For my consulting business, AdWords has helped me add 2 large clients every year for the past several years, with a return on investment running right around 20x. But it took me a little while to figure out the right way to word the ads and the right keywords to pick so that I didn’t waste so much money on the wrong target audience, so I documented what I learned at Success With AdWords.

I’m amazed at the percentage polled who don’t advertise! Advertising doesn’t have to cost a lot of money! I started FreelanceLocalTech because business people I knew kept telling me they were having trouble finding freelancers in their area. Seemed like a nice advertising service to offer to help freelancers (and clients) out… and it’s FREE.

Google has by far the most traffic (really important for big accounts!) but is a bit more expensive in general; yahoo and msn have a different type of audience so depending on what you are selling they might work well for you.

I am also about to try Yell.com’s new advertising network - i’ll let you know how it works..

Alex
Find Freelance work

I’ve always wondered what sort of free advertising there is that might actually work. I’ve been wanting to get some contacts outside of my network and bring in some new referrals and work.

On the brighter side, though, and to get to answering the question, I am now listed on just a few high-traffic referral sites (publishing industry) and have spent time beefing up my Web site and blog. I tried advertising with Google and Yahoo for a few months but I didn’t ever feel I’d found the magic formula for success, though I did get a few low-budget clients. Lately, I’ve been surviving by word of mouth and referral to the point that I’ve been too busy to contribute to my blog; however I’ve become a fairly regular contributor to some other Q&A forums—which occasionally lead to clients.

I have a side business providing desktop support to residential and commercial clients. Word-of-mouth is my favorite form of advertising, but before I had much of a reputation I had to rely on other methods.

Envelope of coupons: I put a coupon together and paid to have it included along with a bunch of other coupons. I had one or two hits, not nearly enough to pay for the advertising itself. Waste of money for me. If I’d run the coupon multiple times maybe I would have done better, but it was expensive and I didn’t see a timely enough return to justify the expense.

Yellow pages: I ran an ad for a year in one of the MANY yellow page books in my area. I think I got one call in all that time and it was “what’s wrong with my mouse? no, i don’t want to pay for your service.” Waste of money.

Newspaper: I ran a small classified ad in the Business Services section of the local paper (which included two newspapers from neighboring towns). I received a couple of hits on those, enough to justify the cost. I also took out a two inch by three inch ad that ran every Monday. I received a LOT of business this way and the ad paid for itself many times over. I had a number of clients tell me that they’d seen the ad several times and believed that if they had problems they’d wait for the ad to appear and contact me. I’ve been told and have verified that print advertising works best by repetition. Well worth it.

Business cards: I frequent a number of businesses in my area including diners, dry cleaner, grocery store, etc. After a while I asked permission to put a small stack of business cards on the business’ counter/bulletin board. I picked up a few cheap plastic business card holders so they’d stay neat and not clutter up the counter. I receive lots of hits this way. Since I had business cards anyway (shouldn’t everyone?) I figured it was a great way to get them circulating. Turns out it was.

Flyers: When I first got started, my father told me about the local post office he frequented. People would be standing in line, staring at the walls, reading anything they saw to pass the time. The post office had a small bulletin board. My father suggested I put together a flyer, which I did, he asked permission (VERY IMPORTANT!) to hang the flyer and did so. I got lots and lots and lots of hits this way! Thanks, Dad!!

My two cents.

-Jeff