What is a good way to market products, advertise and get sales?

I was wondering if I should create flyers to draw people to my site or should I do email advertising. I am curious to know how consumers are attracted to sites through advertising? I guess I am really asking, what would interest you in purchasing something from a website? The product itself or would you only purchase something if you were looking for it and the site offered it. My product is something that I create myself, so I am wondering which route I should take on advertising. Thanks to everyone who responds, I truly appreciate it!!

Answer:
Depends on what you're selling. If you're going to the expense of flyers why not advertise on the back of a bus? I don't know about your area but in this area it's actually less expensive to put a 21" by 71" poster on the back of a bus (there's a production cost but the poster can be reused). Anyone sitting behind that bus will read the ad and you have a billboard going all over the city.
Lisa,

I'll tell you what I would HONESTLY do if I was in your place if you take the time to send me an e-mail via my Yahoo Answers profile. But for public view I'd say you could find someone with an opt-in list within your niche and ask them to use it to do some e-mail advertising. Flyers COULD work, but you'd probably have better luck finding website forums with your niche/product and posting about it in there and having a link to your site in your signature. Best of luck with whatever you do.
Make sure you have satisfied customers regardless.
Hi, perhaps you can try Google adwords to market your service/product.

Google adwords is a text-based system for advertising on its site and its partner sites. The service allows you to create your own ads, choose keywords to help match your ads to your audience, and control the cost of your advertising—you pay only when people click on your ad (a cost per click plan). Anyone wishing to promote a product on Google can enroll in this program.

you can get a 5 detail pages information about Google adwords at :

http://www.adcenter.net.cn/google-adword.

Good Luck && Best Wishes!
You can post free advertisements in as many websites as possible. Many websites provide free classifieds and hence you can avail the opportunity to market your product. A collection of such websites is linked to the two sites I know.

http://www.freewebs.com/freeclassifieds/.

http://www.freewebs.com/infodata/classif.
There are a number of free resources available to advertise your website and increase traffic. You can advertise on relevant free classifieds ( www.craigslist.org) ,directories (dmoz) and relevant forums. Major search engines like Yahoo, Google , MSN search are a major source of visitors for most websites and you can submit your website to these search engines for free. You can also run contests offering prizes to regular visitors. I have found the following website useful
http://tinyurl.com/n547z

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