I suppose the most often asked question by online businesses is how to advertise online for free or for very cheap and have it be effective. This is something I’m still trying to figure out. Our service is free, and I do believe it has great value to our users so of course I hope it grows by the oldest and cheapest form of advertising, word of mouth. Word of mouth is actually the most important method of advertising for us not because it’s the cheapest, but because the whole concept of Commuto is building communities and the only way to build them is by inviting your friends, neighbours and co-workers.

For Commuto, our advertising has to be contained and focused. City by city, school by school, office by office. If we scatter out too much we may get the users, but it will seem bare to those that do join, and I suppose that ends up being the most serious issue, how do we keep it interesting while not providing users any content. We have had users join from Arizona, Fairbanks, Alaska, Toronto and many other cities, but more often than not they are the only people in their city who have joined so far. I suppose all social sites have this issue initially so we’ll just have to wait for the site to populate and hope that those who joined in the beginning will be there later on as well.

One effective means of advertising I found yesterday was in the classified section on forums. I spend $1 to advertise for 2 weeks and we got 10 new users on the first day. I can’t be certain that all the users came due to this ad, but seeing as I haven’t advertised anywhere else yet, I am quite certain that at least 6-8 of those users are due to this ad. That’s a remarkably effective use of money but I doubt the return on investment would always be that high otherwise I would take a loan today for a mass classified advertising campaign.

Link exchange programs seem like a thing of the past. Google won’t allow them and that’s the kiss of death right there. So I’m left with personally finding sites to exchange traffic with, but currently we don’t have much traffic to offer. There is always a catch somewhere.

We are working on some big ad campaigns and partnerships with some larger companies which I can’t really discuss until its done, but for now I need to find other ways to get the word out. “If you build it they will come”…not if they’ve never heard of it. It’s time to get the word out.

If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to email me at sarbib@commuto.com.

Thanks and trade friendly.

Stephen