First thing's first: You need a graphic designer!

The very first thing I realized was that in order to do any marketing or advertisements, I needed some artwork. Luckily, I happen to have very rudimentary artistic ability (enough to make the cheap logo for this blog). So before you even think of creating ads or advertising your product on the interwebs, you better be able to create some good looking designs or know someone who'll do it for you. Nobody wants to look at an ugly ad or web page. If you want your company to be taken seriously, you need something that'll stand out and look pretty.

To begin I started off using an image editing/creating program called GIMP.
Basically, it's the poor man's Adobe Photoshop.

http://www.gimp.org/

It doesn't have as many features as Adobe Photoshop CS5 but guess what? IT'S FREE! And, it should do the trick to get you started.

I won't give a whole lesson on how to use the program since there's tons of websites out there that give you the basics: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/The_Basics/

The bottom line is that to market on the internet and be taken seriously, it's going to take some artistic ability. If you're like me and you're going it alone, get your hands on a copy of Adobe Photoshop or GIMP and learn how to use them. You're gonna need it.