I am a massage therapist who co-owns a small massage (brick and mortar) business, and I am an entrepreneur, who is studying internet marketing strategies. Not only for positioning my massage business online but also as way for creating a supplemental revenue stream that will support my business whether I am working or not.

I had recently connected with a massage client named Corinne Phipps; who also owns a small business called Urban Darling, and I know that this is not proper, but during our massage session we started to talk about our businesses ( I hope that she didn’t mind ). During our talk, I mentioned to her that I am a blogger studying internet marketing strategies for my massage business. I suggested ways for her to use her blog to gain more interest in what her purpose of the business was and those simple pointers, she recognized to be valid points. Anyways not to get off topic too much, she emailed me a list of “Free Internet Marketing” sites that were given to her by a friend, in which she can join to increase her SEO ranking and she wanted my opinion on them.

As I looked over the list I knew of all of them in one form or fashion. There was the Google’s and the Yahoo’s, MSN’s and even InfoUSA, but there was one in which I had heard of before but did not pay attention to it until now. It’s Merchant Circle.

Merchant Circle is one that I personally believe to be the best choice out there for someone like a massage therapist or any small brick and mortar business who does not have the resources to get a $500 or more website built and/or have the knowledge to get that website positioned on the internet. And let’s face it that just getting your business on the internet will not help you if you do not target your local traffic. Local traffic is the most important thing for a small business owner, especially in the service sector as we do not have products or services that we can sell to the online community. Our revenues come through from actually providing a service to our potential clients. You can check out the ad/website that I created on Merchant Circle here.

I will not get into all the details of why I think that Merchant Circle is the best choice out there but I will say that creating a free ad that is more like a website was very easy. Here is a small list of the free benefits which Merchant Circle offers…

• Your title tags keywords are specific to your local community

• You can offer coupons to potential customers

• You can upload a company logo, and your website address

• You can blog directly from their website without installing any software or paying for hosting services fees

• They have a great Alexa rating (this measures overall web traffic to a website or blog)

• You can tag your website with keywords that are relevant to your website.

I was actually really surprised to see all the free offerings. They also have paid options as well, that will not only give you more resources but clicks for even more web traffic exposure. Merchant Circle is not paying me for this; I am only sharing this with you for your benefit as well as Corinne Phipps. They have allot more features and video tutorials that you can take a look at. I would be interested in hearing from you as well should you have another great resource or comments. If you are already using Merchant Circle and have some strategies that you can share please do, thank you.

I also have here a podcast with owner & founder of Merchant Circle below.

P.S. Please if you have some time create a free acct. it only take a couple of minutes and if you look below you will see a place to stumble, del.icio.us and add us to mixx we would appreciate it if you choose 1 or 2 of them and bookmark us, thank you.

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