If you consider your web site a money pit, you are not alone. Quite a few business owners have told me that they have web sites because "everyone else has a web site", but they haven't gotten any business from their web site. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. Many of them have paid thousands of dollars to web designers to create the web sites for them, and than the web sites just sit there, gathering the proverbial Internet dust, and getting enormous traffic consisting of three to five unique visitors a month.
Your web site should not be languishing in one of the rarely visited corners of the Net. Instead, it should be working 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year getting leads and clients for your business. It should serve as marketing brochure and as your best salesperson (who incidentally never sleeps, and doesn't require either salary or commissions).
So how do you turn your dust collector into a lean, mean sales machine? First, you need to lay down the infrastructure for your online business. Here are three guidelines your web site should adhere to before its initial debut:
- Your web site must be easy to navigate, understand and use. When a web surfer comes to a web site and doesn't understand what the web site is about in the first few minutes, the surfer moves on to the next web site (trust me, there lots of them out there. Approximately 2.7 billion at last count, give or take a few billion).
If the purpose and intent of your web site is not blatantly obvious, a surfer will move on. If your web site is difficult to navigate, a surfer will move on. If your web site is hard to use (for example, it is not obvious how to contact you or hire you) a surfer will move on.
- Your web site must discuss what you do AND how what you do will benefit your customers. Let's say Sue and Jane are both weight loss coaches. Sue's web site says that Sue is a weight loss coach. Jane's web site says that Jane is a weight loss coach who helps women look and feel better by losing 30 pounds in 3 months.
Which coach sounds more appealing? The one who not only states what she does, but also shows what is in it for the customer. The site must answer a fundamental question: Why should I hire you?
- Have a newsletter sign up box on your web site. The majority of your web site visitors will not contact you about your services after visiting your web site, but they will subscribe for a free newsletter. By subscribing, they give you permission to send them your information-packed newsletter, which will also serve as a reminder about your business.
Without a newsletter, many people will visit your web site once and promptly forget about it 10 minutes after leaving it. By having a newsletter, you are able to capture these visitors, and tell them about your business again and again.
Take action today! Take a critical look at your web site and make sure that it conforms to the guidelines outlined above. A website that follows these forms a solid foundation for having a marketable web site for your business.
Having an online business website and driving targeted traffic to that website is what all webmasters eventually come to focus on. The combination of targeted traffic and a well positioned website can be a very good way to make money online in the form of residual income. Once you have a website up and running adding content will only make your site grow in page number. Each one of your web pages has potential to make you money. Thus, the more pages on your website the more money you can make from them. This article will discuss some of the more popular methods.
Creating a free blog, or positioning one on your online business website will allow you to drive traffic to multiple pages of your website. This is to your benefit because each page can represent one visitor. You can count your potential visitor count by the number of pages on your website. If you can get each page recognized by the search engines then people will be able to search for the content of your page on a daily basis. This can bring you traffic every day of the year for each page.
Whatever your niche you need to make sure that the content of your site is very informative in nature. Whether you're making personal daily blog posts or submitting articles it is important that your website provides helpful information on all areas of your market or niche. Doing this will soon label you as an expert in your field and your content will be sought after, and so will the products and services you refer people to on those pages. This is how you make money online using content.
At the end of your content page you can refer visitors to products and services related to the content you place on a page. For example, of you run a health and fitness website it would make sense to have a resource box with links to other information and products which the reader might be interested in based on the content of the article or blog post. You can use articles and resource boxes to sell relevant information products such as e-books from the Click Bank affiliate network.
You can add an extra income source on each one of your web pages by allowing Google Adwords advertisements to run on your site. You can run the ads on side of your web page, at the top, or at the bottom. If configured correctly these ads will match the content of your web page, and you are paid a fee when an ad is clicked.
Each page of your website can be monetized in one way or another. As long as you keep your content fresh and original you will attract visitors to your ever growing number of web pages, and you will make money from every one of them.
Both Biana Babinsky & Michael Laleye are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Biana Babinsky has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Management, Recreation and Sports and E Books. Biana Babinsky teaches business owners how to make more money online. Learn how to get your web site to make money by getting Biana's