How to Score Free Advertising for Your Home or Web Business

Starting a home based or online business and building it to the point where you are making a regular income is a daunting task. However, if you are passionate about it as a career rather than thinking of a way to make easy money, you will get there if you let as many people know about it as possible and build a reputation in a niche market. I remember reading in a college text book that since appearing in the top ten of major search engines is something that can be bought and paid for, you need a million dollars minimum just to make it worth your while. However, if you're selling a niche product with a small, but stable market and you're not trying to compete with Amazon.com or any company that produces mass produced products, you can take care of your marketing needs without spending a dime with the following methods.

Go onto blogs, message boards and, email discussion groups where people might be interested in your products and where you can hook up with people who are trying to do what you're doing. I started a blog on Sta.rtUp.Biz and I immediately received invites for friend requests from several people and we exchange information and sell each other's products on EBay all the time. Entrepreneurs are a rare, courageous breed and they like to bond with others and help each other out. They don't compete, they all want to succeed together.

You can also go to message boards for entrepreneurs on some social networking sites such as Digg.com and LinkedIn.com as well as Yahoo.com with selfstarterweeklytips.com/forum/. If you come off blatantly as an advertiser or affiliate, you'll probably be ignored. However, if you join the chat room as a conversationalist and let people get to know you personally eventually they'll be asking about what you're doing and your business will become a part of the discussion. If you're simply pleasant, and not pushy, you can exchange information and maybe even a sale. When I was building my vending machine business, I only ended up placing the machines in establishments where the owners liked me personally and liked chatting with me about other things or they liked my sense of humor. If I had approached them in a salesman mode, they would have probably shut me out immediately. People just don't feeling like they're being sold to.

Also, many starting and established web companies will swap advertising with you. You can exchange links and banner ads simply by exchanging the link or banner ad code and you can feed off each other's traffic. Ezine directories such as http://myfavoriteezines are a great place to go to swap advertisements. There are also Free Link Sites which you should search for in the search engines where you can post your link for free if you add one there's to your site. Also look for banner exchange sites if you have a linked banner ad for your web site.

They say that content is king now on the Internet. The more content you have with search engine optimized key words the more search engines will spider your way to the top. I like to publish articles about my hypnosis products on sites such as ezinewriter.com where I can include links to my website and affiliate links in the article. Other people are able to pick up your article with free reprint rights and distribute to sell their similar products which provide you with even more advertising with other's doing the work. Also, there is no excuse for not having a signature tag in your e-mail with your url and basic information.

I believe the best form of advertising is still word of mouth. Whenever you make a sale, include a flier, catalogue or information about a related product with the package. Every happy customer be a repeat customer and get you a referral.

Finally, be persistent. Keep it at it. It won't happen overnight, but if you keep duplicating the process above your success will have to come eventually.