The Internet's full of hyped-up promises of the 'ultimate' marketing secret that will singlehandedly skyrocket your business to instant success.

Naturally, this is all it is: hype. There's no single 'secret' that will magically transform a fledgling business into a powerful money-maker. Instead, every business owner is responsible for testing and refining various techniques until he or she has developed a solid, effective base that produces the desired results.

What works for one business may not work for another! Likewise, another business may have poor results with one method, while others experience great success. Here's a quick checklist of some of the more popular -- and completely free -- marketing techniques to help you build your online business (note: this is a 3-part series).

PART 1: FREE ONLINE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

1. Build and use your own opt-in list of targeted and interested prospects. Offer a free newsletter that provides fresh, interesting, and relevant content. You'll receive feedback from your readers about what's important to them, and over time they'll come to know and trust you. Your products, services, and even recommendations will then be taken much more seriously because you've developed credibility with your readers.

2. Contribute to newsgroups or discussion boards. Establish yourself as a helpful member of a community. Other members of the community who come to know and respect you will often refer you to others.

3. Niche directories or search engines. Find all the highly-targeted directories and SEs for your market, and then work to get listed. You'll be surprised at how many niche sites there are! Good places to start looking are http://yahoo.com/ and http://www.dmoz.com/.

4. Build your link popularity. For example, you can trade links with other businesses in your market so that you can 'share' each other's traffic. Most of the major search engines take link popularity into consideration when ranking your site.

5. Endorsed mailings to other lists. Find the editor of a great newsletter, and offer your product or service to him for free in return for a review or an endorsed ad to his list. Endorsements from the editor can far outperform regular 'ads', since they come from someone they know and trust (the editor).

6. Testimonials. It's fine for you to say that your product or service is wonderful... but there's far more 'punch' when someone else says it! Testimonials show prospects that you have happy customers and helps them to make the decision to buy.

7. Use autoresponders to follow-up with your prospects. It has been proven time and time again that autoresponders can dramatically increase your profits! They're also great time-savers, saving you from following up with each prospect manually.

8. Ad swaps. You can get extra exposure for 'free' (no out-of-pocket expenses) by swapping ad space with another editor that caters to your audience. Plus it's a great way to put 'remnant' ad space to good use.

9. Join a webring. Link to other sites like yours and build an online 'community.'

10. Offer coupons or gift certificates to entice visitors to make a purchase *now*.

11. Make good use of referral marketing. Ask happy customers to refer prospects to you. Many people are so busy these days that they're willing to rely on a trusted friend or contact's advice -- it saves them the time necessary to do all the research themselves.

12. Write and distribute articles in your area of expertise. This is a great credibility-builder! People who appreciate what you have to say are much more likely to check out your business. Another 'bonus' is that articles are often archived on websites for visitors to refer to time and time again.

13. Become an 'expert'. If you like to write and have the time to do so, consider partnering with a high-traffic site within your niche market and offer to write a regular column or article. You establish credibility and get exposure; your partner site and their readers get great content.

14. Use a 'Recommend-It' or 'Refer-A-Friend' script. These scripts let visitors send your URL to friends.

15. Make it easy for others to link to your site. Consider adding a 'Link to Us' section where you provide the HTML that visitors can simply cut and paste to their own web pages. Again, this helps to build your link popularity (see point #4).

16. Hold contests. For example, every month you could give away one of your products to a lucky subscriber or customer.

17. Use a signature. Also known as 'sig files', a signature is a brief blurb about your business along with your URL and/or contact information. Put a signature on every piece of email you send out, as well as on any message board posts (if appropriate).

18. Give away a quality free eBook or report. eBooks and reports can be excellent viral marketing tools. You can even offer them as a 'premium' to other businesses within your niche, so that they can give it away to their own customers or subscribers. This is an effective way to build a network that will willingly promote your business for you! More on promoting free eBooks and how they can help you can be found in the article, '10 Quick Tips on How to Create, Distribute, and Profit from Free eBooks'.

