Online Marketing your Small Business
For many small business owners, one of the most time sucking experiences is having to deal with the email or phone call from an online marketing company.
These can come in several forms – the unsolicited email that drops into your inbox offering to get your site ranking at the top of Google with the addition of a large number of back-links. Search Engine Optimization is the name of their game and their touting for your business, playing on your insecurity about the current position of your website for the keywords you have chosen.
Or it could be the telephone call from a local listing directory. Initially these are to ‘confirm the details of your free listing’, but the conversation soon moves on to ways in which you could improve the visibility of your company on the internet with one of their enhanced listings. Hold out against signing up for the first offer and you will find yourself pressured into accepting a much better offer, including a whole raft of keywords and areas, for a greatly reduced price. They’re so desperate to get you signed up that they’ll promise you the world in return for a monthly payment.
The thing about online listing directories is that, even though they say they have lots of regular visitors, if their site does not rank on the front page of Google for your search term, then it is unlikely that many people are going to find your company through their auspices.
The thing to remember is that any good online marketing company will not be ringing round or emailing touting for business, these will work on recommendation and referral as one contented business owner pass their details to his friends – although not necessarily his competitors.
The cold callers will offer you all sorts of ways to get onto the first page of Google, all of which will involve you giving them money. But one thing they won’t mention is probably the most effective things you can do to market your own small business online – grabbing yourself a Google Places page.
These are free websites given away by Google to local bricks and mortar companies and which show up with a little red balloon marker at the top or sprinkled in amongst the search results for a particular keyword in a specific location.
The issue of keywords is something that they will talk about, but they will try to push you into phrases for which they already have categories, and probably a large number of free subscribers so that you are encouraged to pay for a premium listing to rise above your competitors.
It’s a good idea to choose your online marketing company wisely because when it comes to marketing your small business, some do not always have your best interests at heart.
Earning Money with a Blog
One way to start business online or simply making money online is through a blog.
A blog is basically a website where an author regularly publishes articles, notes, or notes, which will appear in chronological order on the homepage of the blog, where readers tend to have the opportunity to comment on these publications.
Earn money with a blog requires patience and dedication, as to reach the blog is profitable, it is necessary to have a good number of visitor traffic (which may take some time), and to achieve this end, necessary to publish new content constantly.
However, in the long run, a blog can become a viable alternative, provided that we have created a blog attractive and we have captured a good number of followers or readers.
Let we see what are the necessary steps to make money with a blog:
1. Create an attractive blog
First we must strive to create an attractive blog, that is, a blog that this good design, and contains publications of interest to the public to which it is directed.
To create our blog, we can make use of any of the free blogging platforms that exist on the Internet, which also offer free hosting for our blog, allow us to easily manage, the main of these platforms are Blogger and WordPress.com.
However, having a blog on these platforms has certain limitations, such as the design of the blog, the number of pages that can be created, the number of visits which can have, etc.
Therefore it is recommended to create a blog with own accommodation, where it is necessary to pay a cost for accommodation and domain name, but is generally very low.
An alternative is to use platforms such as WordPress.org (though in order to use it you must have a minimum knowledge in web design) or in any event, we always have the option of hiring the services of a professional designer to create us our blog.
2. Attract a good traffic visiting
The next step, once we have created our blog, is to attract good visitor traffic, i.e., a good number of followers or readers.
Have a good visitor traffic can take some time, especially considering the number of blogs that exist today, albeit with a little patience and dedication can get a good number of followers or readers in a few months.
To attract more visitors to our blog can include your address in some important directories, participate in forums or other blogs of similar theme to our blog for the blog seek to include the words or key phrases for which we want to be found in search engines, etc.
But the best way to attract visitors is to produce consistently interesting content to our target audience, and are of good quality, so that visitors or other owners of blogs or websites to recommend they arrive.
3. Make profitable blog
Once we have an attractive blog, and through our regular publications, and of good quality, we have succeeded in obtaining a good visitor traffic, it’s time to make our blog to be profitable, that is, start making money with it .
For this there are several alternatives, we see the four main:
* Rental of advertising space: is rent space in our blog to other sites so they can place their ads or advertising banners.
* Advertising Systems: a variation on the rental of advertising space which is the use of advertising systems, which we pay for clicks or impressions that have their ads on our blog, the best known of these systems is AdSense.
* Sell products themselves: is to sell proprietary products related to the topic of our blog, can be digital products (such as eBooks) or physical (e.g. clothing), in which case it may be necessary to have a virtual store annexed to the blog.
* Affiliate Programs: This option is to promote products of others, and earn a commission or percentage of sales for each person referred to the website where you sell products, and make a purchase.
