Small business Archives - Monetization Magic

What IS an Income Producing Website?

Quite simply, an income producing website is a website that produces more money than what it takes to keep it running each month. Every business person knows that it takes money to have a website and to keep it running. There are domain names to be purchased and hosting companies to pay to allow your website to be housed on their systems. Typically this amount is less than $20 each month. Business owners don’t mind spending money on their business if they know that they are getting a return on their money. If your website is not producing money for you, it might as well be an unlit billboard on a desolate desert highway in the middle of the night! Fortunately, there IS something that you can do about it.

Begin by finding out who sees your website. This will simply tell you about the traffic your website receives today. Think of this as being point A. This will tell you the good news and the bad news. The good news is you’ll know where people are going on your website and how long they stay. The bad news is you’ll know how small the traffic stream really is. You can find out who sees your website by installing Google Analytics on your website and allowing it to gather statistics while you work on the other items in this article.

Think about your ideal customer. If you can identify one customer in particular, an actual person with a pulse and a name, that is best. What are this customer’s needs in relation to your business? What do they buy? If they were to look for something to satisfy their need or problem and they wanted to use Google to search for a solution to their need or problem, what would they type into the search field to find that solution? What location do you want to service? Where is your ideal customer located? These are the items that make up your basic key words for your website: customer problem, customer need, location, services offered, best selling items. Your keywords need to be used on your website and in the content that you produce for your website.

Your customers are interested in your products and services and they want to know more about your business. This gives you an opportunity to create meaningful content to place on your website. Sell the sizzle of your product!

Your website has the ability to sell your products and services even when your business is closed. Allow it to do just that by providing a way for your customers to book their own appointments, email you, buy products from you, interact with polls about upcoming products that you’re thinking about offering, finding out about upcoming events and purchasing tickets to those events. Make it easy for the customer to interact with your site and they will continue to come back.

Just having a website is a great first step. Setting up the website to work for your is a wise business move because it begins to work for you and will free up your time and resources so that you can concentrate on your core business.

Create Your Own Groupon – Part 2

By SoftwareGirl

Don’t cut your own throat.

Sometimes it’s ok to give an incredible deal as long as you know it will bring you more business not take money out of your pocket. This is especially true if you are a small business. You can do many things as a small business to expand your business that doesn’t cause you to lose money as in the case of our example bakery.

Have everyone who responds register for an awesome give-away.

When running the special, offer an even bigger ridiculous special for one lucky person. Have everyone who is getting the first special register for the 2nd one. On the registration, collect name, email and phone number. The name and email you can use to communicate with the customer later and the phone number is to notify the winner.

Use the media to your advantage!

While you’re having the special, take a moment out to have the media interview you on TV. Create press releases for your business. Do an exclusive interview on the radio. Make sure you record both interviews to place on your website and then you can include an “As Seen On” badge for your website.

How to create your own?

Perhaps you’re a little leary of partnering with Groupon for your business expansion but you do still want to do something? The good news is that you can. Hold a one day sale. You can do it online or in your business. Create 1,000 flyers with your incredible offer. Hire someone to place the flyers on doors within a certain radius of your business. Then follow the rest of the tips outlined in this article. This way you control your exposure and you can start small.

Use your small size to your advantage.

Small businesses are great because you can change direction on a dime! You don’t need to wait for some board of directors to approve your decision once you have come up with a great idea. You can execute it as soon as you want. You could do a one day sale every month. Consider partnering with a nearby school and offer them a portion of the profits of the sales from your one day sale. If the first one works out well and you still want to expand your reach, do another sale and hand out more flyers or include another school. You could also include another business for instance, if you’re a pizzeria and you’re having a sale, you could offer a free skate session from the roller rink down the street. Get creative, make some money and have fun!

What are some of the sales or Groupons that you have done in the past that have worked well? Let’s hear about it! Leave your comment below.

Grow Your Leads by a Level of 10

By SoftwareGirl

With Anthony Robbins and Chet Holmes

Do you want to massively increase your flow of targeted leads, without increasing your marketing budget? Tony Robbins, recognized by Accenture, Harvard Business Review and American Express for his business accumen, and Chet Holmes, author of the best selling author of “The Ultimate Sales Machine”, show how to increase your lead flow by 10 times, with strategies and techniques that work for small business as well as multi-billion dollar corporations.

Best Advertising for Small Business Owners

By SoftwareGirl

Surely by now you’ve heard about the coupon sensation called Groupon? If you’re a small business owner, this is an excellent service! Since the buzz created with Groupon produces paying customers rather than just browsers, I consider this the best advertising for small business owners!

Groupon will use the social networks for you to get the word out about your special offering. They encourage deals to be sent out to friends or being using by friends to add to the fun. Prospective customers can use their social networks to arrange plans and further spread the word about your business.

Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. They send the deals to thousands of subscribers in their free daily email, and they send your business a ton of new customers. These are not just browsing folks on the internet, these are actual paying customers that have already purchased and are ready to redeem their coupon purchase. That’s the Groupon magic!

There are no out of pocket costs associated with being featured on Groupon. They make money by taking a piece of each Groupon they sell. In other words, they only win if you win – and you know what you’re getting at every step of the process.

Since a minimum number of people must buy for the offer to be valid, Groupon guarantees paying customers. These subscribers are not looking for “the perfect deal.” They’re looking for the perfect excuse to try something new. They get them to your business, and you bring them back again and again.

A Groupon feature puts you in front of thousands of subscribers in each Groupon city – with thousands more opting in each day. Their subscribers share your offer with everyone they know via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. This buzz will continue to attract new customers for months following your feature.

Just as you’ve seen people who have appeared on Oprah before they are ready, you should also be ready to receive a flood of customers to your business prior to advertising on Groupon. It makes you look better when you’re prepared and there’s less stress that way! Before advertising with Groupon, think ahead of time about how you will bring these new customers back again and again by offering a special promotion just for them once they visit your store.

Do you have a fitness business and you’re offering New Year New You packages? Perhaps you’d like to offer a special on a cruise celebration once they’ve reached their goal weight to show of their newly acquired physique? Or perhaps you could do a buy one get one at half price special for the cruise or other special event?

Groupon allows you to target a specific area which makes it great for opening up a new area of your town or state or section of the country. Perhaps you would like to couple it with a fund raising event to double your exposure and donate to a good cause as well.

Be ready to create a buzz about your incredible offering and get your message out to thousands of people for your next big launch. Contact Groupon today!