PROMOTING YOUR ONLINE HOME BASED BUSINESS

You may have heard so many so-called “online marketing gurus” preaching as if everything in online business depended on traffic to your website. This could have been true if online business just meant trying to sell something over the Internet. It would also be a valid argument if there were not home based business systems on the market that would send qualified customers to your site. Furthermore, if this were true, how on earth would your home based online business really make money if your site were an auction site?

Well, then what does it mean to promote your home based business online? The truth is that online business principles are not hugely different from those followed by conventional businesses. You can't disconnect online business from the realities of the market, as you are still selling to real people.

Promoting Your Online Business

Promoting an online home based business calls for 3 things: increasing traffic to your website, selling goods/services that are worth the money and retaining/adding to your customer base.

Increasing Traffic : Increasing traffic to your site will help with your overall website visibility. That is, it will get your site in front of more people and increase your chances of making a sale. Though increasing traffic is not the only thing that you should do to promote your online home based business, here are 4 tips that can help you make it happen:

•  Optimize for the top 5-6 search engines. This involves several steps such as getting the right metatags, content and keywords placed strategically all over your website. You should know by now that most of the traffic for both new and well-known sites is generated by search engines.

•  Build link and content exchanges so that they generate organic traffic and link popularity with search engines. Certain search engines count these inbound links for ranking.

•  Use e-zines, blogs and forums to popularize your sites. Make sure to make a posting with a link to your home page. This is a very powerful tool. Readers can follow the links into your site, which helps with your site promotion efforts, and also helps to increase link popularity. E-zine articles have the advantage of getting picked up and published in numerous sites.

•  Text advertisements are triggered by your keywords in search engine results pages. These PPC ads are worth trying as you only pay per click. This way, your online home based business receives relevant, target traffic.

Worth the Money : You can't ignore this, as customers really want to substitute offline buying with online buying. What sells offline must work online as well. Visitors to your website are motivated to buy for all the same reasons that they would offline, with the added plus of convenience. Reliability, quality and low cost are the 3 mantras that drive them to opt for the convenience of Internet purchasing. On the other hand, the site design should be convince the visitor to click through and take action. A good design and pages such as privacy policy, about us, contact us and feedback/complaint are a must. In addition, logos from security agencies like Verisign ® and a 24/7 helpline will help increase your credibility and put your visitors at ease about their purchases. Don't forget to add a FAQ page where you should answer any questions. As with any home based Internet business, you need to include after-sales service and warranties. In one word, it is trustworthiness that will win over visitors to your website.

What if your online business is e-zine where you just publish free articles? It is the trustworthiness created by solid, no frills content. A slight modification of this will apply for auction businesses as well.

Customer Base : As with a brick-and-mortar business (minus the headaches of a conventional business), adopt what conventional businesses do to retain/expand your customer base. A good experience in your website, quality freebies or money back guarantees will work in your favor. The trick to making your online home based business succeed lies in motivating your visitors to make a purchase, rather than have them just be “tire kickers”. Good Internet businesses that satisfy their visitors usually gain new sales through word of mouth advertising, testimonials and referrals.