One of the hardest parts of running any business is finding new customers. It's a matter of getting your message to the right people. Timing is important, too. If you're running a pizza parlor, you can probably run ads on local television stations around dinner time, flash a phone number on the screen, and, provided the pizza itself is bearable, you'll probably do pretty well for yourself.

There's probably potential for small businesses to do this kind of thing at local used bookstores. If you're a personal trainer, sponsor the Health & Fitness section. If you're a personal chef or a nutritionist, sponsor the Cooking section. If you're an Herbalist or Reflexologist or something that's otherwise pretty new-agey, sponsor the New Age section.

Spend the money to pay the purveyor of the bookstore a monthly fee, print up a good-looking sign to hang from the shelves, and put a bookmark with the same graphics/colors as the sign in each book. (Keeping the visuals consistent creates a trail from the bookstore shelves to the books, so they know you're league with the bookstore and not just going around sticking your card into random used books, like some people do.) Make sure the reader knows you're local, that they know what you do, and make it easy for them to figure out how to contact you. It's the right message, at the right time, to the right kind of person.