I know this question has been asked a billion and one times, but I'll ask it again, but with a bit more specificity than most.
Let's say that you are starting up a website that will (theoretically) have all the content created by students of a particular college. This will include pictures, events, news, sports talk, teacher reviews and whatnot. You have $2000 to spend on it. You intend to do most marketing offline in the real world.
How would you spend the money?
The first thing that comes to mind are stickers and t-shirts. I have a few decent ideas for free marketing as well, so that will be a good chunk of time spent. Also a good idea (seeing as how the college team is absolutely EVERYWHERE in my town) would be business cards for the website, and hand those out to everyone that I come in contact with.
Run a contest of some sort.. Like the most active user will get $100 or something after X amount of days. If the community is good enough it will keep people hooked even after the contest is over.
Have a press release about the contest, and then a second one about the winner. (Online and offline possibilities)
Well I am going to go with one of the cheapest methods tomorrow. I designed some really nice flyers, and they will be two to a page, so I'll go make 200 copies, which will give me 400 flyers. Then I will head down to the campus and plaster and hand them out.
Also, I work in a restaurant part time where on Saturdays we have to wear a college team's shirt. I will be buying some t-shirts and wearing one of those then as well.