Free tool for you - Have you tried Gumtree?

Now it's been a little while since I've had a total and utter zero budget idea for you. But this is a goodie, I promise! Have you discovered Gumtree yet?

Gumtree is a fab (not so) little community noticeboard - which has listings by Aussie city. It's like Craig's List, but for those of us downunder (although being eBay they're totally global, you just wouldn't know it).

So why do I care about a community noticeboard, I hear you ask?

Well, did I mention it's free?! And it's also got excellent SEO (search engine optimisation) which means a listing on Gumtree is often what you find on Google when you're hunting for just about anything.

So have you got something you can fit into one of their categories? You have to think laterally. I tried it out for my client, Flexicar. I wanted to get some people to try the service for free, so I put an advert on Gumtree to see if I'd get any nibbles. I spent a whopping $7 or so to make it a "top listing" (so it wouldn't get pushed down the page) and I not only got over 100 website visitors in a month, I got around 9 actual prospect inquiries.

Now, don't get me wrong, that's not going to set the world on fire - but it's nothing to sneeze at when other times I can spend hundreds and hundreds to get that many leads.

From Gumtree:

Gumtree.com was started in March 2000 as a local London classified ads and community site, designed to connect people who were either planning to move, or had just arrived in the city, and needed help getting started with accommodation, employment and meeting new people.

We've grown a lot since then through word of mouth and we're proud to say that Gumtree is loved by its rapidly growing community. We now cover 72 cities across 11 countries - the UK, Ireland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore and Hong Kong - and are the UK's biggest website for local community classifieds including flat share, flat rentals and jobs. More than 25,000 new rooms are advertised a month, which means at least 10,000 rooms are rented a month through Gumtree. We now have more than one million visitors every month.

Our aim at Gumtree is to give you a simple and easy-to-use tool that lets you quickly find you might be looking for. You can find everything you need to live your life with the help of your local Gumtree community; from a job or a flat, date, a nanny for your kids or a bargain to a language teacher and a tennis partner.