Ways to market and advertise your business - FREE and/or LOW COST!

There are so many different ways to market and advertise your business online. In most cases, you are either going to have to spend money or spend time and do it on a consistent basis. A good advertising campaign needs at least 3- 4 months to take notice.

I have listed some of my favorite methods here that have been tested and scrutinized for months, and in some cases, years. Some of these methods include solo ads, safelists, traffic exchanges, link exchanges, and advertising boards.

COMMUNITIES
Ryze
This is both an online networking community as well as a place to put ads for your business in their many forums. They also have a classified section. They have both free and paid options.

Reality Networkers
What I really like about this site is the wealth of information that can be found in the promotion guide/tools section. They teach you how to refer and that can be used towards any business model. I mostly use the lessons here to apply towards other online ventures.

Work at Home Community
This is a very responsive community of people looking for work at home opportunities. You basically log in and post your ad for telemarketing and sales jobs, copywriting and translation jobs, customer service and office assistant job, and web design and online marketing jobs. Then sit back and wait for the emails to come in as people apply to find out more. You will be required to write back and send them a link to your site at this point. Webmasters can also add a bit of code to their own pages and post your listings for their viewers to see.  In order not to spam, I would suggest you only list free opportunities here.

SAFELISTS
Skysafelist
This is a credit based safelist where you earn credits by viewing other ads. You actually set and forget your own marketing efforts as you earn credits, the system will run your ad for you automatically. You can buy additional credits. There is an option to post your articles for free as well.

Herculist
This double optin safelist system has been online for over 9 years now and going strong. Free members can post once every 7 days. Paid members have a lot more options. They even pay free members who make referrals. This safelist is not only going to be around for a long time, but it's one of the best out there.

Advertyze
As a free member of this site, you can post your ad to 50 people once per week. This is targeted email advertising with optin leads. There are also various inexpensive upgrade options for those interested. Each time you refer someone else to the site, you will earn a commission as well as your own $1 commission for becoming an affiliate with a verified link.

Link Referral
There is nothing else like this out there. You promote your link. In the meantime, you view 30 sites and personally review 5 of them. Do this daily, weekly, etc to increase your rank numbers. As you do this, others will do the same for your site. You are getting real eyes not only reading your site but giving you feedback. And, that, my friend, converts to signs up and sales.

TRAFFIC EXCHANGES  
4 step
If you decide to go the traffic exchange route and you have a unique squeeze/capture page, check this out. You basically join a bunch of traffic exchanges, some run on auto surf and others on manual surf. All your usernames and passwords go into a quicksurf page that you can easily access to do your searches almost on autopilot. You will even get email reminders of when you should surf to keep your sites active. And, for $10 per year, most of the set up is done for you (which is a huge time saver). You really need to know what you are doing with TEs though to make this work.

Traffic Swarm
This is perhaps one of the longest running manual traffic exchanges online. There is the free option (which most of us chose) and the pro option which you can purchase and not have to worry about surfing for credit ( like us free members have to do). They also offer a daily lottery, where you can win credits (as I have done several times since joining in 2005). Set it as your home page and earn credits every time you go online. If you are going to join any TE, this is the one you need to have.

OTHER
Solo-Ads
Free solo ads are a great way to get your message out to others in an easy to read, double opt in email message or ezine solo ad. By reading other solo ads, you earn money/points towards getting your own ads placed, which will be opened and read by others. So, you will want a unique capture page that will entice others. They do work and they are quite effective.

ISOR
This is a whole comprehensive system of advertising. You earn credit by viewing others ads and then use those credits to place your own solo ad impressions, scrolling text ad, or site entry ad for others to view. You can track your ads, add a URL rotator, create a lead capture page, and make money through bringing in other affiliates.