There are a lot of ways that you can market a site on the internet, and most of them will work for most sites. The key is to find the ones that will give you the most traffic for the least amount of cost, especially when you are just starting out. Methods like pay per click advertising can be extremely beneficial, but they are better left to those who are already making money online. When you are just starting out, free or cheap is the only way to go.
So how can you keep your internet marketing costs down? Well, there are quite a few methods, but we'll deal with the top four.
The first thing you absolutely have to do to market your site effectively is get listed in the search engines, and this is absolutely free. Don't let anyone talk you into a paid service. If you submit to the top three sites, MSN, Google and Yahoo, the other sites will automatically be populated. You should also submit to the local search engines of those sites, which is a separate and yet still free listing.
The second thing you can do to keep internet marketing costs down is to avoid outsourcing. Use only methods that you can do yourself. If you're not a good writer, don't use article marketing until you have the money to either learn how or hire someone that can do it for you.
Third, online classifieds are often free or extremely inexpensive, and can be well worth your effort. This is especially true if they are high traffic, because these are often indexed by the search engines for their content.
The fourth thing you can do is list yourself in directories. Try to go to industry or niche specific directories, but barring that there are many more generalized directories that are free. It can take several weeks to see the results, but you will soon have targeted traffic at no cost.
