How do you market your startup on a shoestring?

Since launching a startup (http://infostripe.com) earlier this year I have been learning a lot about how things truly work online. I've been around the internet since the mid nineties, I have worked in web development throughout that time (for a government) and have intensely followed tech news, podcasts and events very closely as an interested observer. I have gotten a lot out of that practice but it was truly when I tried to reach out with my own thing that I discovered the height and depth that is the 4th wall of the marketing underbelly.

We are not yet in a position to spend what resources we have on a lot of things so it has been a grassroots campaign to reach out to tech punditry, journalists, bloggers along with some minor experimental spends on Adwords, Stumbleupon and Facebook Ads. This has been somewhat successful on small scale but we have run into some interesting observations.

- It seems to matter who you know more then what you are if you have little to spend. - Tech journalism is in some corners a vapid recycling of the same daily hot air with very little investigative instinct. - There is a lot going on each day online and getting heard is tough. - Spammers have made us all afraid of each other and new things.

So the question, How do you market your whatever as a small yet unfunded startup on a shoestring?