Hey all,


I have NO money for an advertising budget, so what's the best way for a new comer like myself to attract customers without spamming the places I visit to lure people in?

What did you do to help build up a loyal following?

With NO money for advertising? When starting a business you should always have money for advertising, how else are you going to find clients? Try cold-calling; Add your site to your signature; Optimize your site for search engines and hope for the best.

In this day and age, word of mouth isn't as succesful as it once was. The huge way to obtain it is by Ad programs. If I were you, I'd find a smaller community to encourage to buy your product. Something like gaming. Or if you wanted you could go to your town hall and get a list of local businesses that just opened up. Then from there you could phone them, or send them mail. One last way to do it is by using some sort of chat program. Lets use IRC as an example. A lot of users are on it, if you pick the right network. There are a multitude of small and larger communities on there that could use hosting. You could try starting out at irc.gamesurge.net and market to that gaming community.

Try sponsoring already existing sites as well. I sponsored a 1000-2000 member gaming forum and put a banner ad on the top of their index page. This has generated about 20 sales to date.

Yes thats not too bad of an idea, yet don't go to over board and sponsor too many places.

You have to double check your business plan or write one if you don't have it - you cannot make money without spending money.

Thanks for the ideas. IRC and Site Sponsorships seem like the way to go for now. But, if I did have an advertising budget, where would I go to get my paid banner add placed?

Does a site like Google offer this service for their AdSense program?
Or is there a better way to do it?

Thanks :)

Greetings:

Join your local chamber of commerce.

Go to business networking events.

Thank you.

Google offers a text based ad system. Where your website would pop up on the top hand right side. Your website and some info about it. ITs roughly 10-15 cents per click.

word of mouth!

and I usually brain wash my customers with exacting marketing schemes.

If you have no customers word of mouth will not work, of course... Who is going to recommend you if there is nobody who ever used your service... LOL !

If you really don`t have any money try to exchange links with webmaster sites and stuff like that.

With no budget it may be a tough one.
I suppose it will have to revolve around advertising in forums but thats isnt always a good thing, Could i ask if you have a existing client base? or have you 0 customers.
I ask this as if you have a nice little number and you break even just take it easy and you will slowly start to see signups.

Yep, we have seven customers, and make a small $10 profit. Just enough to pay our $60 bill.

Originally posted by Neil V
Yep, we have seven customers, and make a small $10 profit. Just enough to pay our $60 bill.

You can't seriously expect to expand a business this way. You need to find some outside money to help push things along during your growth, otherwise this will always be a hobby.

1) - Select 100 businesses of your town / city and send them snail mail explaining your business ( 1st week ) They surely will ignore it.

2) - Send them 1 more snail mail and explain little more about it. They will atleast notice it. ( 2nd week )

3) - Send 1 more mail explaining everything in details and I am sure 50% will notice and study it. ( 3rd week )

4) - Last mail. Try to get their appointments or atleast have them provide you with the best time to call and discuss about it.
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This idea was given by 1 WHTer and I have tried it. Believe me or not but it worked for me and they were so much impressed with it.

- I have given some small ADs on local TV channels since its cheap and affordable in India.

- Flyers and word of mouth always works.

- Ads in IT related magazines / newspapers

Originally posted by Neil V
Yep, we have seven customers, and make a small $10 profit. Just enough to pay our $60 bill.

1. You should request your those seven customers to refer at least three customers each, you can offer some small gift article or some extra services.

2. You should approach your well wishers, friends and local customers, and get some references from them.

3 Make a prospective list of those entire people whom you know directly or indirectly, start cold and Luke-warm call and later direct approach them. You should educate and try to create awareness among them about the benefit of a domain name with a website.

Overall I advice you to focus on your local market and its sub markets, it'll require your patience, determination and lot of leg work. If you've no money for advertisement don't worry for that , I am confident you'll get the success if you put your efforts in right directions with full of passion.
Good luck!

