For everyone that decides to start their own web site online, advertising isn't as easy as it seems and many people end up paying others to do their dirty work. Face it, hours and hours of boredom. So how can you get your name out there successfully? Below is a list of some useful advertising tools that can help you lift your web site off the ground!

1. Put your web site in the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live, etc). Everyone uses search engines, so that is always a help.

2. Pay to get visitors using Google AdWords. You pay Google a certain amount of money per click that is made on your Ad which is placed on someone's web site. Their site would be related to yours so it's targeted traffic, and they receive money for the clicks so everyone's happy.

3. Exchange links between other web sites. This is a great way to get traffic. Whether you contact web site owners personally and see if they wish to do a link exchange or you just sign up for a "paid" link or "reciprocal" link, which is where you post their link on your web site as well. These links help you get visitors, backlinks, and improve your Google Page Rank.

4. Purchase advertisement spots on other web sites. Make sure that they are popular, receiving a decent amount of unique visitors every day. You could purchase a banner which is very noticed to help optimize the visitors you get from the web site.

5. Contact customers by e-mail advertising your web site. You can set up a mailing list of only people that would be interested in this so people don't consider it "spam".

6. Submit your web sites URL's in as many free directories as you can. Even try to submit your web site in DMOZ!

7. Use Digg! Submit articles on their web site to help get traffic to your web site. This is a great method and if you pick very good topics for your articles, even topics that trick the readers to click, you can get a decent amount of traffic.

8. Become an active member on forums related to your web site and put your web site link in your signature. Make sure you confirm with staff at the forum that it is alright with them first because you don't want to waste your time for nothing!

9. Buy signature links from active members so they can post and get traffic for you.

10. Advertise on MySpace! Yes, that is right, MySpace! Get yourself thousands of friends, real people, not other advertisers like you and put up bulletins advertising your web site.

11. As usual, we saved the best for last. This is definitely one of the best ways you can get traffic to your web site, guaranteed. Put up a video on YouTube with the displayed picture of a naked girl, then trick them to watch and get them to your web site.

Those were just some of the basic methods that you can advertise for free, or at little cost. Good luck getting some traffic!