There are many ways to market your small online business with the cheap or free methods of marketing before spending a lot of money on a system that will not work for you.

Traffic exchanges are one strategy to market your business free of charge. Many new small online businesses advertise through traffic exchanges and gain tons of free traffic. These however are not targeted unique visitors to your site.

Forums are online communities that focus on specific niches. There are forums (or discussion groups) on just about any topic you can think of. Most forums do not allow commercial solicitations. The focus is on exchanging information. Be prepared to add useful comments to the discussion and follow the posted rules. You may be allowed to attach a signature to your comments. Put your website in the signature to attract the search engine spiders and send visitors to your site. Develop a reputation as an expert on your topic and give free advice when possible to build credibility. Be careful not to go into forums only to advertise your site. This is considered spam. It could get you banned from the forum.

Forums also get you back-links to your site through your signature on your posts. Forums are one of the most affordable marketing strategies for your small online business. It gets you back-links, targeted visitors, and builds credibility for you as an expert.

Writing articles and publishing them to directories and ezines, is the best marketing strategy of all. Writing a keyword rich unique article can do more for your business than anything else, in my opinion. Writing an article is free and the more you write the better you get. You can't buy your way to top rankings on search engines but one truly great article can place you at the top and get you more traffic than you can imagine. Be sure to write about what you know and stay on topic of your web site.

Keep your money in your wallet. For affordable marketing strategies, start using two or all three of these methods and you will be creating a solid marketing foundation for your small online business.