I actually started my company with only $100 from some web design work that I had done. With that, I bought a small celeron from Managed.com then after experiencing lack of support, within a week I moved to Sagonet. I did share this server as well with a partner of mine so the costs were only about $40/mo per person, which allowed me to gain profit with a small clientel base.

Today, my company owns it's couple Dual Xeons and has trippled sales since last years second quarter due to posting on forums. We also did a small WHT banner ad which we got no sales off of (we did not invest enough into this campaign.)

My point is, starting out doesn't take much. Investing only $100 gave me 10 x's back per month and you can even have better luck than I did if your smart on making choices.

Originally posted by TheNetway
I actually started my company with only $100 from some web design work that I had done. With that, I bought a small celeron from Managed.com then after experiencing lack of support, within a week I moved to Sagonet. I did share this server as well with a partner of mine so the costs were only about $40/mo per person, which allowed me to gain profit with a small clientel base.

Today, my company owns it's couple Dual Xeons and has trippled sales since last years second quarter due to posting on forums. We also did a small WHT banner ad which we got no sales off of (we did not invest enough into this campaign.)

My point is, starting out doesn't take much. Investing only $100 gave me 10 x's back per month and you can even have better luck than I did if your smart on making choices.

That's great,but you never mentioned what you did to gain that client base ;)

Yes I did.


Today, my company owns it's couple Dual Xeons and has trippled sales since last years second quarter due to posting on forums. We also did a small WHT banner ad which we got no sales off of (we did not invest enough into this campaign.)

Ah my appologies, read it but went right over my head I guess.

Yeah, me personally, reading on WHT all day makes me miss a lot of key notes depending on how tired I am (lol). Anyways, no problems, we all do it :)

I tried google ads. I had some customers, but the ads it`s too expensive. I tried sponsership, but I still wait more customers. I have some ideas for free hosting, but keep waiting.

Yeah, Google did us no good either. We tried that, and got no signups, and ended up with a $50 bill. That would be the last time I were to use Google for advirtising.

I don't think I will ever use Google, or any large pay per click network because a lot of people just click the ads to make money, they typically don't care about the site, the funny thing about it though is that it helps one webmaster, and hurts another.

If you really need to advertise with NO budget, you need to do a lot of work yourself.

Do a Google search for web forums related to your hosting theme. Review each forum to determine which ones appear compatible with you. Become an ACTIVE member of as many of the forums you can. Give yourself a nice signature that advertises your site. Post as many valuable comments as you can - try to help others when they have questions. Don't just spam the forums - that will do more harm that any good posts. When you have enough posts, then post in the advertising section.

Do a Google search and add your site to all the free hosting review sites.

I would stay away from Google. Can you have success with it? Sure if you have tons of money. If you don't have any or much money, you have to put some extra work in and get some networking done. I like everything everyone said above. And Neil, I'm glad that you're turning a profit so soon. Not many people can say that for themselves as a budding small business. $10 isn't much but it's better than nothing.

I wonder how some people here are suggesting Neil, for google ad, as he has already mentioned clearly that “I have NO money for an advertising budget".

Originally posted by etechsupport2
I wonder how some people here are suggesting Neil, for google ad, as he has already mentioned clearly that “I have NO money for an advertising budget". Actually in a later post, Neil said "...But, if I did have an advertising budget, where would I go to get my paid banner add placed?"

Yes, but later he mentioned "Yep, we have seven customers, and make a small $10 profit. Just enough to pay our $60 bill." that means he is unable to afford advertisement cost at present situation.

I would also like to know how to get more customers. I just recently started my hosting company, and I only have one customer (after one month) :|

Edit: I do not have the funds at the moment to get into advertising, so I am just posting on WHT, HH, WHC, and NamePros for now. I am not aiming for local customers. I would like to target a variety of people as potential clients, but I have in mind people who are into gaming, web design, and computer savvy sorts of things. Keep posting suggestions ;)

Try to find the market segments and opportunity which probably has been overlooked or missed by your competitors.