Make Money From Home: Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Online Businesses

Owning a small business is both exciting and hard work. If you have the privilege of working for yourself, you understand that both discipline and marketing skills are necessary in order to make a sizable profit. In today's tech world, online marketing is essential to getting yourself some publicity, but there are also good old fashioned marketing ideas that you can utilize locally.

Here are some creative marketing ideas to get you making money from home via your small business:

1. Get articles published in local magazines. Write a few high quality articles and see if you can get them published in your local magazine or trade magazine. This is very cost effective and can reach many readers.

2. Sponsor a sports team in your community. If you want to build brand or service awareness, sponsor a local sports team. Use your logo and name on the uniforms and send out a press release letting others know that you are a generous community member.

3. Teach classes and workshops. If you're an expert in your field, feel free to hold your own classes, workshops, and check into speaking at seminars. As you get out there in the communities, you'll connect with many people.

4. Create a blog and update it regularly. The purpose of a blog is to dazzle your readers with interesting and relevant content. If you're not a writer, you can hire a freelance writer for a very good price so that you'll always have fresh content. Doing so will get you a better search engine ranking so that more people will be able to find your website via search engines. More traffic equals more sales!

5. Host a free event. Do you have knowledge or a quality service to share? Go ahead and host a free event to get the media interested and get plenty of prospects for your product or service. Give away prizes and be sure to have an email sign-up sheet for a newsletter or other free giveaways.

6. Get your information online everywhere. In addition to your website and blog, get active with online marketing avenues like YouTube, iTunes for podcasts, Facebook pages, Twitter, and other popular social media sites. As you expand your sphere of influence, you're building credibility and attracting more traffic and possible sales.

7. Honor birthdays and holidays. Many business owners report that the fact that they send handwritten birthday and holiday cards to past clients has won them bonus points in a major way. Take the time to do this and you'll be more apt to see your past customers time and time again and get them talking about you to family and friends.

If you own a small business and want to make money from home, it is essential that you tap into online and traditional marketing techniques. Some of these ideas only take a little bit of time, so you have no excuse for slacking with your marketing strategy. If you don't have ample time to spend marketing, hire someone to do this for you, as the investment will be well worth the payoff.