Jason @ 37Signals wrote an interesting post about the software needs of side-business people...or the "Fortune 5,000,000" as he calls them. Tools like Basecamp get after this, but so do tools like TrackMyHours, which I've been using for a little while to track my consulting hours and don't know how I lived w/out it before.

The problem that I see with this market is marketing reach. How the hell am I, if I were a side-biz tools developer, to get the word out to my ultra-fragmented target market? As much as I pimp blogging as the answer, I don't know that by developing some tools and starting a blog I'd really satisfy my marketing needs. Yes, we're talking about 'niche' here, but we're talking thousands of niches...

This is truly the $5,000,000 question. It seems that if you don't have google juice, a highly-viewed blog, and some level of hype (warranted or not) then you might be in for a pretty turbulent ride. My question is does blog ads work better than conventional ads? Is there any imperical data to answer that question?