How to grow a free Marketplace with both paid and free methods?

[sitedeal]

Hello Everyone,

I am a new member here searching for some input on my new marketplace. Currently we just launched and have around 50 members from our notification list that we setup during pre-launch.

The problem we see with a marketplace is that we have to attract buyers and sellers, and so we are looking for help on how to go about attracting buyers and sellers into our marketplace.

We have around a $2,500 advertising budget for this first phase, but I would also love to know any free methods beyond, free press release, twitter, and all the other social banboozels...

What do you guys/girls think?

For sellers we are giving $500 credit to the site as a promotional tool to start, and plan on doing a PPC campaign, but would this be a waste of our budget?

For Free methods we plan on some old-school article marketing and SEO?

However, are not sure what else to include

[bobchrist]

Search engine optimization is the prime factors if you would like to create your online presence, I think it should be the first step.

[sitedeal]

Hey bob,

Thanks for the reply!

If you could elaborate on the best SEO strategy that would be awesome.

Currently we have our on-site optimization pretty much done, but don't really know the whole "off site" optimization.

[InsightsDigital]

You need to create content that can be published on other respectable sites, like Press Releases. This press release needs to contain links to specific pages and contain the right mix of related keywords.

[musicbox]

what is your site about ? what are you going to sell or your users buy ? you need to add your website to google adwords