Send releases to free PR services. There are several services that will distribute your PR releases at no cost. Two that I like are PR Free (Prfree.com) and PR Leap (prleap.com). All you need to do to use these services is register and add your releases. They will check to make sure your releases are well written with no typos, etc., so make sure thry are clean before submitting them. Naturally, there are no guarantees that any of your releases will get picked up. But, if just one of them does get picked up by s large publication, you're still way ahead of the game.

Join a newsgroup and start posting. Find and join a newsgroup (or groups) that matches the content of your web site. For example, if your site is all about travel to Costa Rica, find newsgroups about Costa Rica, Central America of just travel. Monitor these groups for a week and you'll see what issues are being discussed the most. Then, you can start posting to the group with information that will be of interest to their members and that carry subtle references to your web site.

Find blogs you can post to. Search for blogs on the same subject as your web site -- or at least related subjects. You can add posts or comments to these blogs periodically, again with subtle references to your web site.

Start your own blog. You can start a blog on the same subject as your web site. You can build a blog free at www.blogger. com. You will need to post to your blog on a regular basis to keep the content fresh. It doesn't hurt to be controversial, either, as this tends to draw posts from others.

Add an RSS icon to your site. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a new way to get content on your web site automatically sent to subscribers. You will need to add an RSS icon (or button) to your site. People can then add a feed from your site to their RSS readers. To learn more about RSS and how to do this, I recommend you go to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol) for more information. You might also want to download an RSS reader (www.rssreader.com) for your own use, so you can aggregate news from other web sites.

Like anything else worthwhile, getting free publicity for your web site takes time and effort, but you can't beat the price.

Douglas Hanna

Douglas Hanna is a retired advertising and marketing executive. Over the course of his 30-plus year career, he created sales-winning advertising and marketing plans for a wide variety of clients. Hanna writes extensively about family finances, old time radio and the Internet. He is also the webmaster of a site devoted to a new technology called HD Radio.