The great thing about the Internet is that it allows you to set up a business with very little money. Online business advertising can be inexpensive but also hard work. This article is just one snowflake in an avalanche of advice available about online business advertising so the message here is to not dig too deep to avoid information overload, rather look for simple, easily workable tactics that won't drain your budget. This won't happen if you keep buying products that promise to deluge your website with traffic. The aim of this article is to show you the best options for promoting your business.

Many companies list themselves on one or two online business directory advertising websites, which are much like an online yellow pages. Apart from online directories the other straightforward ways of online business advertising are reciprocal linking, blog and forum postings, ezine advertising, article marketing, Pay advertising and writing press releases. When considering Pay Per Click note that using a cheaper service than Google such as Microsoft Ad Centre is advised.

Just because your business is solely online does not mean that your advertising has to be. If you are in a niche market then its possible to effectively compete online and somewhere there will be an offline magazine, or probably several, dedicated to your niche. Offline advertising is a highly unexploited traffic steam for online business and putting your advert in a magazine dedicated to your niche area will pay dividends. Another offline idea is to go to your local library and insert your business cards in all of the books that are related to your online business.

Choose affiliate partners carefully, income depends on wise choices. Indeed, many look to earn extra income with affiliate marketing with no real plan, and that can severely hamper their efforts at becoming successful at it. Partner with 2-tier and residual affiliate programs and benefit from an on-going stream of revenue and income. An important resource for affiliate web site marketing is online communities aka forums. As you get marketing experience you can use this to create your own viral product such as a free ebook as a vehicle for your affiliate promotions and to also bring in traffic to your site, this taps into the huge demand on the Internet for free products. Writing reviews of products or combining articles into an ebook represent easy ways to commence affilliate promotion.

So, to summarise, unless you are a professional Internet marketer, don't go too in-depth with you online business advertising methods since you will suffer from information overload and this will be a very time-consuming distraction from actually running your business. Stick to the straightforward approaches suggested here and never overrun your budget.