When it comes to advertising your service online there are two ways to make it happen. First is the quick and expensive way and needless to say, you would need a budget. The other, however, would be primarily free (no budget required) but it would need to be built over a longer period of time.
In a brief word, social media is one of the best ways to get started without a budget. It takes longer to build up a revenue because to advertise effectively on social media websites your advertising needs to be viral. That is to say, it needs to be memorable and has to have the appeal that your target audience will want to share it with others. If it is viral then fans of social media websites will ‘spread the word’ for you. So depending on what services you have to offer, I believe that through social media and creating a ‘viral’ ad is the way to go. I recommend that you focus your efforts on Facebook, StumbleUpon, YouTube, and Twitter. (Sorry Fast Pitch. You come if fifth though.) I am working on a social media viral ad for one of my online projects.
If you don’t yet, I also recommend having a blog and link your social media profiles to your blog. Blog about things related to your services but make your blog posts interesting. Perhaps with an interesting twist to the blog posts. Depending on the service that you have to offer, I recommend listing classified ads on free classified ad websites. Do this on a regular basis. It may not be the most effective but on occasion it will work even if it just sends web traffic back to your website or blog.
Another long term “budget-free” way to advertise is to ‘give away’ stuff whether it’s your services (depending on what they are) or something related to your services. Create “Raving Fans”, customers that are not only customers but your biggest fans. People that want to keep coming back for more. I think that giving away ‘free stuff’ to your customers and potential customers is a way to show them that you care. For example, you create a “Make Money Online” ebook and want to sell the ebook. In addition to the ebook, create a “Free Report” and give it away in exchange for your visitor’s name and email address. Build a permission-based email list and continue to show those people in your list that you care by asking them what they want then delivering it to them.
Once you start building some revenue from your services through these online advertising methods, I recommend that you create a budget for advertising. Then you can continue to use the above methods but also add paid advertising such as Google Adwords. Then you will be on your way to creating a regular stream of revenue through effective online advertising.