Internet marketing has become a treacherous quagmire that can suck up all of an inexperienced marketer's income in a very short time, often with little to show for it. By using the many free or low-cost techniques available, savvy marketers can cut their costs down to near zero - or can they?

As you read this discussion of some of the free and near-free marketing techniques available today, you may want to consider trying them for yourself.

Offline Marketing

This is a largely untapped approach, due in part to the internet marketer's reluctance to do anything other than sit at a keyboard to generate business. But if your goal is to make money, you should look at the advantages offered in this area. Much of these methods are nearly free, and your competition is so much less fierce and the audience so potentially responsive, that you can't lose when you try some of these techniques.

1 - Drop Cards. Create some business cards sized ads for your website with deliberately tantalizing copy - short and intriguing. Leave them everywhere: grocery stores, restrooms, airplanes, stores, virtually any place you go. Hand them to your cashiers, leave with tips. You can print thousands for a very small outlay at quick copy places like Kinko's, and these work if you provide just enough information to make people curious.

2 - Flyers. You've found them on your windshields, and while they don't often appeal to you, the power of numbers is at work here, and the message will get to a few ready prospects. Consider hiring teenagers to distribute them for you. Also, think about leaving them around in college parking lots, and in doors at apartment building complexes.

3 - Bulletin boards. Tack up tear-off flyers and business cards whereever available. Keep a list of where you have been, and check them weekly to replace them if needed.

Online Marketing

Much of the free online marketing is just a big waste of time, and often generates a ton of mail soliciting YOUR business. Some tools that have been created to automate some of this are listed here.

1 - Press Release Equalizer. This is an excellent tool for building your visibility. The time-consuming aspects of writing and submitting press releases are simplified and automated. Press releases help your business in several ways: they generate immediate exposure for your website, getting you traffic directly; they create many high-quality links back to your site, helping your search engine visibility; they are picked up and published by newsletter editors hungry for content, and readers go to your site after seeing your release in the form of an article. PR Equalizer is a one-time purchase and allows you to submit unlimited releases for as many websites as you want. It will even let you schedule re-releases that keep your notice current.

2 - Hit Booster. This is an automated attempt to build your displays in traffic exchanges. My experience with this has been poor. Many of the recommended exchanges have caught onto this "cheating" and now require validation entries in order to get credit, which the software can't do. At any rate, figure this - if you are cheating the system, probably others are too, and then it won't work for anyone.

3 - Blog Blast and Feed Blast. These programs are low-priced software to automatically send ads to RSS feeds and Blogs, with no added costs, as many times as you want. Set up the ad, select feeds/blogs via keywords, and let it go. You can do other things while the submissions are being processed. This approach has possibilities, but the ads must be very good. If you use these, be sure to study up on what makes a good classified ad.

4 - Free Classified Sites. You can try this, but chances are your results will be poor unless you are marketing to marketers. Pretty much the only ones who look at the ads are those who have posted them, so if your product will appeal to them, such as a better way to market than this, you may see some results.

5 - FFA Sites. Free-For-All sites are merely a way for the owners of the sites to market to you. When you post an ad, the owner can send you an email to confirm your ad, in which he usually puts his own marketing message. Your ad, on the other hand, is virtually never seen. Don't bother unless you want to host a site - this works if like the classifieds if you can convince the posters you have something better. There are lots of FFA sites that will let you host your own site for free.

All in all, free and low-cost marketing is a mixed bag. Although a highly responsive opt-in email list should be the key to an internet marketing plan, if chosen and tested carefully, these techniques can be an excellent supplement to the more expensive marketing methods. What are you waiting for? Try something new today and watch your business grow.