With so many businesses on web and so many different ways of promoting your site it is easy to spend far too much on advertising and get far too little in return. Here are some tried and true ways of promoting your business that are simple and relatively cheap:1. Using Banners to Promote Your Site
Banner exchanges are about oldest form of advertising on Internet, and while they won't flood your site with customers, they can be an effective low-cost promotional tool.
How it works: Your banner runs on other sites in a banner co-op while their banner runs on your site, simple as that.
Two of longest running free banner exchanges are Link Exchange at http://adnetwork.bcentral.com, and Banner Swap at http://bannerswap.com. These are both pretty reputable and have some good features. Of course there are many more banner opportunites out there, and some of them are great, just use good sense, and avoid sites with claims that sound too good to be true.
Be smart with your banners. There are a few basic rules to banner use.
*Don't place banners at top of your page. They take time to load and detract from your page content. Place banners at bottom of your page.
*Banners that tell people to "click" to get something good far outperform other banners.
*Animated banners work well only if their file size isn't too big.
*Yellow gets attention best but is hard on eye. Blue is most soothing color.
2. Classified Ads
There are a ton of web sites and e-zines that print classified ads. Most are pretty cheap, and some are even free. The trick to an effective classified ad is to say what you need with just a few choice words.