It doesn’t talk much to start a services-based company, if you are willing to do the work yourself. It does however take a little bit of time and money to do some marketing and attract new customers.

In a recent discussion with a friend trying to start a services-based company, he figured it would be easiest to connect with potential customers online. As an SEO guy, I told him he was right, but that it would be difficult in a competitive space to build a site from scratch and hope to compete with long established companies. That’s not to say that I wasn’t hard headed enough to try it, but we had to be realistic from the start.

With little or no budget outside of building and hosting a site, we tried posting ads and links to the site from craigslist. Much to my surprise, it resulted in some phone calls!

Lesson learned: If you have no marketing budget. Give Craigslist a try, and don’t be afraid to post every day.