Bootstrap Marketing For Your Start-Ups

Some of these tactics (#8, #9 for e.g.) just show a blatant disregard for communal property, almost to the point of screaming !!SPAM!!

Imagine if every single business owner started slapping their business stickers all over town.

Some of the techniques described are sketchy and can hurt your business!

Guys I posted this to bring out some creativity within your own start-up, not a step-by step guide to bootstrap your business. I apologize for the confusion.

"I believe in helping people in any way possible. If you see a homeless person somewhere on your daily commute to work, or various other places, you could pay the homeless person to hold a sign that reads “YourCompany.com paid me to hold this sign”. Regardless if it brings a TON of business your way or not, at least you’ll feel good about yourself, and you’ll touch that persons life forever."

Yeah, great stuff...

This was a totally disappointing read. Like stated in the other comments, most of the techniques are sketchy and questionable. Furthermore, there is almost no advice on how to reach your targeted customers / business partners.

Most of the techniques appear a little desperate and wouldn't impress me as a potential customer or business partner.

I was impressed by the author's creativity, but yeah. Almost everything would absolutely flop in the real world, and probably have a negative effect on the local perception of your business.

Things like "sponsor an event" and "write for newspapers" work, yeah, but they're not really what I'd term guerrilla...

"Money Stamping – grab a stamper from your local office supply store and stamp a funny phrase along with your website address on it. Have a make money online blog? Stamp something like “Learn how to make thousands of these online: sitehere”."

My recollection is that it is illegal to deface currency. I believe some of the other suggestions are also illegal. Just because people do it all the time doesn't mean you won't be the one that gets caught in the crossfire when there is a crackdown because people have had enough. When I think of "guerrilla marketing", I think of breaking social convention, not breaking the law.