Chances are, no matter how long you've been online, that you've used some pretty popular advertising techniques that produced no results for you. Some of you might even still be in that boat right now.

I'm talking about safe lists, ad blasters, free for alls, traffic exchange programs and such. You'll learn sooner or later, if you don't know already, that those making full- time incomes have never had much luck with those and they won't waste their time with them.

And you shouldn't either. Even some of us that do know this can still get suckered in because the people who peddle these ineffective, time wasting advertising techniques make it sound so simple and easy. Which is exactly what people want--simple and easy. They want a magic button that they can push and call it a day and expect to retire by the next afternoon.

There are some free advertising techniques that work. But you'll mostly hear about those from people who've been there and done that, with safe lists and such, and free advertising that actually works. Those techniques won't have headlines that scream "Send your ad to over a million in 30 seconds!" or "Type it once, click send, and sit back while the cash rolls in!" at you.

No, effective free advertising will take you some time, persistence, and dedication. Writing articles or looking for reciprocal link partners or posting in forums, etc. Those are the kinds of techniques that have produced results for people. It's not a set it and forget it process, so choose how you advertise wisely.