How to get a shed load of new customers without paying for advertising

Advertising is all well and good but it can cost you a lot of money, sometimes without much return. For the average new online trader, your budget can be tight so you need ways of attracting new customers/making them aware of you and gaining trust.
How are you going to go about doing all that without spending thousands on advertising and marketing, well here's a couple of ebay based ideas to get you going:

The new release method
This method involves using the latest hot releases. Yes I know I always say that there's no money in new releases but this is how you can use them to help your business.

When the big stores are running there usual price war promotions on the latest big release, there's usually a point where one store goes abit loopy and drops the price stupidly low (you could use the watching feature to keep an eye on these specific games).

Once the price drops, buy as many as you can there and then, don't worry about buying too many as you'll have no trouble selling them on due to their current high demand.
Once you have a nice pile ready, work out your break even price (including all costs) and sell them at this price, chances are that you will be one of the cheapest out there on ebay so they will easily sell all day long.

Make sure you provide a speedy/quality service and you will have load of new customers on your books who you know are actively buying games, know you and have already gained some trust for the future.

Once you have heap of customer details, keep in touch with them at regular intervals via email or through the post your latest deals (which will have a good profit margin for you). If you have your own online store then you can direct them straight there and eliminate ebay fees.

The 99p Auction Method
This might seem abit mad but I've used it a number times and it honestly works.
What you are trying to do here is get as many people onto your ebay listings as possible. The way to do this is by setting a number of your items at a 99p auction start. I would usually set it for a duration of 3 – 5 days.

This is will get a lot of eye balls onto your listing and if they see this amazing deal then the chances are that they will scan through the rest of your items to see what else you have.
Big businesses use a similar method all of the time, y'know when you see things like “Big Sale” then one lead item like “buy modern warfare 3 for just £22 plus lots more” if you look at what else they have “on sale”, most of the time these other sale items aren't any better than what you find on a regular day elsewhere but that lead item has already got a lot of buyers onto their site or through their doors.

Plus with this 99p auction method, your item will often sell for as much as you would have set the buy it now price for anyway and sometimes even higher (if your lucky).