Believe it or not you can market your website business to greatest effect with very little or no cash. You can’t do this with paid advertising or with Pay Per Click ads! But we’re going to take a look here at some of the best and most popular free Internet marketing methods that won’t bust your budget..

Here are my picks for free online marketing:

1.Article Marketing – A typical article can be anywhere from 250 to 750 words long. Articles posted on article directories (such as ezinearticles.com) can help you get more traffic to your website through the link in your article signature file. You should be aware that some article directories do not accept short articles so you need to check the directory rule before submitting articles. Each article can also help the specific web page it links to to rank higher in the search engines for specific keyword phrases, which will then bring more targeted traffic to your web page.

2 .Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization – You can find out a lot about simple SEO techniques free of charge by doing some basic online research with Google. Study the techniques and build each of your web pages around sound basic SEO principles. This will attract some traffic to your site without you having to do any active publicity work.

This is especially effective if you combine SEO with longtail keyword phrases. Longtail keywords are longer keyword phrases that are very specific. They attract a smaller number of more highly targeted visitors and are much less competitive than more common keywords. If you build a series of ten webpages around ten longtail phrases, and each page attracts just fifty visits per month that will amount to 500 visits in total from highly targeted traffic. The more you build the more your traffic will continue to grow without you having to do additional work.

3. Blogging – Blogging is a free or very cheap way to build an online presence. Some Internet marketers stick solely to blogging and focus on building an online presence through the power of their blog posts alone. If you have a lively writing style and enjoy writing, start blogging! Whether you use Blogger, WordPress, TypePad or some other blogging platform, blogs tend to get great results on the search engines. A blog post around a longtail keyword can appear on the first page of Google for that search term within hours of being published.

4. Posting blog comments – This marketing tactic should to be done with care. Find popular blogs that are related to your market niche and post responses to the blog posts. When posting a comment you are usually allowed to include a website url which will hyperlink your name when your comment appears on the blog. Always post constructive comments in response to the topic of the blog. Remember, high quality comments will be appreciated and will get people curious to find out more about you. They will then click on the link to  your website.

5. Forum marketing – Log in to several forums that are similar to your market niche. Set up a signature file with a link back to your website and contribute to the conversations on the forums. Each time you post a comment your signature file will appear underneath. As with blog comments, it is important to offer good quality comments to be accepted as an asset to the forum and to show that you are an expert in your field.

6. Post Videos On Video Sharing Sites – If your computer has a web cam then it won’t cost you anything to make “talking head” style videos and post them on YouTube.com. Whenever you upload a video you can also post a blurb with a link back to your website.

7.Link exchanging – Although somewhat dated now, link exchanging still offers a free method of getting your website “linked in” to the Internet. You can either seek out sites you would like to exchange links with and contact the site owner, or join a free link exchange service and do it that way.

8. Traffic Exchange Surfing – If you have time to spare, you can always get free traffic by surfing traffic exchanges. However, be sure to post only simple squeeze page style pages on the exchanges because people usually click away from web pages very quickly on traffic exchanges. Create a simple page with a bold headline, a free offer and sign up form, and include a photo of yourself and your name to help build up your online profile.

As I’ve illustrated here, there are numerous ways to drive free traffic to your website. Even if you are operating with a limited budget you can still successfully build and market an Internet Home Business

 Have you set up an Internet business as a way to make money from home?  Are you blogging about it? If not you are missing out on one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic to your website. However, setting up a blog and regularly updating it is only part of the story. Another aspect of successful blogging involves taking advantage of web2.0 social networking sites to publicize your blog posts.

One reason why social networking sites should be a part of your online home business is that many people use social networking sites as their main source of news and gossip. One such popular social news site that gets a lot of traffic is Digg. Digg attracted more than 230 million visitors in 2008. People visit Digg and similar sites to find out what’s new and to share content from anywhere on the web, including their own blog posts. If people like what they read they can vote for the post, and if the article is popular enough it will reach the top pages of Digg and be seen by millions of visitors.

Even if the blog post that you submit to Digg does not get any votes, you are still getting the benefit of building one way back-links to your blog from each social networking site that you post to, so it is well worth it to submit your blog post to social networking sites. In addition, it’s easy to submit your blog post to social networking sites and quite often takes just a click of a button.

Another benefit you will gain from blogging regularly and submitting your posts to social networking sites is that it helps with branding and your credibility. Be sure to use keywords that people are using to search for your kind of business. Social networking will give your blog a great boost in the search engine rankings as well, and you may find that you can get your site into the top ten of Google for a wide range of keyword terms if you take a disciplined approach to social networking.

Speaking of discipline, a lot of people try to take on too much when it comes to social networking. Too often people try to submit their post to every social networking site that they can find only to become overwhelmed by trying to keep up with the huge number of social networking sites.

It makes far more sense to choose a few of the best social networking sites for your business and to concentrate 90-95% of your social and marketing effort on making regular submissions to those sites. The other 5-10% of your allocated time can be used to post occasional submissions to other social networking sites just to maintain a presence.

