No matter how small our tiny little microbusinesses might be, we still need to let people know that we exist. Of course, the standard, tried-and-true way of doing that is by advertising. Since our businesses are of the virtual, online type rather than the brick-and-mortar type, it only makes sense that we should concentrate much of our advertising online.

Luckily for us, online advertising is generally a lot more affordable than offline advertising is. Still, it pays to be as frugal as we possibly can, so I wanted to give a few thoughts on making the most of our advertising budgets (no matter how meager they may be).

Of course, text ads are one of the first things that come to mind when discussing online advertising, and I’m not going to throw you any surprises here. Just as you would expect, I would recommend starting out with a Google Adwords account, and testing the waters with a small budget. I do recommend that you read as much as you can about the process however, so that you don’t accidentally shoot yourself in the foot and overspend (sometimes significantly) without even realizing it.

Next, spend some time creating some banner ads (or having them created if you aren’t graphically inclined). I recommend creating a minimum of 4 ad sizes, but 9 sizes is ideal. You can see all the standard IAB recommend ad unit sizes here, but my recommendations are as follows:

Four Sizes To Always Have Available

• 125×125
• 468×60
• 160×600
• 728×90

Five Additional Ad Sizes If Possible

• 120×240
• 120×600
• 300×250
• 180×250
• 336×250

Sites will very likely have ad spots available in one of the above sizes, so if you have ads already created and ready to go for any of those sizes, it will be easy to get your ad up and running quickly.

The next thing I would consider is having 2 or 3 variations of ads in each of those sizes. This will allow you to test each ad so that you know which works better. I recommend reading an interview that the Wildfire Marketing Group did, in which they explain when and how often to run the same ads versus testing different ads.

Once you have all of your ad banners created, your next task is finding available spots to place them. My favorite place to advertise is on blogs. Many blogs are set up to run 125×125 ad blocks, so if you have that size handy, it will be easy to arrange. You can either approach bloggers directly via email or Twitter, and arrange for an ad spot, or you can go through one of the many networks (such as buysellads.com) to find them. Most blogs will display ads for a month term at a fixed price (which is usually fairly low).

Finally, run your ads, run your tests, and track the results. Once you have some initial stats to look at, you can plan for the long term.