Building Your Home Based Business Website
A home based business, like any other business these days, needs a website to be successful. And fortunately, a home based business owner doesn't need major corporate dollars to build a great website to reach a much broader audience than is possible with conventional advertising and marketing methods.
In fact, a well-planned, well-designed website can be a home based business owner's best friend.
The first thing that you need to do is to start planning your home based business website as soon as possible. A mistake that many home based business owners make is in waiting until their company is already up and running. This can cause problems because the domain name should be on all offline marketing materials. It costs a great deal of money to have new letterhead, business cards and other printed materials redone to add the domain name. Also, having a website adds substance and credibility to your home based business. So you want to plan your home based business website strategy as early as possible.
You also want to put a great deal of thought into your home based business domain name. In many cases, it's the same as your business if the name isn't already taken. This may not be the best way to choose a domain name, however. You want to make it easy for prospective customers to find you, so you may be better off choosing a domain name that describes your home based business product or service accurately. The reason for this is that people who are looking for lawn care services are going to do a search for lawn care services, so the domain name should relate as closely to that as possible. A hot trend these days is to put hyphens between each word of your domain name, but stay away from periods and commas.
When it comes to actually building your home based business website, unless you're extremely knowledgeable about web development and design, it's a good idea to hire someone to do it for you. You can find many great web designers online who will build and host your website for a truly affordable fee. Many of these companies have templates you can use to design your home based business website yourself. Whichever method you choose, remember that you want your home based business website to look as professional as possible. And be sure to stay away from slow-loading graphics and flash. Web surfers aren't known for their patience and will leave a website if the pages take too long to load.
Another important part of your home based business website that you want to put a great deal of though into is the content. You'll want the content to speak to your customers in an conversational, informative manner. And website experts suggest the more pages the better. When you're first starting out five to ten pages is probably enough, but you will want to add to the content as you go and frequently update your content with news and information to give your home based business website visitors a reason to come back. If you're sitting there screaming, But I can't write! Relax. You can hire professional website content copywriters on outsourcing websites like Elance and Guru to develop the content for you for quite affordable rates. It's money well-spent to have the best content possible for your home based business website.
All of these, along with a merchant account, are essential for a successful home based business website. However, there are some other things that you will want to consider for your home based business website such as:
Opt-in newsletter
Shopping cart if you're going to be selling merchandise
Autoresponder
Affiliate program
Email courses
Free offers
And don't worry if all of this website building stuff sounds confusing or difficult to you. A good website developer or a few nights searching the Internet for information on building a website will clear everything up for youor lead you to the right company that will build your home based business website for you, from beginning to end. Just make sure the company has a great reputation. You may be running your home based business from your basement, but that doesn't mean your website has to be anything less than perfect.
A million dollars in 4 months?
Copyright 2005 Richard Grady
As with so many things, the ideas that really 'work' on the Internet are often the most simple. In fact, they are often the ideas that most people would just discard as being too ridiculous to even try (this doesn't just apply to the Internet of course - many great inventors/entrepreneurs have been laughed at in the past only to have the last laugh themselves...).
Anyway, I have been following the story of one such idea over the past couple of months and although I am sure many of you will already be familiar with it, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.
The site in question is called the Million Dollar Home Page. This site was the brainchild of an English guy by the name of Alex Tew. Alex is 21 and back in August was about to start university. Being only too aware of the fact that many students end up finishing their education with huge debts to repay, he decided to try and generate sufficient funds to cover his expenses whilst studying using the power of the Internet.
The basic concept of the Million Dollar Home Page is that website owners can buy advertising space on the home page of the site at a cost of $1 per pixel. The smallest advertising block you can purchase is 10x10 pixels, hence a cost of $100. There are a million pixels available for purchase, thus if Alex succeeds in selling them all, he will have raised a cool $1million!
On the face of it, this is a crazy idea - why would anyone want to pay to put a tiny graphic on a page of thousands of other tiny graphics on the off-chance that someone might click on it? If you had asked me 3 months ago (ie. prior to the site being launched) if I thought it was worth doing, I would have said 'no' (as indeed, I think most people would have done). How wrong I was....
Alex launched the site at the end of August and right away started to try and generate press interest. This approach worked superbly and he has had International press coverage over the past couple of months which has helped to spread the word about his site in the viral manner that is only possible via the Internet. Result? At the time of writing this article, Alex had sold over half a million pixels - yup, that means he has generated over $500,000 in income in just 2 months! At this rate he will achieve his target of selling a million pixels by the end of the year and even if he doesn't sell another pixel, he has still done superbly well.
So what can we learn from this?
Well the first thing is that even the wackiest ideas can work and it doesn't matter how simple a theory may be, it is worth giving it a shot. You don't get much simpler than the idea for the Million Dollar Home Page - in effect, this could have been a one-page site. As it is, Alex has added other pages such as a blog and press release info which helps to make the site even more appealing as people like to read stories such as this as they happen.
