It
really doesn't matter what Business you're in, where
you're located, or what you product or service is. You
need to be on the Internet!
- Ted Ciuba
|
If all of the pages and
articles are grouped around the same theme, your pages
will be considered highly relevant to search queries made
by web surfers looking for information on that topic.
The more relevant content
you have, the higher your site will rank in the search
engines. Eventually, you will start to receive some
traffic from the major search engines. It can take several
months to see your first visitors, so while they are on
their way, keep building more and more content pages.
If you aren't a great
writer, that's no problem. You can find great articles
FREE on the web that people have written and made
available for you to use on your website.
Again,
Directory
of Ezines can help
here with free content, but there are many other places
you can find Free articles - just type 'free website
content *your topic*' or 'free ezine articles *your
topic*' into a search engine like Google
and you will find hundreds or thousands of matches.
Then, simply write an
introduction to the article, insert the article below it,
then write a couple of paragraphs at the end showing how
the article ties in with your Business or theme, and
offering a product or service that is related to the
article.
Simple...but be careful not
to use articles that direct your visitors away to websites of
your direct competitors - always use articles that offer
great content but aren't promoting products or services
that will take sales away from your Business.
Pretty
soon, your visitor traffic snowballs until you reach the second
stage -
Visitors
Arriving By The Hundreds...Then Thousands Per Day
As traffic builds, you
continue creating more and more quality pages tightly
focused around the same theme. Visitor numbers grow and
many of them, when they read your great, informative
content, will continue to tell their friends about your site.
Over a period of several
months, your traffic numbers should continue growing if
you have done all the right things when building your
website - optimised your pages, submitted them correctly
to the search engines, kept building pages of quality
content. (If all of this sound like too much work, see
below for the simple solution).
Once your traffic is
flowing and your visitors are reading your information and
returning regularly to see what's new, it's time for the next stage...
Pre-selling
- Giving Your Visitor The Information They Are Seeking
Pre-selling means forcing
yourself NOT to sell products or services to
your website visitors.
Think about it - people
come to your website from a search engine looking for information. If they find a sales pitch, they will usually
just click away.
Pre-selling means giving
them the relevant information that they are looking for,
and then making a friendly recommendation on a product or
service that might be just what they are after.
Pre-selling means writing
informative articles that explain step by step how your
visitors can solve a problem or find a solution to
something that's bugging them.
Your articles should
contain between 500 and 1000 words (although shorter or
longer is OK, too, depending on what you have today) and
give your visitors information that is relevant to the
topic that they searched for at the search engine.
You must be careful not to
come across as trying to sell them anything
or you will lose them in double quick time - the object of
your article should be to educate and inform.
Once your prospects know
what they need to do to solve their problem, you have earned
the right make some recommendations for products or
services that can help them do just that.
These recommendations of
course are to buy your product or service (if it does
indeed help them, of course) or to some other product that
you are affiliated with.
Side Note
-
this really belongs of the next section - Monetization
- but for a comprehensive discussion on what affiliate
programs are, how they work and how you can profit from
this profitable new marketing phenomenon, The
Affiliate Masters Course is a wonderful Book that is seriously
worth taking the time to read.
It explains in detail
everything you need to know to be successful online as an
affiliate - and it's FREE to download!
Affiliate income can add 1,
5 or many more small, individual streams of cash flow to
your offline Business - it makes sense to tap into this
powerful marketing medium while it's still in it's
infancy. Take the time to read The
Affiliate Masters Course and you will be well on your
way to developing Multiple Streams of Income from YOUR
Business.
So, back to the article...
Remember, the sales website does the
selling - your content website merely offers a recommendation.
If you try to sell on your content site, your visitors
guard will be up and they will resist your offers. If they
do then click through your sales site or that of your
Affiliate Merchant's, they will feel doubly pitched to -
and your chances of closing a sale are extremely limited -
don't sell - Pre-Sell.
And
Finally - Monetization - The Reward For All Of This Work
Content is building,
Traffic is flowing, you are Pre-selling your visitors and
informing them about how to solve their problems; now it's
time to turn on the cash flow taps of your website.
If you provide good,
valuable information about topics that interest your
visitors, they will be receptive to your recommendations
when you ask them to visit another site, call for an
appointment or promote a product or service to them via an
affiliate link.
So, now it's time to
launch your ezine or online magazine.
