How to start a website, with your own domain with no money. - Part IV (Offline Marketing)

Offline Sources:

Offline sources of marketing are available, though they are usually costly if you use the traditional outlets. Many people use (with varied success) news paper ads (classifieds) radio ads (yea, really) and even TV commercials. Personally, I think that those types of offline promo services, while effective, are probably not going to have a good R.O.I. (return on investment). These methods reach a lot of people, but cost a lot of money and honestly, unless you have something that is just amazing to sell, it’s probably not going to be worth it. Here are a couple suggestions for offline marketing:

Rear window lettering - This actually works pretty good if you are someone that is out and about every day. I spent around $80 to get my website name put on the back window of my vehicle. Everyday I drive to my regular job, in rush hour traffic. At night, I go home through the same rush hour traffic. I have a relatively high vehicle (truck) and the letters are easy to see. Every day, twice a day, it’s like a ‘commercial’ that runs in my area for atleast 45 minutes

Business Cards - Suprisingly, business cards are a pretty good advertising medium. Small, portable, and there are many different places that you can drop a business card that will make it worth your while such as: Grocery Stores (bulletin boards), Laundry mats (bulletin boards), bars (many bars will put them on the wall or ‘under’ the bar’), and just handing them out works pretty well too. But usually, business cards either cost you to make in the way of card stock and ink, or cost you to have designed/made. However…this too can be free. VistaPrint has an offer going for 250 free business cards. I have personally tried this offer and you do get what is advertised. There are 6 different backgrounds to choose from, and they also have other freebies for marketing like postcards and stationary.

Postcards -Like business cards, postcards can be pretty handy, and are a tad bit larger to hold a little more information/sales pitch. VistaPrint also has an offer for 100 Full Color postcards. You do have to pay for shipping.

Flyers - Like business cards, flyers can be very useful for marketing. In my opinion the ROI you will get on a reem of paper and the ink involved is very much worth it.

There are a few others, but this list should get you going.

We started out with $84, the s/h on the 250 business cards and the 100 Post cards will be approx 3.00, taking $6.00 from our $84.

So at this point in this process we have:
Purchased a domain name
Purchased a host
Aquired $400 worth of online marketing
Aquired 350 pcs of offline marketing (postcards and business cards)
And still have $78.