What is the best way to market a new online business for the least amount of money?

[jenniferaboston]

It is a T-shirt design business. We want to market the (already designed) T-shirts but dont have money to advertise with. What packs the biggest punch for the least amount of money?

[Lucky Me]

Craigslist.org

MySpace.com

Facebook.com

InetGiant.com

LiveDeal.com

Ebay.com

Amazon.com

[Jay Hamilton-Roth]

Who are you targeting? The more specific you are, the easier it is to find & attract your target audience.

For example, let's say you're doing t-shirts for toddlers. Obviously, the toddlers won't buy it themselves. But think about parents and relatives. What else do toddlers need - hats? shoes? diapers? This leads to ideas for co-marketing, teaming up with another business that sells those things to your market.

You're wanting to do this online. Do you want your own website, fulfilling orders or are you looking to upload your designs to a site and allow people to order from them (along with other designs)? If you're fulfilling orders yourself, you'll need traffic to your website. What are people searching for? You'll need to identify keywords that people search on, figure out how to get organic (i.e., non-paid) links. If you want to do pay-per-click traffic, that's easy, but'll cost you a little money. If you want to simply upload your design and wait for people to find you, then use a service like CafePress, etc.

To build interest (inexpensively), you'll need to get pictures of people wearing your designs. Create a video with your performers wearing them. Upload pictures/videos to the usal places (YouTube, etc.)

Social media sites can help as well to create "buzz". You'll need pictures to have people see what's so wonderful about your designs. Find sites that have people that are your target market, and start blogging about your designs (appropriately).

That should get you started.

[M P]

try dmoz.org; blogs on the same type of product/service; you can exchange links with others businesses(not competitors)but those with the same type of customers; you can do a blog on a site that would have customers interested in that.
If you exchange links then make sure those sites have at least a 50% page rank - you can get a page rank from Google toolbar.
Put your keywords into the search and see what types of companies come up then you know who your competition is, but you may find similar businesses you can link with.
Search for directories for that type of biz and get listed in those. Put promote a biz in your search and check some of those out.
Good Luck

[Colin S]

Create a Squidoo Lens and a Blog (at Blogger.com) about your business with links placed inside the Lens/Blog to your products/website.Write articles about your business, with a link to your
Blog/Lens/Website placed in the resource box,then submit your articles to ezinearticles.com,searchwarp.com and goarticles.com. Go to Google Site Submitter and enter the url's of your Lens/Blog/Website at least once per week.
Ping your Blog/Lens at Pingoat.com and Pingomatic.com, every time you update them or make any alterations.
Submit your Blog to a Blog Directory.Create an ebook or a short report about your business containing links to your Website/Lens/Blog and affiliate products, give it away or sell it for a small amount and then ( if its any good), people will be selling it or giving it away all over the internet and when people click on the links inside the ebook/report,they will be taken to your Website/Blog/Lens or affiliate products. Offer free items (ebooks etc.) in exchange for them opting into your mailing list (you would need Aweber or Getresponse to do this).
There are lots of ways to drive traffic to your Website and the ways that I have mentioned above are all free!
The only expense would come from Aweber or Getresponse and of course the hosting of your Website.
Do not pay for Search Engine Submission, in my experience this is a total waste of hard earned cash.
I hope this helps,
Colin

[Annoyingunderwear874]

Free Link exchanges with websites in the market you are targeting for your T-Shirts.

[John S]

There are many ways to advertise your product without money, In the internet there is an affiliation program where you could pay the advertiser when your product were sold by the advertiser. How much? it is depend on you. You could sign up as a member of Clickbank.com, paydotcom.com, CJ.com, Linkshare.com, eBay.com, etc.

[martinbj]

You could create your own website or have a friend do it. You can also use your directory and email all of the people you know and ask them to forward it to all their friends.

There are a lot of free sites on-line, just get in there and search.

What about using a blog. There are a lot of free blog areas.

[Tim]

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[Melanie M]

Have you thought about online marketing or doing some PR?
You should definately look into marketing your business online. And this doesnt have to be expensive.
Something you should think about is PPC (pay per click) and you could start bidding on keywords such as "t-shirt design" etc.
This article on 'how to PR' should help:
http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Article.aspx?id=51