Asheesh Advani of Entrepreneur.com has an article over on MSNBC covering three honest ways to raise startup money. He points out a number of pitfalls that are common to entrepreneurs and then gives these three things:

• Develop financial projections that are rooted in verifiable assumptions
• Write paychecks that don't bounce, but increase as the business grows
• Get your clients to compete to be first

These are all great points but I especially like the last one, on many levels. It's no secret that people love to be first. It's like an insatiable thirst with no quencher. When you have customers competing to let you provide them service/product/etc, you are sitting in a great position to grow your business in the right directions on your terms. Guy Kawasaki recently said in a talk that if you go to a VC and say, "I need money to scale", they will invariably respond with their checkbook.