Starting your own business can be difficult, but marketing a business is impossible. This is doubly true if you live in some place like New York. I wanted to promote my business without using outside help. I have always had pretty good business sense, and I didn't have the budget to hire advertisers. I decided that the best way to go about it was to promote a business online. I run what is in many ways a normal tourists shop, but it has a few important differences. There is a real New York feel to it, something that appeals to the tourists. They can get a coffee and a sandwich while they are browsing through the various gift products. Although I have the usual plastic statues of liberty and other old standbys, I also have some pretty unusual and well made crafts.

I figured that the best way to promote my business would be to use the Internet. I would go to some of the things to do in New York websites and buy pay per click ads on them. I know that promoting businesses online is a mixed bag - although the prices are low, the results are not always impressive. Nevertheless, I figured that if I got a hit every once in a while, the ads would more than pay for themselves. When you are promoting a business, after all, you have to deal with the fact that most of the people who see your advertisements won't come to your store.

Nonetheless, my efforts to promote my business were doing nothing for me. Although I got a fair number of clicks - and had to pay for them - it didn't seem to be translating into an increase in business. I decided to go with more traditional ways of promoting my business. I put flyers up around town, bought a little bit of billboard space, and the like. Still, nothing seemed to make a difference.

I would get a steady trickle of customers - enough to stay in business - but not enough to expand. I finally figured out that it did not matter if I promote my business or not. I'm never going to get rich doing what I do, but I think I'll always make a living as long as I stay in a good location. In this city, as everywhere else, location is everything. All the promotional contests and offers you can hold won't change that.