If you’re like most people today, you are feeling the pinch from the weakened state of the economy. However, regardless if you own a blog, website or ecommerce store and assuming that you are interested in making some money via the web, you simply must spend some money on internet marketing. This doesn’t mean that you have to break the bank by spending a small fortune. You can be very frugal in your internet marketing efforts as there are inexpensive techniques you can use which cost under $30 a month.

Press Release

A well-written press release is a good way to spread the news about your site. A press release is simply an announcement of sorts which is related to your website and which is written for the media. You can hire a freelancer writer with experience in writing professional press releases to write your press release for you. You could easily find a writer online who will write you a 500 word or so press release for around $20 to $25. You then can submit it to PR websites. The search engines look favorably upon press release sites which means that your keyword rich, well-written press release will be indexed quickly, giving your website or blog a nice temporary boost.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Another inexpensive internet marketing technique to use is pay per click (PPC) advertising. The beauty of PPC is the fact that you can spend as much or as little as you want and that you can purchase traffic that is very targeted. While Google Adwords is the largest PPC program online it is also one of the most expensive. A good alternative to Adwords is to use second-tiered PPC programs. Among the best of these is 7Search as they have good traffic which converts quite well. The key to succeeding with 7Search is using very broad keywords. It costs just $25.00 to set up an account and with a minimum bid of just one penny, you can count on a lower cost per visit and more affordable overall costs than with higher profile programs such as Adwords.

Blogging

Another option is blogging. You can blog your way to the top as blogging is a highly effective method to use for achieving high search engine rankings. Use one of the free blogging platforms and then buy an inexpensive domain to park it at. WordPress is a top choice as it features plug-ins which automate many of the processes and which integrates pinging to drive traffic to your blog. The trick with blogging is to do it regularly and to choose your tags carefully. The content must be deemed useful and informational for readers. If you become lucky with your blog an owner of a high ranking website or blog will link to you, giving you a nice source of highly targeted traffic.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another proven tool. Millions of internet users are using social bookmarking sites to store, organize and manage websites that interest them on public bookmarking sites instead of storing it on their computers. When you bookmark your sites with social bookmarking sites, you will automatically obtain access to potentially large numbers of people which visits sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit and Digg. Social bookmarking can be very time-consuming task. You have to create accounts at each site before manually submitting your page to them. This is good reason to use a service like Social Maximizer as the social bookmarking will be done for you. 100 submissions would cost you less than $20.

Directory Submission

Finally, do not overlook submitting your site to directories. Google, MSN and Yahoo put a high value on the number of incoming links which point to your site when deciding where your site will rank. Submitting your website to directories is easy to do. However, you will have to have quite a bit of time available as you’ll need to find a good list of directories and then have the details about yours site submitted properly to each of them. For a low cost you can easily hire a directory submission service like Directory Maximizer which will do the work for you and in the most effective way. Expect to pay under $20 for having 100 submissions done.

Tightwads and misers can successfully market online without the need for huge budgets. The internet does offer some great low cost opportunities for the most frugal among us and it it also allows you the chance to market for free. By all means, take advantage of these low cost and free internet marketing options so that you can drive traffic to your website without busting your budget.

Anyone can get lost in the world of SEO, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are, there are so many things that you might not know still. With so many sites dedicated to SEO, searching for relevant (and more importantly correct) information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Of course, there is no dearth of information but they’re usually outdated myths or just a repetition of 1-2 articles.

I decided to compile a list of informative and useful SEO resources. I’m sharing it with you so that you need never go back to those days when you spent hours looking up a single piece of information. This list is going to give you each and every conceivable bit of information about everything from A-Z of SEO. The list includes free sites as well as professional sites that charge for information, tools or services.

To make things easier for you, I’ve listed them under the following headings: Basic Info, Video Tutorials, Forums, Blogs, Articles and News, Tools and Conferences.

So, instead of Googling and checking out random sites, you can now use this list for all your SEO needs!

FREE RESOURCES

Basic Info

1. SE Roundtable

You no longer have to hunt for interesting information and discussions, hopping from one site to another. SE Roundtable chooses reports on interesting threads from many SEM forums all across the web, in addition to providing a forum for its own members. The mission of the Search Engine Roundtable is to provide you with a single source to locate the best search engine marketing threads on the Internet. It also adds its own synopsis, giving you greater details on these threads.

We recommend:
•   On Page SEO VS. Off Page SEO: Which Trumps?
•   Are Competitors Stealing Your Links?

Video Tutorials

2. Google Webmaster
This is a collection of all videos in which Google’s most famous and visible anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts answers questions sent to him by people.  He discusses how to optimize your site and what you should avoid while optimizing.  Matt Cutts has released many Webmaster Help videos that are simple and clear to understand even for beginners. His videos are one of the most sought-after resources in the SEO world.

We recommend:
•   Is there such a thing as building too many links?
•   What is the best way to check your own site for keyword rankings?

Read the rest of this entry »