It is a common misconception that to be successful with a home based business you need to have a huge marketing budget.
There are ads and articles all over the internet emphasizing that you need to spend big to earn big.
Then there are the endless sales pages telling you that you can get free targeted traffic...
if you spend $$$$ to find out how.
Does this really sound like it is free? There is an argument that the cost of advertising is the 'cost of being successful'.
Internet marketers will tell you that you are not paying for an article, you are investing in your own success.
There are a lot of points that support this theory.
After all, if you want to build up a large list of subscribers and in turn generate sales, you need to first of all find these subscribers - advertising is the only way to do this..
..
or is there another way? Most people starting a home business for the first time will be overwhelmed by the amount of information there is out there.
'Generate 50,000+ targeted visitors each day', 'Learn the secrets of free advertising for only $97' are all common tricks to get the novice entrepreneur to part with their hard earned cash.
The sad thing is, they work and people pay out cash hand over fist to learn these 'secrets'.
If you are lucky enough to have a massive advertising budget then great, but the majority of new entrepreneurs do not have access to such funds, so how can they increase their visitor numbers easily? First of all, there are many ways that traffic can be generated on-line for free.
There are also many cost effective alternatives to Google AdWords, Pay Per Click and other methods of paid advertising.
Pay Per Click advertising is a fantastic way of attracting visitors to your website, but, it can be a bit of a science to learn and it can also become very expensive very quickly.
Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter allow you to reach a large audience and tell them about your business.
Many successful entrepreneurs started their business this way and generated fantastic profits from $0 being spent on advertising.
You should also consider article writing and Press Releases.
Article marketing allows you to promote any site or business through the distribution of short but informative articles you write or have written for you.
This can be very effective because you come across as an authority figure on that topic leading to increased credibility, causing your prospects to believe what you have to say.
In the internet world many people are very sceptical on what they read because most of it is advertisements that are suspect of truth.
Solo-Ads should also be considered as a powerful way to get visitors to your website.
This form of marketing is not free, but very cost effective when compared to Pay Per Click.
It is an e-mail sent by an e-zine publisher to their mailing list - showing only your Solo-Ad.
These ads are published separately from the e-zine.
The ad is your sales letter to target your market and it should be written in a way that it will attract the attention of the e-zine readers and encourage them to take action.