We are trying to market a online tax site and having troubles finding ways to market without any money. We are currently working on optimizing our pages, building links (not sure where to get new links from), building our tax help section, and creating a tax help forum. This is our first year trying to market online and are having trouble finding ways to do this. Any suggestions would great.
Taking Magpie's suggestion further, some article marketing might be something to consider for you as well. Its a fast and free way to reach your target market and hopefully start a little revenue rolling in that you can then build a marketing budget from.
The only way to really do it without cash is through social marketing. Squido is a good option, writing articles and submitting to article directories, Answer Questions on Yahoo Answers, Join related forums and post helpful information, use this content you are providing to direct people to your site.
Hope this helps. From my research, "Online Tax" gets searched about about 2,000 times a day, but the traffic is seasonal and there are about 900,000 competing sites in Google. You are going to have to rank in the top 10 if you want to see some of that traffic. Learn as much as you can about SEO and focus on Link Building. I usually hire someone full time to do my Link Building for less than $4 an hour with awesome results. If you don't have the funds, just do it yourself. I outsource it because it's boring and my time is worth more than $4 an hour.
Get the reliance on Google out of your head is the first thing... You are in a hugely competitive market here and cracking the top 10 is going to be difficult. Direct traffic might be the way to go.... Create something to give away for free... You obviously have experience on the topic so write a guide (ebook) and give it away for free, a few ideas that popped into my head are. - "Top 10 tax deductions you never knew about" - "How to keep more money, and pay less tax" - "Dont give your hard earned cash to Uncle Sam - The Ultimate Tax Guide" (you can change uncle sam if you arent in the USA hehe) Then go on the campaign trail so to speak... Use this guide to market your site by approaching sites in your niche. Sites about tax, saving money, making money, economics are a good start (and there are thousands on thousands of them) Email them the guide and ask if they like it to promote you a little. This will get them talking about and and linking to you etc etc. This will give you loads of direct traffic and eventually help your rankings too. Hope this helps and Good Luck