Online classifieds are an effective marketing channel often overlooked by webmasters. Online classified sites like www.craigslist.org and www.backpage.com get enormous traffic from people looking to buy and sell services and products.

Although not recommended for link building as they expire in 7 to 10 days, online classified ads represent an excellent source of direct traffic. They are best suited for products and services catered to local and regional markets but may be used for global as well.

Placing an ad is not as difficult as you might think. In fact, much of Craigslist’s enormous popularity is owed at least partly to the site’s fast, no-nonsense design and the ease of ad placement.

I seem to recall a link exchange service called “linkfart.com” a while back. The site no longer exists. Such a name as “link fart” is attention-getting, but not the kind of attention that would a site an overnight success. To be sure, I have no idea how much of a factor the site’s name was solely responsible for linkfart’s downfall, but its flatulent name was not enough to keep it afloat.

Link baiting has become a catch phrase in the SEO community nowadays. The idea is to get others to link to your site naturally through attention-grabbing, often provocative, content. You can bait others to link to your site by stirring controversy. The concept is basically a new twist on the old “content is king” mantra. The concept is perhaps more descriptive of methods that provoke.

Anything that evokes a negative response, such as anger, disgust, and envy, even on a subconscious level, may backfire, so it’s not always prudent to provoke to get people attention.

Link-baiting can be a double-edged sword. One should not try to create a buzz at the expense of detracting from their online professionalism and reputation. One should set a limit on how far they’re willing to go to get people’s attention.

Most companies would not consider placing contextually-targeted ads on their commercial sites. An obvious reason is that these ads may make their sites look less professional and somehow diminish their online credibility. A more important reason, however, is that the ads that will be appearing on their sites will be for competing products and services.

Due to the rising costs of pay-per-click advertising, revenues from ads can help offset advertising costs. Plus, people who find your site by clicking on an ad are more likely to click on ads on your site.

As for displaying ads for competitors, I think people are inclined to do comparison shopping any way. So why not make a few bucks from their habit? If you have confidence about the product or service you’re selling, then there’s really no reason to fear.

Personally I have no qualms about placing contextual advertising on a commercial site. I don’t mind ads offering competing services. If you’re worried about your direct competitors’ ads appearing on your site, you could go into your Adsense account and filter them out so that only products and services that are complimentary to yours appear.

A lot of site owners are complaining that making less and less from Adsense nowadays. No matter how they play around with their ad size, position, color schemes, etc., they still see their revenues declining.

I think part of this is that people are learning to habitually ignore contextual ads. Sure these ads are relevant to the material they’re viewing, but they also know that they’re, well, advertisements by companies going after their pocketbooks.

When contextual ads first came out, I liked to click on them thinking that I’d find useful (and free) information on the landing pages. But once I had found out often enough that these sites are mostly trying sell me something, I learned to avoid them.

I’d figure that everyone else is probably the same way. Most people get on the internet to look for FREE things. They don’t necessary like sites where they’d have to pay.

So what’s next? What could be more effective than context ads?

Since there is no industry standard for pricing a website, a site is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. This isn’t helpful if you’re considering selling your site and don’t know where to begin. In my opinion, a website should be priced as one would a brick-and-mortar business.

One might price a site by taking its annual profit and multiplying by some factor, say 2.5, to arrive at a “fair” value. Unlike brick-and-mortar businesses, the internet business is volatile and everchanging, so a profit one year may not translate to one in the next.

Other considerations for valuing a site include the site’s niche, market reach, traffic, search engine rankings, age of domain name, number of inbound links, number of paying sponsors, Google PageRank, Alexa rankings, number of competing sites, and so on.

dnScoop has an interesting site valuation tool that attempts to value a site based on various factors. However, one should be forwarned that the results, while useful and interesting, should be regarded for its entertainment value rather than taken seriously for valuing a site.

Perhaps a better way to get an idea of how much your site is worth is to hang out in forums like the Digitalpoint and Sitepoint marketplaces and see how much sites comparable to yours are selling for. Ebay is another place to search for past sales of websites.

When it comes building a website that stands out above the crowd, content is king, or so goes the old mantra. By this we mean content that is fresh, unique and original.

But what exactly is unique and original?

With billions of pages on the web, one would be hard-pressed to come up with material is truly unique and original. Chances are, anything that could be said already has been said somewhere by someone else. The only thing left to originality is the way in which the words are strung together.

People surf the web to be informed and entertained, and with over 100 million sites on the web, there is no shortage of information. Much of the information on the web is redundant and unoriginal. But you can be original in the way you present it.

People surf the web for different reasons. They surf to be informed, to be entertained, to sell and buy stuff, to be aroused, and so on and so forth. In the end it’s about putting a smile on people’s face. So, even if you don’t have anything original to say (like in this post), try to say it in a fresh, new way to capture your readers’ interest. But don’t try too hard. You either have it or you don’t.