By taking a focused and disciplined approach to blogging and social networking, you will gain much more publicity for your blog, and ultimately for your home business opportunity, than you will if you take a shotgun approach to social marketing.

If you really want to make money on the Internet, the good news is that working at home on the Internet is a very flexible way of doing business. You can run your business in a way suitable to you and make money in many different ways. Actually, the beauty of it is that you can combine several different methods of making money online and multiply your income.

Let’ take a look at these methods and see how you can make money on the Internet?

1. Affiliate marketing. This is probably the most popular way for home based Internet marketers to make money. There are literally thousands of businesses out there that offer affiliate programs. With an affiliate program whenever you introduce somebody to an affiliate website and they make a purchase you can earn commission.

Affiliate programs can be used to sell goods or services, and payments can be one time, or residual. Residual commissions are often generated from subscription-based services such as membership sites, web hosting services and so on. With residual commissions you get paid for as long as the person you introduced remains a paid-up describer of the service you introduced him or her to. Passive income is another term for this commission structure.

2. Dropshipping. This method of making money on the Internet is often popular with full-time auction sellers. However, you can also use this model via your own website, blog or e-mail newsletter. In this case you sell goods directly from your site but the orders are transferred to the company who ships the goods to the customer. Blinding shipping is used so that the customer will not be aware that the product has come from a source other than the seller.

3. Direct retailing. If you make your own products, have access to wholesale goods, or run a shopping service, you can offer your goods directly on your website or on an auction site. This can be an easy way to generate sales, especially if you are selling a unique niche product.

However, there is a downside. You will have to handle customer enquiries, deal with the financial side and pack and ship the products yourself. Because there are only so many hours in a day you will be limited in the number of goods that you can pack and ship without taking on extra staff. Nevertheless, if you are willing to do the work this can be a very effective method of making money on the Internet.

4. Network marketing. If you are interested in joining one of the many online network marketing businesses and performing the double act of selling products and building a team of distributors, this model could be for you. The beauty of a network marketing business is that you can work it off-line as well as online. Having a website to refer people to when you meet with them face-to-face can be a very powerful way of backing up your sales pitch.

5. E-mail list building. This is a very effective method of making money on the Internet if you are willing to give it your time and effort. Building and making money from a list is all about building relationships with your subscribers and providing them with a valuable service. When people subscribed to your list they are giving you permission to send them your information. However, they are expecting good quality content in return for the trust they have given you. If you provide them with the quality of content they are seeking  you will earn their trust and their business. As a general rule of thumb you should expect to make a one dollar a month from each member on your list, or $1000 a month from a list consisting of 1000 active subscribers and so on.

6. Niche marketing. Finding niche products, building a niche website, around each product, then promoting it to the top of the search engines can be a very lucrative technique to master. The trick of course is to research and  identify lucrative niche markets, and then go out and find affiliate products that offer great commissions that the market will want to buy. Once you have a profitable site set up it will not take much maintenance work to keep it running. Then you can then move on to find a second niche market to exploit. One popular resource for the products to offer niche markets is Clickbank.com.

7. Blogging. Setting up a blog is one of the easier things you can do on the Internet. It’s a great way to publicize your business by producing unique content, and monetizing your blog with ad sense, Amazon, and other affiliate products. As your blog rises through the search engines you may also find people who are eager to advertise on your site and that will generate revenue. Beyond that, a blog is also a great platform from which you can promote your own business products and services.

8. Membership sites. These have become very popular lately. The market is huge and if you have special knowledge of any kind you may be able to turn it into a membership site. Typically, a membership site makes money on the front-end through subscriptions to the site, and makes even more money on the backend through sales of additional goods and services to the membership. Obviously, for a membership site to work there must be a real demand for the whatever knowledge it is that you offer, and you must provide a lot of good quality content on the inside if you are to build and maintain a loyal following.

9. E-book’s, Video and Audio. Producing your own e-books, video and audio presentations can be a business in itself, or it can greatly enhance your business presence on the Internet. You can write an e-book about your business niche and give it away free of charge. Include links back to your sales page in the e-book. Likewise with video and audio, you can offer free downloads as a way to promote your business and give it some credibility.

You can also produce products to sell, such as video courses, or e-books, audio mentoring services and so on. There is really no limit to what you can do with these media.

10. Podcasting. This is real area of potential the Internet and it is not that difficult to get set up with your own podcast. You can think of a pod cast as an audio newsletter. Just as with an e- newsletter, you will need to offer a lot of good quality content. Back up your pod cast with a webpage and refer your listeners to it so that they can find your special offers and you can make money from podcasting.

As you can see, there are many ways to make money on the Internet. Really, anybody with enough dedication could be making money on the Internet by using a combination of the methods as I have mentioned. So if your goal is to give up your day job or just to make some extra or turn yourself into a work from home millionaire, start researching some of these ideas about how to make money on the Internet!