Get
Online in 24 Hours!
3
Tips to market your small business idea on the web
overnight
You’ve
got a great product or service idea, and you want to get
it online quickly. Think you’ll need 6 to 8 weeks to
get yourself up and running? Think again. If you’re
itching to get online, you can get most of the work done
in just 6 to 8 hours. Here’s how:
Build
a Website
– Given your short timeframe, stick with a one-page
layout for now. That should be just enough to tell
visitors to your website about your valuable product or
service offering. If you’re not a web designer,
don’t worry. You have two options to get going. The
first is to purchase a copy of Microsoft FrontPage.
FrontPage is by far the easiest product to use for
designing websites. If you are familiar with Microsoft
products, you’ll be fairly comfortable with the user
interface and should have no trouble getting started.
Don’t worry if you’re not a graphic designer either,
as there are some great websites online that sell
FrontPage Templates that will dress up your website in a
hurry. For less than $30, you can purchase a template
designed by a professional, drop your text into their
layout, and have a crisp, well designed looking site in
under an hour!
Alternatively,
you could search websites such as www.cnet.com to locate
a shareware web design program to set up a simple web
page, although the FrontPage templates will not likely
be compatible with this type of program.
Accept
Credit Cards
– You can look to PayPal to get started with credit
card acceptance online. They will accept all major
credit cards for you, then forward the funds to your
PayPal account less a specified handling fee. You can
set up a small business account in minutes, although you
won’t be able to access your funds until you’ve
completed a verification process. Still, you will have
the ability to accept your customer’s credit cards
online, a key to selling anything over the internet.
They’ll even provide you with some pre-written code
that you can simply cut and paste into your website,
which will result in a professional “Buy Now” button
appearing on your site. The button will link people
directly to your order page on PayPal’s website.
Drive
Traffic
– The Internet can be a lonely place if you don’t
drive traffic to your website. With so many sites out
there, nobody will know you exist if you don’t promote
your website. The quickest way to do this is with Google
AdWords. The AdWords program is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
arrangement, whereby you bid on certain keywords that
you think web surfers might type into a Google search to
find a product or service like yours. (For example,
“Small Business Marketing” would be a term
applicable to your business if you offered some type of
marketing advice to small businesses).
When someone searches on your chosen term(s) a
small ad appears on the right side of the screen that
links to your website. You only pay if someone actually
visits your website.
A
Google AdWords campaign can be up and running in less
than 10 minutes once you have provided them with the
necessary billing information for your marketing
campaign.
Using
these three steps, you could realistically build a
website, set up a basic e-commerce credit card
acceptance facility, drive traffic to your site, and
most importantly, generate revenue overnight. If you are
serious about an online venture, your one-page site
should just be a starting point. You’ll need to
continuously build and improve your website to maintain
a professional online presence.
However, if you really need to get going in a
hurry, you can use these 3 steps to get online in no
time flat.
Article
contents © 2004 by marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
Will
Dylan is the Author of “Small Business Big
Marketing” a powerful e-book for small businesses
available through his website www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
. You can contact Will at askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
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