Like many families at this time of the year, spring cleaning is a time honored tradition to whittle down the items that have outlived their usefulness. This gives rise to another activity in many homes across the country - the yard sale. There are many names for this: yard sale, rummage sale, garage sale; but the goal remains the same: to sell the items that have accumulated over time, and maybe even earn a little extra income.

There are many benefits of a yard sale beyond reclaiming storage space and recouping some of the purchase price costs. But oftentimes sellers are not able to sell all of the items offered in a yard sale, simply because of low visibility. And it makes sense: publicity costs money- and beyond the handmade signs and neighborly support, getting the word out can become expensive.

So do people balance the two: ensure that a yard sale gets maximum publicity, but at little or no cost? Online marketing is a great tool: it's cheap, easy and gives you the ability to advertize your yard sale to a large group of people- in many cases, absolutely free.

Free online classifieds sites are a growing service niche and have increased in popularity over the years. And while there are many classifieds sites that cover the entire country- and even the entire world!- increasingly, they are becoming more focused: zeroing in on local communities at the county or town level in order to increase their relevance to local residents.

For instance in North Carolina, advertisers have the option to use larger classifieds sites like Kijiji or craigslist; but for local events, users often choose to target free classifieds sites that target Union County, or specific towns like Monroe, Union City, Waxhaw, Indian Trail and Wingate. Which makes sense since the more local the site, the more relevant is will be to the community it serves.

Since on many of these classifieds sites users can post their ads for free, this allows them to post multiple ads on multiple sites- which beats hanging up posters all over town or handing out flyers for a yard sale. Users can then concentrate on preparing for the big day yard sale, more confident that the word is out.

The internet is an established tool for getting a message to a large number of people. And now it's not just for large corporations, or grassroots campaigns: individuals have been using community classifieds websites with success to get maximum publicity at no cost at all. Go ahead- use them to your advantage today!