What's the single most important thing you need when starting an onine business? The answer, traffic to your site. How do you get that traffic? Web site advertising. When looking for places to advertise your site you have to be smart. A growing majority of sites will promise you the world in terms of traffic and sales, but in the end they never deliver. Below are some tips you need to be aware of and use in your advertising decisions.

Covered below are a few key indicators and must know tips to use and look out for when selecting a place to advertise your business with.

First, do not waste your precious time and money with anyone/site that promises to send an ad out for your site to millions of people for a low fee. These scams have been around since the advent of the Internet. I mean, if you like throwing your money away then by all means, go for it. If not, keep that money in your pocket.

Second, for the most part, stay away from companies that offer to place your site in a multitude of search engines. There are some really great tools out there that you can use to do this yourself until you get an idea of what is needed and how effective search engine submission should be. In all honesty, time is the best way to solve this problem. As long as your site provides quality content the search engines will find you, for free.

Third, it is a good idea to invest your time and money in writing articles. This is a time tested way to drive traffic to your site, increase the number of incoming links from other related sites on the net, get your site listed in many search engines and boost your rankings in the search engines once your in. You have a choice, you can write the articles yourself or outsource to article writing to a professional. It depends on your particular budget and preferences.

Fourth, invest your time and money in solo ads or ezine ads. With ezine ads, you can place a small ad in a companies ezine that is relevant to your market for a small fee and usually receive great results. When advertising, it's very important you or someone on staff knows how to write good ads to convert the traffic once it has arrived, but that's for a future article.

Finally, do your research. If you feel you have found a good site to advertise on, do a little research about that particular site. See what other people are saying, their individual success stories and so forth. Try going to advertising forums and ask around about the site in question or go to yahoo answers and post a question. You will be surprised at how many people will be willing to help out.

In the beginning, try to find the best places to advertise on line can be a nightmare. There is so much research involved and it can be very daunting. Once the traffic is at your site, you need to know how to convert it. Just be skeptical when your first starting out and do your research. Many times you'll save yourself a lot of time in money just asking others about their experience with a certain site.