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This is a long page. But if you are seriously considering getting a web site, then I suggest that you take the time to read this entire page.
First, the bad news... Web sites are not for everybody, in the same way that telephone book “yellow page” ads, newspaper ads or inserts, direct mail ads, radio or television commercials, customized coffee cups, calendars, or an ad on one of those plastic phone book covers, are not for everybody. Don’t expect to “get rich quick” from a web site, despite what you may have seen or heard in a TV infomercial. To have a financially successful web site, you must have two things: lots of site visitors, and a product or service that is both sufficiently unique and attractively priced, as compared to the countless other web sites selling similar products or services. For example: One of my previous clients had a web site online for a year. During that time, they had good placement in the results of several of the popular search engines. Their web site received about 4,500 hits. They had a total of zero sales. Many E-business (E-commerce) web sites do not even produce enough income to pay for themselves, much less turn a profit for the business. Look at the size and complexity of some of the web sites of the larger on-line companies, then imagine the size of the full time staff they need, and how much it must cost, to create and maintain those sites. If your E-business does become successful, have you given any thought as to how you are going to fulfill your orders? That is, do/will you have sufficient:
Now the good news... A business web site can be a terrific way for your potential customers to learn about or purchase your product(s) or service(s). Think of your web site as a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sales clerk - always available and always ready to answer any customer’s questions. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of business web sites - informative and sales. Informative sites simply tell your visitors various facts about your products or services. Informative sites are like a sales associate telling a customer about your items. Keep in mind that most visitors to your business web site don’t care
about you, or your company’s history, mission statement, financial
report, goals, objectives, organizational chart, etc. Most of your
visitors just want information about your product(s) or service(s).
Sales sites are intended to be a point of sale for your product(s) or service(s) . Buyers want a quick way to find the items you offer, and a secure way to purchase them. If you take the time to carefully plan the content (text, photos, etc.) of your web site, you will have a very effective sales tool.
What I think... Most visitors will come to your business web site to learn about your product(s) or service(s), not to be entertained. The exception is, of course, if your business and web site are an entertainment venture! Visitors will come to your personal web site to learn about your views and opinions , or about yourself or family. On either type of site, I think it is a bad idea to have a “banner exchange”, links to other stores, and web rings on your site; or at least don’t have them on your home page. These devices can bring visitors to your web site, but... those visitors came from someone else’s web site. You want your visitors to stay at your site long enough to look around (and maybe buy some of your stuff); so why give them an easy way to leave your site? Yes, you might earn some money from click throughs or by sales on banner ads, but what is the purpose of your web site - is it to sell your products or services, or to sell someone else’s stuff? Concerning banner ads. Most banner ad companies accept banners from large businesses for a fee, then place the ad “in rotation” to be displayed on other web sites. When you click on one of those ads, you are taken to the business’s web site. Look around on that web site. Notice that a lot of these big web sites do not themselves have banner ads? Hmmm. Their paid ad got you to their site, and they don’t want to promote someone else’s products or services, or to give you an easy way to leave. These same banner ad companies will often accept your ad to be displayed on other web sites. They will either charge a small fee and/or require you to give them space on your web site for their rotating banners to be displayed. You will get your banner mixed in with other “small” web site banners, and the big paid ads. Who knows what products or services these banner ads will be promoting on your site - competing products or services, or objectionable material? Banner ads also take up space on your page, add to the time it takes for your page to load in a visitor’s browser, and often must be placed “above the fold” of your web page. “Above the fold” means that the ad must be placed in such a way that a visitor need not scroll down the page to see the ad. This “above the fold” area is considered prime space on a web page. This is where your information should be! So, if you don’t have banner ads, link exchanges, web rings, etc., how do you get visitors to your business web site? Two ways - web search engines and advertising.
Advertising. To get visitors to your web site, you must advertise your web site. Put your web site “address” on EVERYTHING you have - business cards, letterhead, envelopes, telephone memo pads, newspaper ads, flyers, brochures, booklets , your phone book listing, E-mail “signatures”, invoices, estimates, statements, receipts, the sides of your vehicle, FAX cover sheets, refrigerator magnets, promotional items like pens or key chains, etc. Even include it in the outgoing message of your telephone answering machine, or as a part of the message delivered by your telephone answering service. Chances are, you are not offering services or products to the entire world - you’re not that large of a business. Instead, you are probably trying to reach a market within some specific distance of your location. (If you are that large of a business, then I might not be the web builder you need.)
For Personal or Informative sites... If your site gives away stuff (e.g.: information) instead of selling stuff, or if your web site is a “personal” site, then you probably will want banner ads, link exchanges, “Associate” sales programs, web rings, etc., to help promote and pay for your site. But you are still probably not going to get rich. Consider these situations: Example #1. Some time ago, America Online®™ was offering US$50 to a web site owner, if the owner placed an ad for AOL®™ on their site. That sounds like an easy way to make $50. But consider this - to GET that $50, one of your site visitors had to click the link, AND join AOL®™, AND they must have remained a member of AOL®™ for three months. At the time, AOL®™ was claiming to have over 33 million members. Of all the world wide Internet visitors to your web site, what percentage might have been current or past AOL®™ members who WOULDN’T click on the link, what percentage were NOT current or past AOL®™ members who might click on the link, and what percentage of those who did click were sufficiently dissatisfied with their current Internet Service Provider (ISP ) to actually join AOL®™ as a result of seeing the ad on your site - an ad that they’ve probably already seen and ignored on countless other web sites? Example #2 . Associate sales programs like Commission Junction™ or AMAZON .COM™ or Google Adwords™ pay a commission of the sales that are a result of one of your site visitors making a purchase. All you have to do is put an ad or link on your site to the product or program. But many associate programs will send you a payment check ONLY at specified intervals throughout the year, and ONLY if the amount owed to you is more than some specified amount. For you to earn a commission, one of your site visitors must click the link and make a purchase. You must have enough visitors click the link and make a purchase in order to accumulate enough commission to have the associate program owner actually send you a check. How often have YOU clicked on an ad, and then made a purchase? Example #3 . Various marketing programs offer easy web site creation and suggest the possibility of quick income. The “Internet Tool Box”™, the “Specialty Marketing Corporation (SMC)”™, and the “Internet Treasure Chest”™ are three companies that have advertised on TV. They are similar in that they emphasize how easily you can get a web site of your own and start selling on the Internet. These companies basically can build a web site for you . If you don’t have your own product or service to sell, they offer their own products for you to sell on your web site. But consider this - the web site they build for you (or that you build using their templates and wizards) will probably be visually similar to many other web sites from that company, and the products on “your” web site will probably be among the same selection as offered on those other web sites. What will set your site or product(s) apart from the many other sites of the people who have enrolled in the same marketing program? Why should/would anyone buy from your site instead of from one of the others? Also consider pricing. I’ve seen one claim that you could make a profit of $40 , by selling an item for $49.95 that you bought for $9.95. Yes, that is a profit of $40, but only if you manage to sell the item for $49.95. How many other web sites are selling the same item for less than $49.95? If you price it at $49 .95, why should anyone buy from you? Result - zero profit. The key to making money by selling your product or service is to get a LOT of people to visit your web site. The more people who visit your web site, the higher the likelihood is that one of them will “click and buy”. The way to get more people to visit your web site is by advertising (or through banner ads, associate programs, and marketing programs). And advertising is going to cost you! And, no, search engines are not going to send enough visitors to your web site to make you rich. By the way, did you notice there are no banner advertisements for other
businesses anywhere in this site? That’s because this entire site is one big ad for my services!
revised: March 22, 2007
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