One of the hard realizations that most new e-commerce companies must make sooner or later is that simply creating a Web site does not mean customers will visit it.

Sure, there are hundreds of millions of potential customers online, but there are also billions of other Web sites competing for their attention. "The odds of people finding you accidentally are infinitesimally small," Orvel Ray Wilson, coauthor of the Guerrilla Marketing series of books, told the E-Commerce Times. "If you build it, they will not come."

Unless, that is, you do something to increase your odds. The good news is that while many traditional marketing techniques have required the deep pockets only the big guys have, marketing on the Internet can often be done on a dime. That, in turn, means that even little guys have a chance.