Is Free Advertising Better, or Should You Just Pay?

There are many ways to market your home business, but some are better than others.  There are endless opportunities on the internet to advertise and the cost varies.  There are even free advertising methods available that work great as well.  No matter how you market your business, some methods are more cost-effective than others.

If your home business is new or you are just starting to advertise, it is probably not reasonable to spend a lot of money right away.  If you want to advertise locally you could place an advertisement in your local newspaper or on bulletin boards.  You could also send out fliers and postcards and print them out at home to save on costs.  It is okay to spend some money on advertising costs, after all a business is an investment, even a home business.  Most offline advertising has a small cost that must be allowed for, whether it is sending out postcards, printing fliers, placing an ad in the newspaper or bulletin.

The only true free advertising you will find is word of mouth and online advertising methods.  One form of online advertising is forum marketing.  You can post links to your website in your forum signature and gain backlinks to your site and increase its ranking.  Another method is posting to classified sites such as Craigslist or AdLandPro.  There are many free advertising methods, but there also many paid advertising methods as well.  You can pay a small fee to post to some classified sites, pay a one-time fee to send out a solo ad in an ezine newsletter, or use pay-per-click advertising.  Some ezine's even allow you to send out free solo ads to their list as well. 

Depending on your budget and how much you are willing to pay, your methods of advertising can be limited.  It is a good idea to try different methods and mix things up a bit.  Once a certain method works, keep using it.  A word of warning though, if the return you earn is less than the amount you paid for the advertisement, it isn't worth it, period.  There are plenty of free advertising methods that work very well, so you should start there first.  Once you start bringing money into your home business you can reinvest some of it on paid advertising.

If you prefer the offline advertising methods, or want to start there, you can survey your customers and ask them how they found out about you.  This way you will be able to determine which method is working, and more importantly, profitable.  You will also be able to get rid of an advertising method that is not performing as well, saving you money.  You can then use that money you are saving towards the marketing strategy that you know is working well.  If you like the idea of online marketing, there are many ways to track your ads, usually in real time.  This allows you to test your ads and see the results in a few hours, not days or months.

Finding the best marketing method for your home business will take time, so you must be willing to be patient and test different methods.  Your best bet may be to try a combination of free and paid methods and not limit yourself to just a single avenue of advertising.  In any case, you must advertise your home business if you expect to get any customers.  Finding the best advertising solution is not difficult but will take some time and effort, but in the end it is well worth it.