Your ezine will be your
most powerful marketing tool - email marketing is the 'killer
application' of the Internet. It will help you create a
relationship with your readers and place you right at the
top of the pile as a knowledgeable 'expert' on the topic that they
are interested in.
There
is no faster way to get rich than on the Internet!
- Robert Allen
|
At first you will just send
your subscribers quality, free information, but in the months that
follow this little ezine will turn into a money tree...as
a rule of thumb, for every subscriber on your ezine
database, you can expect to earn between 10 cents
and one dollar or more per month! That's a pretty
good case for building up a large ezine list as quickly as
possible, wouldn't you agree?
Tell all your offline customers,
friends and suppliers about your website and mention that
there are always 'web-only specials' available there.
Offer everyone you meet a gift Voucher or special discount coupon in
exchange for giving you their email address.
As you build more pages
that complement the theme of your website, more visitors
will find you via search engines and tell their friends about your website. Your
customers will also continue to check out your 'web
specials' because you are going to talk about them in your
ezine.
Include
Coupons for Special Offers in Each Ezine
You have to make it super
easy for people to join your Newsletter list, plus you
should offer your visitors something for Free to encourage them to
give you their email address.
It doesn't have to be an
expensive item - a Free Report that you write yourself
that provides additional quality information that isn't
available anywhere else is a great incentive, a Discount
Coupon or a Free Service of some type will encourage
people to give you their email address - and once you have
their permission to send them messages via email, you
can market your products and services, along with those of
other Businesses you represent through Affiliate Programs,
indefinitely, FOR FREE!
Did you get that? You can
send your email list messages targeted to their specific
needs forever, FOR NO COST!
Then each fortnight or
month when you send out your newsletter, write an article
about one aspect of your Business, giving your readers
good, solid information, with a text
link at the end to a page selling a product or service related to the content of the
article. You can also include a special, limited time
Coupon offering them something related to the article that
has can be retrieved either online or in person at your
store.
This 'in context' text link
(like the ones in this article) doesn't look and feel to
your readers like a typical ad, it's more like a
recommendation from a trusted friend (you), so your
readers natural buying resistance is reduced and they are
typically very receptive to your offers, especially if you
have given them good information and have built up trust
with them - your readers will feel like they know you and
will take your recommendations easily without resistance.
You're
not selling them something - you
are simply making a
recommendation.
You can promote many
different products and services to your list of readers
each time you publish your ezine, and every time you send
it out to your list a small
percentage of them will buy whatever it is that you offer
them.
Once your theme based
content website is at this stage and you are receiving
some traffic and publishing your ezine, it pays to join
some related Affiliate Programs as I
mentioned above. These are programs set up by merchants
who will pay you a commission on sales of their products
and services made by you which are tracked through your
personalised tracker link.
Please
Click
Here to read another great article that explains some
excellent, additional strategies you can use to profit
from Affiliate Programs.
Next, apply to Google for
inclusion in their Adsense
program. Adsense ads are those little boxes you might have
seen on other websites that say 'Ads by Google' next to
them.
Google pays you to have
these ads on your website!
The registration process is
simple and straight forward, as is putting the ads on your
website. Adsense ads can bring anything from a few dollars
to several thousands depending on your website traffic -
it all depends on traffic. The more you have, the more
money you make...
For
a full explanation of what the Adsense program is and how to
profit from it, Click
Here.
From here, there are many
additional ways you can make money from your Local
Business from your Theme Based Content Website. This
well written article by Ken Evoy will guide you
through the process once more from a different
perspective. It will give you many more ideas, tips and
techniques that will help you profit from your local
Business website.
So
what is the next step you should take?
As I mentioned
in the previous article, the easiest way to build a
website that requires no knowledge of HTML, FTP, SEO, JavaScript,
CGI (in other words, all the technical stuff that doesn't
make you any money!) is to use Solo Build It!
It's instantly
accessible on the 'net so you don't have to wait to get
started, comes complete with everything you need to build
a website that works, requires no knowledge of anything
remotely technical and is remarkably inexpensive.
The manual
that comes as part of the Solo Build It! package takes you through the process
of building a high traffic website step by step in easy,
bite size chunks.
You simply go
through the process one step at a time and in a few days
or weeks, depending on your available time, your website
will be completed, ready to bring you Free, targeted
traffic. Visitors who are hungry for the information and
products you have for sale.
