There are, according to author and internet marketer, Richard Quek,, over 100 different methods you can use to market your business online. However, as Quek points out, not all of these methods are free, nor are they effective.

Below are five more highly effective methods you can use to market your business, they're all free, and they do work.

1. Joint Ventures (Short - Long Term Marketing Strategy)

Joint ventures are the fastest way to get traffic and sales for your site.

Basically, you contact ezine publishers who own complimentary sites, offer them a copy of your product, as well as other incentives like higher commissions, and ask them to offer your product to their readers.

Although it can take a little while to find complementary sites, you can increase the number of affiliates/partners marketing your product, and you can get immediate traffic.

You can use forums to help you find joint venture partners. However, there is an easier way to find joint venture partners. JV-Network.

2. PR (Short - Long Term Marketing Strategy)

Press releases, or news releases, can help you effectively get traffic to your business because, unlike advertising, you are offering reader's news about your business.

The key here is that it's news. You can make this technique even more effective when you build a list of local contacts to submit your releases to. Online news releases help you build your business globally; local releases will help you build your business in your community, and you have a better chance of getting read.

3. Free Ebooks and Reports (Long Term Marketing Strategy)

Like articles and press releases, this is a viral marketing strategy. You can create brand able copies of your report or ebook so that others can add their information about their businesses and then give your ebook away. This method can be even more effective if you have an affiliate program.

4. Directories (Long Term Marketing Strategy)

Most people don't think about using directories as a way to build their businesses, but this can be a very effective way to do it.

The actual strategy here is linking. There are many directories where you can post your site for free, and they don't require that you link back to them. This increases the number of links that you have pointing back to your site, increasing your Google page rank, as well as increasing your traffic.

The most important thing you can do here is to vary the anchor text that you use in your links. Google is currently penalizing sites that use the same anchor text in their links.

5. Networking (Short - Long Term Marketing Strategy)

Networking is similar to marketing on forums, but you will find networking to be more targeted than forums.

You will also have more tools available to help you promote, like blogs, press release posts, and article posting. These sites will also often allow you to use classified advertising to promote your products and services.

The side benefit of networking is that it allows you to improve your search engine rankings through content creation, and it increases the number of entries you have in the search engines, raising your rankings.