How to Make a Profitable Website for Small Service Based Businesses

Many small businesses think that their website is just a representation of their business online. This is not online marketing, and you are really not getting the value out of what you spent. With a little help with (SEO) search engine optimisation and website design, you could well turn your online marketing efforts into a real money spinner, and an alternative revenue source for your serviced based small business.

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Just because you have a website does not mean you will make money. As with every business, you will need to think about your revenue stream. If you have an existing business, there are many ways to make a website that will be profitable. However, that will require some different strategies. Here is a look at some of the issues to think about if you are running a small service trade or business, and what a website and SEO can do for your business.

• Promotion. One of the major reasons why many small businesses should have a website is to give them promotion. In this case, your website might not be actually earning you money, but it will be giving you a whole lot of promotion that is not available to you otherwise. Advertising is expensive, but with your expert knowledge, you can create an informative site, that over time, will give you a face and a voice in the market. It does not matter how small you are, even individuals can become very well known and very famous, if they know how to market themselves online.
• Generate Leads. The internet has turned to the place where people go to find something or to get an answer to a problem. If your website provides both kinds of information, you will come up in their search. This is how you generate business leads. Think of it as the Yellow Pages of the world. Even the Yellow Pages itself is used more online than the actual book. If you are a service orientated business, you are probably looking for leads. With more leads, you will generate more business, where you will either need to increase the size of your business, or increase your billing due to the high demand for your services. There is one simple rule to this world, the more popular you are, the more money you will get.
• Advertising Revenue Plus. Have you ever wondered how those people make money from a website and all they do is write articles or a blog? This is in the form of Google Adverts. If your site gets lots of hits because people are reading your blog, you can be generating money from the adverts Google will place there. This is very easy to set-up with a simple Google Account. You could also earn money from Affiliate Marketing. Basically, you sign up to other products online that you believe in, and you provide links, and the like to them, on your site. If people buy those products or services after clicking through your site, then you will be paid a commission. Again, this is very easy to set up. You could be earning this money from the blog part of your site pretty easily if you wanted. It won’t be millions of dollars, but you will be making some direct cash from your own informative content as well as your leads.
• Directory Listing. You should make sure you are in those online directory listings with correct and up-to-date information. All of your listings should have a link to your website. Most directory listings will come up in a search, and this is a very easy way to get online users to your site.
• E-Commerce. E-commerce is where the real money is. This is the sale of products online. More and more shoppers are turning to online sales. It means you can open up your store to a huge audience and earn a lot of money. What you need, is a product to sell. You want to try and keep this as automated as possible. You can’t be working for every order you get, so you will need to invent a product you can sell. Let’s look at the example of a trade business. If you prepared an eBook about DIY, and because your articles and information on your site are so good, you could be selling to your website users. Perhaps you set the price for only $4.99 per paid download. If a hundred people a day were downloading it, you might not even have to work anymore. There are simple tools that allow you to make it difficult for others to share the eBook after they have bought it, and even easier tools to make it easy for them to pay.

It is possible to make money online if you are promoting yourself, and to do that, you will need to understand some of the principles of Search Engine Optimization. The benefits of promotion, direct business leads, popularity, and if you can manage it, e-commerce, could change your business and lifestyle forever.