I have tried all I can to advertise and I am running out of ideas. My next venture is to place flyers door to door. This is going to be expensive and time consuming. Has anyone had any luck with door to door? How about placing a business card instead of a flyer?

Would appreciate any help! Thanks

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I use Craigslist to advertise and have had fairly good success. I have been advertising for 3 weeks, and I have a newborn starting full time Monday. I have a couple of part time families who are not going to work out, but I have at least 3 other prospects for full time families on the horizon who I am waiting on to get back with me. And another interview set up for Saturday! The key is you have to know what you are doing when you are advertising.

For instance, where I live there are literally HUNDREDS of providers who are advertising on Craigslist. If you just slap some text together and attach a couple pics using Craigslist's system, you will blend into ALL of the other ads. You won't stand out. So, you need to do what I do and use HTML in your ads. Then when a parent clicks on it, it will look more like a webpage. When you use HTML, you can put high quality pictures right in your ad rather than trying to attach the small poor quality version Craigslist allows you to do.

Here is a link to one of my current ads:

https://post.craigslist.org/manage/2630503790

Good luck to you and if you need any tips, let me know!

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I have tried cl many times all I get is people trying to con me. I tried the newspaper, I did my cards at Halloween, I have put up flyers around town still nothing.
That is why I was asking about putting business cards on houses. I have tried everything else that is available to me. That I can think of?

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I'd love to know how to do this - your ad won't come up for me. I don't find CL to work for me - never got a single call/email from my recent ads on there - and there are NO other dc's in my town on there so its not from competition. I just don't think its a much used source here - I get most of my calls from my website, from people just searching my town + daycare.

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Hmm, I'm not sure why it won't come up for you! It does for me when I click on it. Anyway, there are some very basic HTML codes you can use to make your ad look great. I hope this will work when I try to type out the code and not actually apply it! Here are a few quick ones.

<center>CENTERED WORDS GO HERE</center>

To bold type <b>BOLD WORDS GO HERE</b>

To enter down one time type <br>

To adjust color and size of your font type: <font size="6" color="green">Put text here</font>

Change the number to get different font sizes. And for color you can use brown, blue, green, red, yellow, pink, purple and fuschia. There may be more that I am not aware of.

I use photobucket to upload my photos to, and then I use their html code to paste the pics where I want them in my ad. It works great. Good luck to you!

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I have had several people tape small flyers to the mailbox and I always look at them. If you have a printer you could make two or three on a sheet for relatively cheap and then target specific neighborhoods each week to make it less time consuming all at once.

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I also only advertise on cl right now. Make sure you do make your post very informational and take pics of the crafts and play areas. I live in a huge city so there are a lot on craigs list daily. Try to post very early or preferably very late in the day so you aren't stuck in the middle. Also make your title something to grab their attention.

My other suggestion is to give your information (cards) to the local elementary schools and preschools.(we have preschools that don't offer wrap around care). I have had many calls from that also. And a lot of time they have a 7 year old but they also have a baby they are trying to place. Worth a shot if they will do it. I have a friend who does daycare in a smaller town 20 min away and that school wont stop giving out her phone number

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I would do the door to door advertising. I did, and I passed out about 150, and ended up with 4 dcp :-) 1 full time, 2 before after, and one drop in! Well worth it, but it DOES use alot of ink.

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Have some shirts made up with your business name on them, have your name put on your checks, put something on your car, hang flyers at the library, coffee houses. Are there any play places for children in your area, ask employers to hang up in their break rooms, doctor offices, pediatric offices. One thing no one usually thinks of is talk to the labor and delivery part of the hospital in your area. Ask if you can put a flyer/business card up in their area and in all the goodie bags that go home with everyone. Maybe just make up 100 and start with that and do it every 3-6 months. Don't forget to hit every school in your town including the middle schools and high schools for teachers children!

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