How to Advertise Your Online Business For Free

Some of the best advertising techniques are free. When your first starting out and the money isn't rolling in yet, these techniques are especially useful.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Computer
• Internet Access

1. Optimize your website for keywords appropriate to your business. You can learn plenty about the proper methods to do this at various sites, forums and blogs online for free. You can also find out about this or any other topic at your public library.
2. Write interesting articles that would be appropriate to your target market and submit them the various article directories. Provide useful information that people will appreciate without trying to promote your products to much. Place a tag line at the end of each article describing your business with a link to your site. submit a couple of articles a week and before long you will have links pointing back to your website all over the internet. Keep your articles short and to the point, while offering the reader some valuable free information. Generally around 500 words is standard. I've listed a couple of great sites under resources that will pay you to write articles and at the same time advertise your business.
3. Submit your site to search engines, directories, specialty listings sites, industries organizations and yellow pages. This is another method to get noticed and get one way links back to your website and some free customers. Use search engines to find all these places and submit your site.
4. Submit classified ads directing customers to your website to all the free classified sites you can find. You can get some bonus free traffic to your site in this way. You can't just post to one or two sites and expect much in the way of customers though. You need to post to as many sites as possible and on a regular basis.
5. Post to blogs, forums and message boards that allow you to post with a tagline that has a link to your site. You should always try to post something of value though and not just in an attempt to market your site. Be helpful and respectful and this strategy will will help you to get your name out.
6. Start your own blog. One of the least difficult, most effective techniques to promote your products or business is with your own blog. Post to your blog with relevant information on a regular basis using targeted keywords in each post. When your first starting it's best to update once per day or so. This can be a very effective method to get to the top of the search engines relatively fast.
7. Write your URL on everything. Put it on all your stationary such as business cards, letterhead and envelopes. Also include your URL in your email signature in all your outgoing mail. Find as many ways as possible to get seen by as many people as you can.
8. Start a consistent linking strategy. Find relevant sites targeting the same market that you are but that are not direct competitors and ask them to link to your site. If you use this system you will need to have something on your website (products or information) that will be of value to your possible link partner's customers. Reciprocal links are another type of link you should try to get. This is when you link to a website and they in turn link back to yours.
9. Write an ezine and submit it to ezine directories. This strategy is almost like the strategy used for articles. You can use the articles you write in your ezine and vice versa. You can also use appropriate articles from other marketers that you find at the article directories that you think your readers would enjoy.
10. Submit press releases to get the message out about your product or business. Contact publications and reporters directly related to your industry or area of expertise. If you have something unique or newsworthy to say then this can be an superb strategy.
11. Use traffic exchanges. Traffic exchanges are sites that you join and in return for visiting other sites you will get visitors to your own website. These programs take some work but you can get lots of visitors to your site for your efforts.
12. Make joint ventures with people in your industry that offer non-competing products and services that your customers would find useful. Then promote each other and both parties benefit without having to pay for advertising.
13. Use your circle of influence. Some of the best advertising you can use is called word of mouth. It's possible to make a living with this technique alone. Just ask any successful network marketer. Make a list of all the people you know and then engage these people in some way, whether it be by email, telephone or in person and let them know about what it is that you do. The people that are actually interested might surprise you.
14. Be your business. If you have a good, honest business that your proud of and excited about, then let people know about it. Engage anyone you come in contact with, at the local shopping center or your waitor at your favorite diner. Don't just yell at strangers about how excited you are because that obviously will not work. Engage people in conversation. Ask people what they do or how they like what they are doing. Their natural reaction will be to ask you the same things in return. Tell them what you do and exchange business cards with them or at least give them one of yours.