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Advertising Your Home Business on a Budget

Many people start an online home business because it promises to be low cost or even free. While this is true to a large extent, we very soon get bombarded with emails or advertising that asks us to pay for something, whether it's advertising, a marketing tool or just upgrading our account. If the purse-strings are a tight, and let's face it, most of us started this business because we're short of money, this can be disencouraging to say the least.

What can happen at this point is that you begin to believe that the only way to make your business successful is to throw money at it. If you haven't got any to throw you might think about giving up at this stage. Alternatively, it's very easy to start spending money you can't afford and quickly get into debt.
So, how do you build a business without spending huge amounts of money? Is there such a thing as free affiliate marketing?

Advertising, especially Pay-Per-Click and other paid advertising, such as solo ads, can work out to be very expensive if you want big returns. For many of us, spending money this way is just not an option. We must come up with alternative solutions for low cost internet marketing.

So, before you start splashing out or giving up, let me show you a few steps that will get your business going without breaking the bank.

Step 1 Set a Budget
Work out how much money you can afford on a month by month basis and stick to this. Set yourself a budget and make a commitment not to go over it. Once you have done this, you will look at every opportunity that is presented to you more carefully and you will choose more wisely.

Step 2 Get a website
If you only have enough money to buy one thing then use it to set up your own website. If you are serious about marketing on the internet, this is essential.
There are plenty of low cost hosting companies on the internet. Do some research and choose the one that's right for you. Or choose an affiliate program that gives you your own website that you can edit and change.

Step 3 Get trained
Most good affiliate marketing programs will give you free marketing training. I recommend that focus on two or three methods of marketing to start with, and keep to the free ones. You will come across many methods that cost money, but you do not have to use these at first. Many people build successful businesses using free affiliate marketing techniques, particularly the ones I suggest below. Learn how to do these and do them daily.

Step 4 Learn about Keywords and SEO
There are many free e-books that will teach you how to use keywords to optimize your website so that you can start getting it ranked on the search engines. If you have a website, it is essential that you do this in order to get targeted traffic.

Step 5 Start a Blog and write articles
If you've never done this kind of thing before, it can sound difficult but it is one of the best and most effective ways of getting traffic to your website. Don't worry, there is a lot of help and advice out there to get you started, even if English is not your strong point! Find a book or mini-course on article writing for the internet. Some ezines will also give you lots of advice on writing your own articles.

Step 6 Use Forums
One of the best things I have discovered about this business is the amount of really friendly and helpful people there are to be found in network marketing forums. Many affiliate programs have their own forum, and I strongly recommend that you use these. If you have any questions or problems (and who doesn't?) these are the best places to find the answers and get encouragement and support. Furthermore, the more you post in forums (with a signature link to your site), the more backlinks you get to your website which is vitally important!

Step 7 Submit to Directories
There are many directories which will allow you to post your website address for free but it does take some time to find these and submit them one by one. If you can afford it, you can use a directory submitter which will take the hard work out of it.

Step 8 Use Traffic Exchanges
These are sites where you submit your link (this can be a website OR an affiliate link) and then build credits by clicking on other people's ads. The more credits you have the more your ads get shown.

All of the above, with the exception of getting a website, are free ways of marketing online. Don't get stopped by believing you have to spend lots of money. Your one investment should be your own website but after that, you can keep your purse strings tightly knotted if you want to!

Article Source: http://www.dummiesguideto.com

Ros Bott is a writer and life coach and runs her own home business. To find more low cost methods, free training, newsletters, e-books and useful marketing tools, go to Financial Freedom.

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