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FFA (Free For All) web sites (sometimes known as FFA pages) have been around the Internet for quite some time.  At first glance they seem harmless enough. Merely bulletin boards where one may get a free listing for their web site.  What could be the harm in that?  To the uninformed, FFAs might seem to offer great benefits, especially to owners of newer web sites wanting to establish a presence on the Internet.  Just as it is with many other aspects of the human condition, first impressions can often be quite misleading.

I made the mistake during my early days on the net of listing a couple of my web sites with FFAs.  My thinking at the time was that this would add to the exposure of my sites and, in turn, bring more traffic to them.  I was half right in that it did add to my exposure.  That exposure, however, was to SPAM e-mails by the ton.  I received hundreds of e-mails touting the wonderfulness of everything from allergy cream to Zen Buddhism.  The e-mail address I’d listed with the FFAs (bad mistake!!) became so overrun with SPAM that it became quite difficult to tell the difference between a legitimate e-mail and SPAM.  The end result was, I closed that e-mail address (which, unfortunately, was my primary address at the time) and opened a new one.  I then had to spend a great amount of time and energy informing each of the people and companies, with which I normally correspond, of my new e-mail address.

Vowing never to again have anything to do with FFAs I put my unpleasant experience with them behind me and moved on.

Last week an e-mail address of mine was inadvertently placed on an FFA without my knowledge.  When I demanded that it immediately be removed from their FFA, as I considered FFAs nothing more than fronts for SPAM factories, I received several e-mails from one of that FFA’s honchos informing me that FFAs and SPAM had no connection what so ever and furthermore, I was quite rude for implying that they did and I owed he and his FFA an apology.

Was he right?  I decided to find out.  I wanted to see if others had experienced similar occurrences with FFAs.  It took little time to find literally hundreds of complaints and company policies concerning FFAs.  Below, are a few examples:

Posted on ezboard.com, July 24, 2002

Why I do not recommend using FFA pages

For what it is worth, I do not recommend using free classified advertising or Free-For-All (FFA) page ads as part of your strategy for online marketing and promotion.

Why? Because FFA pages are actually cloaked lead gathering tools for the FFA page owners!

Here's what typically happens: each FFA page is, ostensibly, offered to the public as a free resource for online advertising. However, the real purpose of the FFA page is to gather the contact information from unsuspecting and uninformed advertisers who, in turn, end up receiving floods of prospecting email from the FFA page owner.

Moreover, few people who know and understand how FFA pages work ever actually visit and review these classified ad pages. Instead, they simply use "ad blasting" tools to submit their ads to hundreds of FFA pages automatically, and never actually go to the FFA sites, themselves.

Bottom line? As one Permaworld forum member said: "FFA pages are to bulletin boards as spam is to email."

Bob Blaycock, April 26, 2002

A bit over a week ago, I got it into my head to test an FFA site, to see if it complied with the confirmed opt-in principle. (It doesn't.) To this end, I posted a link to this site, using one of my regular email addresses. I stupidly assumed that even if it failed this test, I would receive only a reasonable number of advertisements as a result. On receiving the first advertisement, I followed the "Remove/Ban" link therein. Since then, I have received over a hundred more advertisements, and they are continuing to come in. The operator of the FFA site is unsympathetic, as is the ISP which is hosting it. After all, by posting a link, I "agreed" to receive all these advertisements. By virtue of having used the "Remove/Ban" link, my address is supposedly banned from making any more submissions, but I am told that I may potentially receive hundreds of advertisements as a result of the one submission I have made.

From the rep agreement on oiopro.com

Promoting OIO Pro on FFA (Free For All) sites is NOT allowed.
FFA sites (Free For All) sites and similar programs have a HIGH RISK of generating Spam complaints because of the nature of those types of programs. Advertising on FFA sites is not permitted for promoting any OIO Pro web site, related web site and/or services. Any complaints generated from advertising with FFA programs will be treated as Spam.

Those are but a few of the thoughts of many Internet users and web sites who have been "burned" by having a listing on an FFA.  A word to the wise is simply this.  No matter how much those associated with FFAs might protest to the contrary, FFAs are not a vehicle for spreading the word about your web site and bringing in more traffic.  Instead, they are a tool for gathering e-mail addresses.  Once you have listed your site with one or more FFAs, stand back because you have just attached a large sign on your e-mail address which says, "lay it on me, I love SPAM".  My advice is to make every effort to get your web site listed on legitimate search engines and to avoid any FFA like the second coming of the plague.

©2003 by Ken Kreps.  This article may not be re-published in electronic or print media without the express written permission of the author.  All Rights reserved.