1. Banner Ads
A typical banner ad is 468 x 60 pixels in size. A banner ad is normally placed in a very prominent area of a web site to attract visitors to click through them. Normally sold in per thousand impressions, it is regard as one of the earliest form of web advertising.

2. Social Network Ads
As the name implies, social network ads are advertisements that are targeted at users of social networking istes such as FaceBook, Friendster, MySpace. It is gaining in popularity and many marketers have very good results from social network ads.

3. Online Classified Ads
Similar to newspaper classified ads, online classified ads are the online version of their more conventional model. There are many sites that you can place your ads on. There is a mixture of free and paid classified ads sites that you can advertise on such as Craiglist, Kijiji, Gumtree and USFreeAds.

4. Contextual Ads
Contextual ads are targeted ads that are displayed according to the type of content a website is based on. In this way, visitors are exposed to ads that are highly relevant I nature to what they are reading. Contextual ads are also used by search engines to displayed ads on their search results based on keywords used by web surfers.One good example of a contextual advertising network is the Google Adsense program.

The four channels above will offer you ways to advertise your business for free or at very affordable rates. Given the nature of online advertising, it is best to employ a mixture of the above channels and test and track to find out which channel or channels offer you the most value in return for your effort, time and money.

Advertising on Craigslist is free with the exception of job postings and housing postings in specific markets. As advertising is mostly free, there are virtually no risks for merchants and businesses to advertise their products or services on Craigslist. However, you have to take note of their guidelines and follow these guidelines closely when posting advertisements. If not, you may end up being identify as spamming Craigslist and get your accounts suspended or deleted. Advertising on Craigslist is one thing but spamming is quite another. Placing an advertisement in an appropriate section of Craigslist is acceptable but placing the same advertisement in nearly every section of Craigslist websites for a number of different geographical regions is considered spam.

The key to profiting on Craigslist is to identify and target your audience market and where to place your advertisements. Place your advertisements in the most appropriate locations to garner maximum results. No point posting hundreds of advertisements only to see little or no results. Do your research well and you can definitely profit from Craigslist’s enormous customer base. The other thing to take note is your advertisements must stand out from the rest. To be effective in capturing people’s attention, your advertisements’ headlines and content need to be intriguing.

If you have not use Craigslist to market your products or services and drive traffic to your sites, isn’t it time for you to consider doing so.