Most of Small Farm Central's [1] farmers are focused on their local communities for sales [2], but some are looking outside of their locality for sales of shipped products. This is a challenging, but potentially rewarding market.

This morning, I was viewing my personal email on Gmail and I saw the following advertisement at the top of my screen and couldn't help but click on it.

I couldn't resist clicking on it to find out about the "Fruit and Veggie Guru [3]"! This is an example of a perfectly executed text ad. I like strawberries! I know they are red and tasty...but I am sure I can learn more, so I clicked. And look, now I am writing a blog entry about the site.

The key in these ads is creating interest and excitement -- with the limited space of about 100 characters that is no small feat.

This advertisement is part of Google's Adwords program [4] which allows you place small text ads in the search results of Google pages, affiliates, and in this case, Google mail. This can be a very inexpensive way of advertising your goods or services because you pay by the click and you can set a budget.

Perhaps you want to spend $100 per month or $5 per day, you can tell Google your exact budget. Maybe you only want to pay 20 cents per click or maybe you can pay up to a dollar -- just tell Google what you are willing to spend and they will show your ad on related searches only.

Google Adwords may even be viable for a locally based business because you can geo-target the ads to a specific region.

This a very large subject and it would take many more blog entries [5] to explain fully; there are whole blogs devoted to the subject. I am not sure how many farmers out there are interested in this subject.

Do you want to learn more about the Google Adwords system?