Work
at
Home on a Shoestring
Many
professionals design expensive web sites for large
businesses.and that leaves a lot of room for the small work at home
entrepreneur. The basics of this small work at home
enterprise
are as follows:
1.
Contact and convince a few small merchants with repeat customers that
you can build a simple website to advertise their weekly specials or
coupons. Start with one! Offer a one to three month
free
trial and keep your prices low. You’ll
have to do
some research to find out the prices that the professionals
charge. That’s easily done by visiting their web
pages.
2.
You can save yourself time by scanning the advertising in local daily
and weekly papers. If a business is advertising and does not
include a website, you have a prospect. The first thing any
merchant will do is advertise his website.
3.
Convince the merchant to obtain email addresses from each of his
customers
4.
Convince the merchant to hand out a small ad directing them to his
website.
5.
Build mailing lists from his customer base for an additional cost.
6.
Offer to send out a newsletter to his customers for an additional cost
per submission.
Your
beginning costs for this enterprise are basically shoe leather and some
printing of advertising materials. You’ll need
business
cards, rate cards and contract sheets outlining your
services.
You can use free web hosting, free programs, free banners, free
graphics, and free
templates to build your websites. There are many
available. I use NVU, a free program to build
websites. Your website does not have to
be fancy,
it could consist of only one or two pages. An example for a
dry cleaner might be a main page with a banner with the
business name,
a secondary table (box) with store location, phone number and etc. The
next table could be a listing of all his services and rates.
Then
at the bottom or on second page a coupon or the weekly
special.
The reason for using tables for each segment of your page is that they
are easy to edit. Once your simple site is up, you can easily
change the specials or coupons without much work.
If
he has
a picture of his store, logo or letterhead, you can scan them and
insert the images on the website.
Eventually,
you will need an email responder service, or design your own
system. You may explain to the merchant that you
can use
free domain hosting and free domain names, but it always looks more
professional for a business to have its own domain name and .com is the
most recognized. However, one of the others might have a name
more appropriate to the business. The costs for acquiring a
domain are usually less than $10 with free hosting for a small site.
These
options should be outlined and explained to the merchant so that he
understands the scope of the service you offer. For example,
you
should have a contract sheet with the cost of designing a one or two
page site, costs for weekly or monthly changes to rates specials or
coupons, costs for maintenance of customer email
lists
and costs for preparing newsletters or sending out emailed newsletters
or coupons.
The
merchant would be asked to pay for obtaining
a
domain name or web hosting as well as an email responder service if he
wants one. The responder service is good because the customer
is
asked to opt into the service and is given the ability to opt
out. I don’t think it’s a good idea to
get involved
in printing paper newsletters or using snail mail, it’s
expensive
and not that effective for the small merchant.
Every
time I head off to nearest city to shop, I visit the grocery and green
grocers websites to see the weekly specials and I’m sure
I’m not the only one. I have usually
obtained the
website from a local weekly paper ad or from a web search. I
think this is a super idea for a home business. As you do
have
to
meet
with local merchants, it’s necessary to dress appropriately
and
be business oriented. Not that you have to wear suits or
fancy
clothes, just stay away from very casual clothes and be well groomed.
Of
course, I have to get a plug is for the Nice
Offers
program offered by
SFI. It offers merchants free online coupon
advertising. I
go over that option in detail on my Nov. 6, 2006
Blog.
Again, the start up costs are low. SFI maintains the website
and bills the merchants for the agreed upon fees and pays you a
commission. Click
Here to visit the Nice Offers site and find out
more information regarding their program.
Also,
Top
Online Profits will guide through the process of setting
up a
professional website. Their program very nearly forces you to learn
what's necessary to become a successful Internet marketer and
webmaster. Their costs are low,
about $60 a year for the program. Click Here for more
information.
The
number one ranked web hosting service is iPowerweb
for about $100 a
year for their basic service. It's what I use and
I'm very happy
with their service. Click
Here for more info.
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At Home Opportunities
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