daily bonus of 100 credits, as well as regular prize draws. Paid options are also available, allowing you to earn credits quicker, hence giving you greater chances to advertise.
The credits are used solely for displaying ads within the FAFY site, they cannot be exchanged for cash or anything else.
What Kind of Niche Can You Advertise?
Almost 100% of FAFY members are in the make-money-online/internet marketing niche. But the site does not restrict them from promoting other niches. It means if you're in a niche that's different and unique, you might have a better chance of gaining the attention of other members.
Is Free Advertising For You a Scam?
No, FAFY is not a scam. The following reasons support the assumption that this is a legitimate advertising platform:
- The site was established in 2011. It wouldn't have lasted this long if it was a scam.
- The site owner is known as Jason Wise, and that's the name that appears on the domain registry. He's known to have operated some other online marketing service sites including viralmailerforyou.com.
- FAFY members can enjoy most of the features for free. The premium services are only optional and, the payments are processed via Stripe, that's safe & secure.
The Types of Ads
The types of available ads on FAFY are;
- Featured Banner with Text - You need 1,500,000 credits to receive 5,000 views.
- Solo Ads - View 35 ads to send one solo ad mail to other members.
- "Set and Forget" Solo Ads - It will automatically send your solo ad on certain days of the week for a week - a month. You need 900,00 - 8,400,000 credits, depending on the frequency and duration.
- Full Page Surf Ads - You need 150,000 credits to get 250 views.
- 1 Lifetime Banner Ad - 5,000,000 credits.
- 1 Lifetime Banner Ads - 9,500,000 credits.
- 468x60 Banner Ads - 200,000 credits to get 1,000 impressions or 750,000 credits per 5,000 impressions.
- 125x125 Banner Ads - 350,000 credits per 1,000 impressions or 1,350,000 credits per 5,000 impressions.
- Text Link Ads - 150,000 credits per text link with 1000 views or 250,000 credits per text link with 2500 views
- Solo Footer Ads - 500,000 Points to get 100 Clicks.
- Block Ads - 500,000 credits to get 250 clicks or 900,000 credits to get 500 clicks.
Millions of credits - doesn't that sound like a lot? It indeed does to me, it seems to take a long time before you can post your first ad. Because when you view an ad for 10-20 seconds, you'll only earn 30-125 credits. Although there are some bonus credits here & there within the platform such as "daily bonus", "login bonus", etc.
Purchase Credits
Alternatively, you can pay $97 to get the right to place the following ads;
- 30,000 x 468x60 banner views
- 5,000 x 125x125 banner views
- 5,000 x featured banner views
- 7,500 x full-page views
- 10 x solo ads
- 50,000 x text link views
- 5,000,000 credits to use for any ads
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What I Like About Free Advertising For You
I can think of a couple of advantages of using FAFY.
Opportunity to Steal Good Sales Copy
You are endlessly required to visit other members' landing pages to earn credits, which isn't totally a bad thing...I guess. I've viewed quite a few of them and most of them are spammy or "seen that before" make-money invitations. But if you keep checking, you may come across some pages with good sales copy. If what a landing page says is believable to you, it may be believable to others too, you know. Then that's your opportunity to find out why the sales copy is believable. You can copy that, use it on your own page, and test it (e.g. send it to your leads) to see how responsive it is.
Access To Free Learning Materials
Some good learning materials (training videos, ebooks, etc.) are available for beginners. The majority of them are premium services run by third parties but the promo codes are provided by FAFY so you can get them for free. You'll get some materials to learn;
- How to generate traffic
- How to build a big, responsive mailing list
- How to generate more cash flow
What I'm Not Keen About Free Advertising For You
On the other hand, there are some disadvantages that I can find.
Bad Navigation
I find the menu items very confusing. "Daily Bonus Credits", "Get Your Bonuses", "Get Your Free Ads", "Win Ads", "Promo Code", "Activity Rewards"...... There are no sub-menus, but when you click each menu item, you'll then be shown various bonuses, rewards, and codes.
The home dashboard tells you how to start and there are some video tutorials but I personally find them difficult to understand. You probably need some time to get your head around it.
Traffic Exchange - Ancient Techniques
In order to earn more credits, you'll have to view as many other members' ads. You'll be directed to a member's landing page with a countdown timer at the top. You need to stay on the page for 10-20 seconds (the duration depends on the type of ad.)
You need to stay for a certain length, that's based on an ancient SEO technique - websites that received a number of visits were simply ranked better in SERP in the old days. So the purpose of "traffic exchange" used to be for the members to visit each other's sites to help boost their search engine ranking. The strategy is so outdated, simply receiving a direct visit from a number of people makes no difference, no matter how many seconds or hours they stay on the page.
Targeting The Wrong Audience
Now, more serious notes. It has always been the fundamental issue with the whole idea of ad exchanges. But particularly with Free Advertising For You because most members are affiliate marketers who promote the wealth niche within the platform.
After signing up, you'll soon witness a hundred different "get more leads" landing pages, "earn streams of residual income" landing pages, "earn with crypto", "free traffic", etc, etc. Basically, they're promoting their business to their exact competitors, i.e. the wrong audience.
What's the purpose of exchanging ads with others? For entrepreneurs to get to know each other, promote their businesses...help one another...? Yes perhaps, if there's a community thread facility. But not with FAFY. There is no personal connection between the members. They're too busy to care about their fellow members trying to promote their own landing page. You can imagine how frantically the members click the ads day-in, day-out to earn more credits...perhaps the only thing they're looking at is the countdown timer, not the ads?
Solo Ads - Spam Each Other
"Solo ads" may sound like FreeAdvertisingForYou has a list of buyers externally, but that's not the case. FAFY will simply deliver your own email swipe to other FAFY members' inboxes. It means that as a member, your inbox will also be bombarded with spam emails from other members. The moment I signed up with FAFY (in a matter of a few minutes), I started to receive spam and, within the first 24 hours, I received 55+ emails, all from FAFY.
(You can, however, go to your account settings and opt-out from receiving emails.)
Again, wrong audience. You want to promote "make money online" affiliate products and you keep receiving other "make money online" invitations every few minutes. You wouldn't be tempted to open any of them because you receive too many of them too often, and all of them have a boring, heard-it-all-before subject line such as "Get instant results!", "150% profit!", "Make sales while you sleep"... I guess the existing members don't realize this yet - solo ads should be sent to the target audience, but they're blindly sending them to their competitors.
Free Advertising For You Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Rank and Rent Club Review - Conclusion:
An ad exchange is like a bunch of hardware shops trying to sell hardware to other hardware shops, not knowing they all work in the same industry. If you are brand new to online marketing, you may be interested to know what others are up to. But ad exchanges are so old-fashioned that you can easily spend a lot of time learning outdated techniques, never mind earning money from them.
(Real Time) Affiliate Income Report Last Month
October 2024: $8,550.00
I see your comparison but honestly some free traffic exchange sites have improved within the past decade from my experience but I can be wrong. For example herculist is pretty good. Maybe even better than FAFY.