I manage a few small businesses and I design and market websites for other small to medium sized businesses as well. I use several dozen websites for advertising when it comes to our websites.ie..

Organic search engine results(SEO), trusted and relevant directories(Google, Yahoo and MSN local search listings, DMOZ.org, Jade.com etc..), social networks(Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Myspace.com etc), bookmarking sites(Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, etc..), forums, blogs etc… Basicly any reliable and free advertising platform available that enables me to access our targeted audiences.

The majority of small businesses are currently pretty low on funds for advertising thanks to the recession. If I or one of my clients are to spend money to advertise, there has to be a high probability of a return for our investments or we must at least be sure that we will be reaching a very large portion of our target audiences.