Small Business and Internet Advertising --

According to this article -->"Kelsey Group: Small Businesses Not Yet Advertising Online" small businesses are not advertising online though the potential for huge returns is evident.

My budget for advertising and promotion was not large, therefore I looked for creative ways to boost my online presence. Here are a few tools I use to promote my small business:

• Business Domain <> www.qisoftware.com
  
• News Service <> Wired Pages
  
• This Blog <> QiSoftware Blog
  
• Search Engine Submission including:
  1. Google Search Submission
     
  2. Yahoo! Listings
     
  3. Alexa Crawl Submission
     
• Forum Posts and Articles <> News, Software, & Java
  
• Internet Groups [Yahoo] <> BusinessBlogs Yahoo! Group
  
• Online Chats
  
• Instant Messaging is also useful however not one of my tools.

I use Alexa to track how well my online promotion tools work. When I first started tracking -- my Alexa rank [March 2004] was over 3 million. Over the summer [2004], I went down to just under 2 million and then back up to 5 million. Today I am hovering at just over a million. Alexa ranks are based on 1 [one] being the best, so the further I descend the better.

I am providing the screenshot I took today for later reference as a bench mark guide.

Screenshot taken today [11.04.04]
clicking on the image will take you to my Alexa profile page.

Take note of the Links in: value of 1 in the above image. I am not sure why this number reflects only 1, since my site is listed with various online sites and search engines, but I am investigating.