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Like every other startup, LetDealersBid.com development was personally funded but that part was easy we realized when it came to market the website :-)

How would you promote your website assuming you are a team of tech savvy individuals in three continents?

Hire bloggers, facebookers, twitterers from 3rd world and give them profiles to keep writing about our website everyday and night?

Create fun to watch videos and spread on YouTube?

Introduce an in-house Affiliate Program?

Anything techatics would be able to do will work. Sounds like we are perfect example for a great idea by folks who dont know how to get funded (funding process seems too complicated :-)

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3 Answers

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If you haven't read it before - check out an interview with Patrick McKenzie. It reveals some heuristics and real numbers.

P.S. From a user's perpective I'd like to say that LetDealersBid.com is a bit overloaded. Maybe combining 'About us', 'Contact Us' and 'Investors' into one page would save some space.

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Steer clear of buying lots of content in from 'cheap providers'.

1 well written, original, insightful, thought provoking article will bring you more traffic and more attention than 1000 spammy pieces of crap. That's not an exageration!

Bigger question though is whether you should be marketing online and inbound at this stage.

Car dealers are easy to find and a (relatively) small population so get in touch offline. Think trade press, cold calling, networking, events, and other kinds of offline marketing as you look for those early customers and early adopters.

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Thanks Benjamin for the insight. Yes dealerships should be easy (have bought dealerships DB with 48K+ records and passed on to a friend to do cold-calling through his call center - so I feel pretty confident dealerships are covered) The challenge is on buyer's end since model is unique in a sense buyers are not used to it (Lead Generation/Free Quotes website are way too popular) Have started focusing on a pre-launch hype by having visitors signup for iPads prior to the launch to win iPads. Hopefully it will bring some traffic. Then I'll focus on what you & Jason have suggested. Thanks a lot! – LetDealersBid May 14 '10 at 5:54
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Social Media might be the hot thing, but it's far from the only marketing technique on Earth.

If you have no money for marketing, it's kind of like saying you have no money for development, but you want software written. It doesn't work like that.

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Maybe I should have said we do have money but not "that much money" :-) – LetDealersBid May 12 '10 at 5:51
Jason, can you please examplify some cheap marketing methods except from Social Media (twitter, blog, social networks)? By saying 'cheap' I mean cheap in money, not in time. – Kirill Blazhko May 12 '10 at 15:07
Not sure what your limit is, but e.g. I've had tremendous results by advertising in small, targeted newsletters. Always under $1000, often more like $200-$400 for a trusting, high-quality audience. Even normal print ads are now very cheap to get started (because they're struggling). Depending on your niche there are online ads, e.g. a development tool advertising on StackOverflow is relatively cheap and (for us anyway) effective. – Jason May 13 '10 at 15:05
Thank you, Jason. Any good resource to start with newsletters? I decided to elaborate my comment and asked a question here answers.onstartups.com/questions/11195/… – Kirill Blazhko May 15 '10 at 9:59
Sign up for a bunch (with a throw-away email address) and see which ones you like, and why. – Jason May 15 '10 at 14:46

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