Hello Reading List members!
This week's tip is guaranteed to bring you success . . . eventually.
Most small business owners would not be in business if they hadn't
had a strong idea they thought other people would give them money
for! One of my favorite quotes is from Michael Gerber, a well
known small business consultant. He says, "Most small business
owners are not entrepreneurs. Most small business owners are technicians,
suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure!"
What is the difference between "Joe's Muffler Shop" and Midas
Mufflers? Joe wants to install mufflers and the entrepreneur that
created Midas wanted to run a successful business! The web has
the potential to create a successful business if that is your
goal.
How do I do that? You might ask. Just take a look around the web.
There are endless sources of free advice and guess what! WebSite
101 is loaded with them on our links page at http://www.website101.com/wlinks.html
.
My recommendation is to thouroughly read all the free advice you
can get your hands on. One of those sources is Mike Scanlin who
contributed our guest article (below) today. I'm going to venture
to offer more free advice myself. Look for ways to improve your
web presence daily. If you'd like to apply for the WebSite101
A+ Award that would be a good place to start. Go to http://www.website101.com/Award.html
. We require a list of 8 ingredients to small business e-commerce
success. Complete explanations are provided on how to win so you
can't fail. But that doesn't mean it's easy!
Here's a tip from Mike Scanlin:
Here's a way for two sites to increase each other's traffic, but
it's not a standard link exchange.
First, you need to give them something that they can put on their
web site to make their site more attractive. It needs to be some
kind of content that you can update on your end, without the other
site having to do any daily maintenance. It could be daily news,
movie reviews, weather photos, jokes, etc.
I chose Banner Tips (how to make effective advertisements). I
started offering free Banner Tips content in exchange for having
the Banner Tip be a link back to my site. I give people a couple
of lines of HTML that load a gif image off of my server for display
on their web page, like this:
<!-- Begin Four Corners banner-tip-of-the-day --> <br><br>
<P><A HREF="http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/totd/rt.cgi"><IMG
SRC="http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/totd/nph-rt.cgi"
WIDTH=200
HEIGHT=100 ALT="Four Corners Banner Tip of the Day"
BORDER=0></A></P>
<!-- End Four Corners banner-tip-of-the-day -->
The script on my site automatically changes the image it returns
at midnight each night. The advantage for client sites is that
their traffic will increase as people come back on a daily basis
to see the Banner Tip of The Day. We, of course, also benefit
by people clicking on the Banner Tip and coming to our site.
If you've got original content on your site then you could probably
package it into 24-hour slices and offer to give away one slice
each day to sites that display it and link it back to you.
Find out more about our Banner Tip offer here:
http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/tipOfTheDay.shtml
Good luck,
Mike Scanlin
Thanks for the great idea Mike! I encourage everyone to take a
look at Mikes site, it's loaded with great ideas.
See you next week!
Mike Valentine
mailto:learn@website101.com
