Here's my situation, my friend and I are starting a new web site that will act as a master hub for RSS feeds integrated with tagging and customized searches. We know this concept is already out there but were looking to throw a few really cool add-on to the site that will hopefully attach a good user base. Overall our big objective here is to produce a good quality site that people enjoy using and hopefully over time will acquire a dedicated user base that will grow as we do. Also in mind we don't have any major VC so our funds are a bit on the thin side. Our backgrounds are as follows: Both of us have been in the government technolgy industry for the past 10 years doing development and server end support (Thus marketing is pretty new to us). Over the past 6 months we have been slowly developing our product and were now looking to research the marketing side of how to get the word out there. Our projected realese date will be towards the end of Jan 07. My question is this, from reading all these post, If you were in my shoes and had limited funds for marketing ($500/month), what would you do?
You need to create PRE-LAUNCH BUZZ. Your site targets well with tech-savvy males, so social networking and bookmarking can be huge for you. Write a strong press release at preweb ($360 maybe), have social bookmarking buttons / links on the site, buy some advertising banners, and maybe a little PPC. Hope that helps and good luck.
Get Firefox 2 and use the inbuilt spell-checker. Sorry - but marketing and text that contains obvious spelling mistakes just doesn't combine. [posting in DP itself is already marketing - so do it well]
Some good advice above. You also need to focus on having a good site and product. That will be the first big step... with that aside participate in forums where your visitors my hang out in... try and sponsor some events if you can. I would also get as many friends of yours to blog about your product/service. Don't forget to posts on other peoples blogs... DO NOT SPAM but leave good comments and ensure your name is linked back to your site. I often will click a link when someone has something good to say in a blog posts.