Offline Promotion (without using ad agencies)

[The Envoy]

Any ideas you can think of/already done for this?

[stacylee]

I am making a bumper sticker for both my sites - for $4 I cannot imagine an easier way to advertise than by doing nothing.

[Nathan]

For other reference see this thread in which I list a few ideas I thought of:

This may be a crazy thought

Edit:

For that matter I'll copy some of the good ones over.

1) Write your website URL in pencil on every piece of money that passes through your hands.
2) If you read library books leave a scrap of paper with your website URL on it in the book as a bookmarker.
3) If you live near a beach write your URL in big letters in the sand.
4) Leave flyers folded in origami pieces at random public locations with your website's url noticeably written all over it.
5) Try no. 2) at internet cafes as well.

[DavidB]

The typical things you would do if you were marketing anything.

I think at the very least you should have business cards printed. It beats writing your web site URL down on little scraps of paper when you talk to people in person.

Bookmarks. The same place that prints business cards could also print up some bookmarks. Just make a nice design and bring it into the shop on USB and they could print out a few hundred for you. Then go to the local library and put one in books relevant to the theme of your web site. Or hand them out at schools, colleges, universities, etc.

Have some pens imprinted with your info. I ordered 300 of the least-expensive pens I could find some years ago. I was into volunteering at conventions that were held locally, so I always made sure there were many of my pens left at the message board where convention attendees wrote messages on little squares of paper and pinned them to the corkboard. I also handed many out to various people. It was a good, and inexpensive, way to market my site. And pens are pretty practical.

Alternately, there are highlighters, coffee mugs, baseball caps, umbrellas, Swiss Army Knives, backpacks, etc. All the typical things that a business uses to market itself.