When you get started online, either you have a budget for advertising and product development or you do not. If you have a budget, you purchase a few online manuals, you learn how to develop a product, you start advertising, and you are in business, hopefully making money in a short period of time.

If you are starting on a shoestring, it may feel like there is just no way at all to get started online and really create a profit. In the next ten minutes, I will show you how to get started online on a shoestring, and how to really make it profitable.

One important thing about starting on a shoestring is that you cannot take any money out of the internet for personal use. Anything that you might earn online should be reinvested right back into your business. I am going to show you a series of steps to take that involve free advertising, free products and tools, and free methods of traffic generation. Although they dont cost any money, they will cost time, so you will have to be willing to spend a considerable amount of time online at first. Once you begin to develop an income online, you must reinvest that money into paid versions of the services you use. If you do not, you will become burnt out on the time you have to spend online, and you will never really get ahead.

The first thing you need to do is determine exactly what kind of an online business you will become involved in. You can develop a product of your own, although if you are just starting out online, I do not recommend it. If you are just starting out, you are much better off promoting someone elses product while you learn all the other aspects of online business.

Next, you need a website. There are several free web site hosting companies that include free site builder software. Just type in free web hosting into a search engine and you will have lots of choices. Now, with free, you will usually have limited space, and the site will have advertising on it to support the company. Keep in mind, you are just getting started, so you wont need a lot of space; once you need it you can upgrade to the paid version. Also, having the advertising is just another price you pay for starting out on a shoestring.

The next thing you need is an auto responder, so you can keep in touch with your client list. There are several free versions of paid auto responder services available. Again, they will be limited and have advertising, but again, once you are making money, you can upgrade.

Once you have your website and an auto responder service set up, you need to drive traffic to your site. This is where you will spend most of your time. My favorite form of free marketing is article writing and submission.

With article writing and submission, you write articles that are related to the product you are selling or promoting, and submit them to the various article directories. In exchange for the content you allow them to use on their web site, they promote your articles for free. With article marketing, you will get out of it what you put into it. You must write nice quality articles, and write every day. One thing to remember online is that if you want traffic and business everyday, you must work everyday.