And finally,
let's go through the points I mentioned at the start of
this article one at a time to recap what we have discussed
and make sure I covered everything -
The
Solo Build It! process and suite of tools virtually forces you to
create search engine and human visitor friendly web pages
if you follow the guidelines in the Manual. By building
your website right the first time, soon hundreds, then
thousands of visitors will be reading your web pages every
day, telling their friends about your website and acting
on your recommendations.
-
Would
you like to make hundreds of sales directly from your
website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Then have the cash
paid directly into your bank account, have no product to
physically ship, and have an automated follow up system to
sell additional products or services to those same
customers indefinitely?
Your website is open all
hours, giving people the information they need. You can
sell products or services 24 hours a day without you
having to be there to take the money. Solo Build It!
easily integrates with several third party providers of
payment services, and the new E-Goods module is coming
soon.
You can also
correspond with your ezine subscribers any time, telling
them about special promotions and offers in addition to
giving them great information that educates them on why
they should give their Business to you.
By
building a relationship with your customers through your
ezine, your competitors won't be able to touch you. Plus,
when your customers tell their friends about the great
service, specials and personal service you offer them,
your competitors simply won't be able to compete with you.
As I mentioned above, by
continually following up with your customers, Use your
ezine to survey them to find out what they want, and then
give it to them.
They
will recommend you to all of their friends because you
continually offer them products or services they need and
you stay in touch - most Businesses simply do not do this
- and it costs them dearly. Word of mouth marketing is a
far more powerful way of attracting new customers than anything
you can say to them.
By
having an online presence, you can still make sales
through your affiliate links and joint venture partners
while you are on holidays or taking time off from your
Business. The cash is automatically banked and all you
have to do is spend it...
I
can't think of any Business that couldn't use more cash
flow. Your website will be the hub for multiple streams of
income to flow into your life. Google AdSense, affiliate
programs, joint ventures with other, non competing
Business, as well as the sale of your own products or
services has the potential to multiply your income.
-
Would
you like to be able to hand your children a Money
Tree Business when you retire early,
instead of just giving them a job working in
a Business they don' t really like? (that's if they even
want to continue running your Business, that is...)
What
would it be like to hand your kids a license to print
money when you eventually decide to retire? It would
certainly take the pressure off your family finances,
wouldn't it. Many of these multiple streams of income are Residual
- they flow no matter what you do. Set up correctly, the
money will flow for years!
How much more
would your Business be worth if it earned three times as
much net profit? Probably a lot more I'd guess. If you can
show potential buyers a proven marketing plan,
consistently increasing profits and how your Business is
earning income from many sources (diversified income
streams), they will be happy to pay you well.
And when you
are ready to sell, use this headline that I showed you in
the previous article on How
to Build a Sales Website to start your advertisement -
Why
Am I Selling My Business For $30,000 Below Market Value? Local
Agents have told me that my Dry Cleaning Business is worth
$330,000, but I
don't want that much. I am prepared to sell to the first
genuine person with $300,000 cash this weekend!
No matter what
your Business is, (just substitute 'Dry Cleaning Business'
for your type of Business) this headline
will attract attention and make your telephone ring with
calls from willing buyers.
Remember, when people call
for an appointment to inspect your Business, arrange for
every potential buyer to arrive at the
same time and watch the feeding frenzy happen - the
result will astound you!!
So now we have
covered everything I promised in the introduction. I hope
you can see why you do need a website for
your Local Business. It truly offers you the highest
leverage you can get when marketing your Business and
increasing your income.
Now I know we have covered
a lot of ground here, and you might be thinking that it's
all too hard. But I promise you, if you really want to
succeed in your Business, you can do it!
Plus, the
Internet is still young - the opportunities are
spectacular - just read the quotes above and below from
these respected authors and Forbes Business Magazine -
If
you want to profit from the Internet boom you must act
now!
- Ted Ciuba
|
The time to do
this is NOW...and I will help you do it right!
If you are still unsure
whether you really need a website for your
Business, please feel free to email me by using the Contact
Form or call me within Australia on 07 55432004 or International 61755432004 and I will be happy to answer any questions you
have
Warmly,

Former
SBI Certified Webmaster
P.S. If you have any questions about how to
get your business on the web, or how to improve your
existing website's performance, I'd love to hear from you.
Just use the Contact
Form Here to send me an email and I'll get right back
to you.
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you have any SBI questions? Click
Here and we'll be glad to answer them
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