Hopefully this has given you a few helpful ideas on how to market your online business. In the next installment of this series, you'll read about several marketing techniques that may cost you money, but that can be worth the investment many times over. The final installment is all about marketing your online business in the 'offline' world! Stay tuned.

This week we continue with Part 2 of our 3-part series on how to market your online business.

As much as we all love free stuff, an Internet business is still a business and you can reasonably expect to invest in marketing. Fortunately, online marketing can be quite affordable -- even to beginners on limited budgets. Here's a quick list of some of the more popular paid methods for small businesses.

PART 2: Effective Fee-Based Online Marketing Methods

1. Search engines. Web surfers typically use the large search engines such as Google, MSN, and AOL to find the information they want. If you can manage to get a good ranking for some of your top key phrases, you can get a steady stream of traffic. Expect to invest funds for review/submissions, and possibly even for hiring an optimization expert or for self-education. A great site to learn about search engine optimization is Search Engine Watch, http://searchenginewatch.com/.

2. Major indexes. Yahoo [http://yahoo.com/] and Open Directory [http://www.dmoz.org/] are two of the best-known indexes. Both of them can significantly increase your link popularity, and provide you with additional traffic. At the time of writing, Yahoo charges an annual review fee for commercial websites. Submissions to Open Directory are currently still free.

3. Pay-per-click search engines. With these search engines, you literally pay a certain amount of money for every click they send your way. The more you bid, the higher you'll rank for your search term and the more visible your link will be. The largest and most popular PPC SE is Overture, http://www.overture.com/. A list of PPC SEs is available from http://payperclicksearchengines.com/.

4. Ezine advertising. Although this takes a fair bit of practice and experimentation, ezine advertising is potentially one of the best and most profitable ways to promote your business online. The editor has already done the hard work of putting together a list of opt-in, interested prospects; you just take advantage of it. Search for complementary ezines at NetterWeb.com, http://www.netterweb.com/ or use the excellent Lifestyles Publishing Directory of Ezines at http://buildyourhomebiz.com/directory.html.

5. Direct email campaign from a reputable list broker. There are companies on the web that specialize in building permission-based email lists, targeted to each subscriber's area of interest. This is true 'opt-in', unlike the endless stream of spam email that implores you to purchase '30 million addresses for only $99!' True opt-in lists are not cheap by any means, but they have the potential to yield great results. Check out http://www.postmasterdirect.com/ as an example.

6. Press releases. Your newsworthy press release could generate loads of free publicity for your business. Invest some of your marketing funds in educating yourself on how to generate publicity; an excellent source of information is Paul Hartunian's website at http://www.prprofits.com/.

7. Advertise on a targeted website. Find complementary but non-competing sites and check their rates for advertising. Banner ads are the most common type of advertising permitted; however, they're usually not very effective. Text ads or endorsements typically perform better.

8. Mini-sites. These small sites (typically around 3 or 4 pages) are focused on selling one product. There's usually no free content; just a sales letter, perhaps a FAQ and some contact information. Mini-sites are an excellent way to get your prospect to do just one thing, whether that's order your product or sign up for your newsletter. The costs to create a mini-site would include domain name registration and hosting fees.

9. Experiment with some of the promotional services offered online. The only way to know for sure whether or not they'll work for you is to try them (and track the results). Use discretion -- be careful not to associate your business with promotion services that are nothing but 'disguised' ways to spam! Before you shell out the cash for these types of services, ask around for first-hand experiences.

10. Hold a conference. A great credibility builder is to offer a web or phone conference for your visitors. Use it to offer helpful information -- for example, you could open the conference to questions from the audience -- and generate additional interest in your product or service. Two sites that offer conference services are http://www.easyconference.com/ and http://www.bridgerentals.com/.

Don't be afraid to invest in marketing your online business. Effective 'free' promotion is always wonderful, but there are many equally effective paid methods that can result in a great return on your investment. Be sure to track the results for each method you use; that way you'll be able to concentrate your efforts on those methods that work best for your business.

Stay tuned next time for a checklist on promoting your Internet business in the 'real world'!