What are FFA links pages?
A FFA (Free For All) links page is a web page where you can post a link back to your web site. As new links are posted to the page, so your link moves down until it reaches the end of the page and then expires.
The idea was originally developed as a tool for web masters to generate traffic to their web sites. All newbie marketers were told, and still are told, to post their links to these FFA link pages.
While they were submitting their link to the page, they would be exposed to other peoples links and would click on any interesting links. This system worked quite well.
Until automatic submission engines were developed...
How effective is submitting to FFA links pages?
Now days, links are submitted automatically in their millions to thousands of FFA links pages.
This means that on a page which sees a lot of traffic, a link will only be published on the page for maybe half an hour before it expires.
To make matters worse, any link posted to these pages is highly unlikely to ever be seen by a human.
Who knows why newbie marketers are told to post their links to FFA pages? Maybe because they do get seen on very rare occasions.
To put it bluntly, posting to FFA links pages is a complete waste of time!
But...
Owning FFA links pages (note the plural) can be a way of generating traffic.
Why should owning FFA links pages be of any importance to an internet marketer?
Because if you are the owner of an FFA link page, you get to send an e-mail with an advertisement to every person who posts a link on your page.
Now bear in mind that people who post to FFA pages will normally use a junk e-mail address. This means the chances of your ad being seen are pretty low.
But...
Every newbie marketer is told to post to FFA pages and they are not told to use junk email addresses and the chances are, even if they do own a junk email address, they will not have been told to delete everything in their inbox on a daily basis.
This means that the newbie marketer is more likely to go through their e-mails (after they've got over the shock of receiving hundreds of e-mails from all the FFA pages they auto posted to). So in the majority of cases, it is the newbie marketer that you will be reaching.
How do you send email to the people who post to your FFA Links page?
In internet marketing, every person who you can contact with an advertisement is known as a lead.
Every person who posts and advertisement to your FFA Links page will have to supply an email address on the understanding that you will be contacting them with a confirmation email that contains an advertisement.
These leads you get from your FFA links page are known as e-mail leads. How you send your email to these leads depends on which of the following two basic categories the FFA Links page falls:
- FFA Links pages which allow you to collect leads and send email to them yourself, or
- FFA Links pages which do not allow you to collect leads, but which have an integral email script for you to use to send email to your leads. Of these, there are two types:
- FFA Links pages which have a manual mailing system. You have to login, enter your advertisement and manually send the email to your leads.
- FFA Links pages which have an automatic mailing system. You enter your advertisement once and the system automatically sends the email to your leads (every time they post to your FFA Links page).
If you have collected your own leads and intend to e-mail them yourself, here are some general rules you must obey when contacting these e-mail leads:
You will need a bulk mailer program to send e-mails to your leads and the best program to use is Group Mail. Group Mail Pro is excellent for maintaining lists of people who've asked to be removed from your mailings and it also scrubs these names from any mailing that you do. The free version does not do this and it limits you to sending about two hundred e-mails at a time.
Important - Some ISP's will terminate your account if you send e-mails to leads through your internet connection using bulk mailing software.
The answer is to open a secondary (throw away) ISP account. If it gets closed at least your primary internet connection is unaffected.
If you are unable to open a secondary ISP account and before you start sending thousands of e-mails you had better confirm with your ISP that you are allowed to do so.
Please bear in mind that sooner or later you are going to be accused of sending spam.
Many ISP's will terminate your account after only one spam complaint.
There are some bitter and twisted people out there who love nothing more than reporting anybody who sends them an e-mail, whether it contains an advertisement or not.
As long as you have followed the advice set out above and the rules laid out by the FFA program you belong to, you should be alright.
How do you use the integral FFA Links page mailer?
As stated earlier, some FFA pages will not allow you to collect e-mail leads. Instead they have an integral mailer for sending email to your leads.
The process is simple...
The mailer script will have a page for you to copy and paste the email subject and the advertisement - the mailer script will add the necessary header and footer.
The difference between the two systems is:
- With the automatic mailer, so only do this once.
- With the manual mailer, you to login to your account every day and copy and paste your e-mail subject and advertisement before you can send the email.
Are there any tips for writing e-mail advertisements?
For any e-mail advertisement you are going to send, here are a few general tips for the actual e-mail itself:
- Always use a re-direct, like those provided by Opportunity.com, for the link to the program you are advertising.
- Since you will not have any names, only e-mail addresses, don't be clever and try to personalize the e-mail.
- Start your subject with '----' as this will have the appearance of indenting your subject line and will make it stand out more.
- Try to use your own words when making a subject line. If you want to use those supplied by the program you are promoting, remember so has everybody else. If your subject is different it will stand out.
- Your subject line must include a major benefit. In other words, in as few words as possible, explain how the reader will benefit from opening your e-mail.
- The body of your e-mail must include one major benefit. In other words, how will the reader benefit from responding to your e-mail.
- If you want your reader to click on a link, ask them to click on the link.
- Keep your e-mail fairly short and to the point.
- Use a P.S. with a major benefit. The P.S. is one of the most read parts of any letter or e-mail.
Click here for a list of recommended FFA Links pages you can join.
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