I advertise using google adsense and Bidvertiser, Im planning to put text-links-ads but not now…I love putting ads on my site…gives me an income…Thanks..

I used to advertise with Adwords, but it is expensive and did not make the conversion I expected although it is good if you have a specific product or affiliate to promote, but not just for traffic. I rather advertise in other websites of my niche or partner with similar companies where both can benefit from exchanging services.

Referrals and word of mouth work best specially referrals from past clients. I always encourage them to give me contacts and names of one or two people who they think they can benefit from my services and I contact them on their behalf to promote my services. I always do some free consulting as part of my promo and has worked very well - Trust in my service is what I call it.

I generally rely on word of mouth and referrals from past and current clients and friends. I pass out business cards everywhere I go and wherever a business allows a business card bin or basket I leave a few behind. I’m also listed in most of the major web design directories and that has gotten me a few hits. For the most part I tend to get most of my work from one company (their employees side jobs, not the company in particular).

@ Mike- Cold-calling/e-mailing is something I need to work on, I’m always scared they’ll think I’m spamming them. Do you have any tips that you find work well?

@ Guido- I like the way you ask clients up front for contact of people to contact on their behalf and promote your services… I think I might try that.

I find clients through job boards. I use the content managment system Drupal and they have a job board that I get a feed through. The Freelance Switch job board. Also Athentic Jobs. I find new clients through these. I’ve had success with entering Sitepoint contests as well. I look at it as marketing. I’ve gotten Web and Graphic design clients from Sitepoint contests. I only enter occasioinally to get new clients.

Greetings!

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

Advertising is something I’ve never tried, but thought about a lot. I rely on word-of-mouth and the smaller bits of promo I do. Also, like Mike Smith, I blog and have several that I work with, so hopefully that will bring me in some contacts and income as well.

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.

I am a freelance web designer…everything is word of mouth except for the galleries I’ve been submitted to; they tend to work a lot.

The best way to market yourself: make sure you have a presence right where the customer is looking for you. Could be by networking meetings, could be by billboards, could be by Kudzu.

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.