Do you feel like you have a great business idea or new business, but are struggling to get people to take notice of you. This is a very common problem and can become very disheartening for any entrepreneur. It's the vicious circle of not being known leading to few sales and no one willing to take a chance, but without selling your product or service your business won't gain a name for itself.

So, if you are strapped for cash but want to give your idea a chance have a think about some free marketing ideas.

Of course there's social networking. Get your business onto sites like Facebook and Twitter and start talking about it, offering deals, giving advice, posting images and testimonials. Don't expect a fast take off, but bit by bit you'll see your numbers grow. A lot of it will be by word of mouth as customers pass on recommendations.

A recent article on BBC news forecasts UK bank lending is set to shrink by 2.2% this year - the first time since 2009 according to the Ernst & Young Item Club economic forecasting group. While banks are usually the first port of call (perhaps after friends and family!) for funding, there are other options.

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The subject of pricing reared its ugly head again recently when my partner and I had a heated discussion about what price to quote for two projects we'd been invited to tender for. I felt my partner was going in too low and that we were undervaluing both the quality of the work and our time. He, however, felt that the quotes I wanted to give were too high and that we would lose out on the jobs. As ever in business we compromised somewhere in the middle, but it did raise the thorny issue of where we should set our pricing.

What you decide to charge for your product or service is one of the most important decisions you will make as a business person. Both too high and too low will cause you potential problems with your sales and cashflow and will affect the growth of your business. This isn't purely about new businesses as it's also important for established businesses to carry out regular reviews of their pricing to help improve their profitability. Plus, of course, new and growing businesses must always be aware of what their competitors are doing in terms of pricing.

To help you understand where to set your pricing you need to work out your monthly fixed costs along with variable costs you will encounter over the course of a year. Your break-even point is the amount you need to bring in each month to pay basic bills and keep the business afloat.

Many small businesses will reach the point where they need to think about recruitment. This might be, for example, due to increased workload or a lack of knowledge requiring outside expertise. The problem, though, is that the business is often not bringing in the income required to pay for that additional staff member.

Knowing when is the right time to recruit is, therefore, very difficult, especially in these uncertain economic times when revenues are changing dramatically for many businesses. I know a company who was due to interview for their first member of staff and the day before the interview lost one of their major contracts. In a way they were lucky it happened before they had taken on the employee, but it does show how decisions made one day can be forced to change another. Employing staff is a huge commitment, and businesses need to understand all aspects of the contract between themselves and the employee, and that includes how they can potentially dismiss them.

In a recent blog we discussed how age is no barrier to starting a business with entrepreneurs in their teens up to the nineties starting businesses. The government has obviously been listening, well in part, as the prime minister, David Cameron, is believed to be looking at funding young people looking to set up in business using a student loan style scheme. The idea was first proposed by Sir Richard Branson as part of the Virgin Media Pioneers Control Shift campaign. When asked about helping young entrepreneurs at a recent 'PM Direct' event David Cameron said, "There's a very good idea in there that Richard Branson has come up with and others have been looking at, which is that, okay, we are providing loans for students to go to university - why not look at something similar for people who have got a great business idea and want to get on and start that business? I think this is a brilliant idea and we are looking very closely at it. We might be announcing something like this later on."

Students loans, however, have been surrounded in controversy in recent years with students currently able to obtain loans of up to £9,000 a year to cover tuition fees and £7,675 for maintenance with lower interest rates then comparable loans. Many students are leaving higher education with thousands and thousands of pounds worth of debt which potentially takes them many years to pay off.