Clearly you don't need a 1000 page website with lots of complicated programming running in the background to earn half a million dollars - one page will do it! :-)
The second thing to note is that the way in which the Internet can spread the word about a website is hugely powerful. Admittedly much of the PR that Alex obtained was via television/radio and newspaper articles/features but an enormous amount of the traffic and customers that he has received will have been via people emailing his link to their friends and by hearing about the site from articles such as this one. Remember, all of this 'advertising' is completely free and it doesn't get better than that.
Of course it didn't take long for the copycats to show up and there are now several hundred similar websites online - many of them haven't even bothered to change the style or wording from the original site and have just copied and pasted Alex's work. How lazy can you get? It is a fact that if you have a good idea that makes money on the Internet, sooner or later someone will copy it. I know this from my own experience! What all of these copycats miss is why an idea such as this works - it is a one-off and the only person that is going to make any serious money from it is the guy who was first to the table, ie. Alex. You see this so often both on and offline - how many people are still trying to set up online auction sites that are never going to work because eBay is already too far ahead of the game?
I have even seen several people selling scripts that automate the admin functions of a 'pixels for sale' page so that you can set up your own pixel site without having to manually add graphics/links etc! At least this shows a little imagination and doesn't rip off the original idea completely :-)
In summary, Alex has to be commended for coming up with a brilliantly simple idea and for actually seeing it through. The advertisers will almost certainly be seeing increased traffic since the very nature of the site encourages visitors to click on a couple of graphics 'just to see'. Of course, this traffic won't be targeted and for the most part therefore, will be pretty poor quality but as they say, there is no such thing as bad traffic.
The Million Dollar Home Page is a perfect example of how a basic idea can be let loose online and allowed to generate a small fortune from nothing in a very short space of time. The best ideas are yet to come and to repeat a quote that I used a few months ago, 'Most of the people that will become Internet millionaires don't even have a website yet...'
Three months ago Alex fell into that category, today he has a website and I willing to bet that in a few months time he will also have the $1m to go with it. Will it be your turn next....?
About the Author
Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html
The four types of mini sites you can create and make money from.
Copyright 2005 Emmanuel Segui
Mini-sites are growing up all over the web because they are so easy to set up and fast to provide a stream of passive income. You can become a webmaster in a couple of weeks and learn how to create many mini websites for fun or for profit.
A mini-site is a two or three page website that is designed for a specific task: either to sell something, get a subscription or to make money as an affiliate for somebody else.
There are four types of mini-sites you can create, without knowing any code, which can bring you four different streams of internet income.
1. Creating a "1-page" sales letter mini-site. Obviously, this is the first type of website that you will think of. A "1-page" sales letter mini-site's main purpose is to sell your own product, whether it is an ebook, some software or multi-media product. When finished, your mini-site contains your sales letter page and your order page where people can download the product they just purchased. If you already have templates of these two, you can create your mini-site in 10 minutes flat.
2. Creating an "affiliate showcase" mini-site. An "affiliate Showcase" mini-site is an organized page where you offer a list of products people can buy. An affiliate is where you advertise someone's product and when someone buy's it, thanks to your publicity, you get a percentage. The products you recommend to your potential clients need to be related to each other. For example, If you are in the health and fitness industry, you will recommend a weight loss ebook or a good fitness equipment guide. You can include private sites to get a coach and/or a specific program on fitness.
3. Creating a "simple newsletter" mini-site Newsletters serve several purposes. A newsletter will help you position yourself as an expert, help you build credibility and rapport. Setting up a simple newsletter mini-site has one purpose only: get as many subscribers as possible. When you position yourself as an expert through the different issues of your newsletters which you send out every week, two weeks or even every month, you can recommend products or services related to your niche market. That's how you create another stream of income through newsletter or Ezine marketing.
4. Creating an "about me" page mini-site. An "About Me" page mini-site is simply a site where you will tell the world about yourself and your interests. On this page, you will set up links to your products, or newsletters to your affiliate's products. By getting traffic to this kind of site, you can convert people into buyers and make another streams of internet income.
You don't need to know programming. You don't need to be a computer geek, buy expensive software, or pay outrageous fees to a webmaster. With professional-looking templates, you can set up a mini-site with graphics, headlines and a mini sales letter in about 3 hours. If you want to elaborate a more complicated mini-site with a long sales letter, some compelling graphics, powerful headlines and a subscription box that will help you generate leads like crazy, you would spend 2 to 3 days.
About the Author
Create a simple mini-site in 10 minutes flat with Jim Edwards' wildly successful course. With professional-looking templates and all the software you need, you own everything possible to create as many mini-sites as you want, quickly, painlessly and fast.Check out at http://www.minisitecreatorreport.com
|
|
