Business Loan

The goal of this business is to market a one or two page mini site to small merchants to provide their customers with weekly online specials or online coupons. The site would market to their repeat customers or introduce potential customers to their services. It's much cheaper to advertise to your existing customer base via web page that it is to buy other media advertising. It will also allow the business to present more information regarding their products, services and rates for less cost than other media advertising. For instance, a delicatessen might have daily specials that can be entered on their web page every week. They might have a two for one coupon for certain sandwiches. Two for one coupons are very effective for beauty and esthetic salons. Two manicures for the price of one might bring in a new repeat customer.

Many professionals design expensive web sites for large businesses. That leaves a niche for the small work at home entrepreneur.

Can you build a simple one page web site or alter a web site template? These are main things you need to know.

1. How to use a web building program such as the free NVU program. 2. How to Insert, delete or adjust tables.

3. How to insert text and format text in tables.

4. How to insert Images in Tables.

NVU can be used to generate meta tags to be inserted in your html page. These are necessary to direct searches to the site. For example, keywords for a drycleaner, drycleaner, dry-cleaning, clothing repair, "business city', "business neighborhood or street".

If you cannot answer yes to all of the above, don't lose hope. There are many web sites offering free instruction and tutorials in basic html and the Users' Guide for NVU will offer help in using the program. Just download NVU, their guide, a free template and start experimenting. NVU allows you to undo the last action. Also just don't save your work, if you don't like it.

The basics of this small work at home enterprise are as follows:

1. Contact a few small merchants with repeat customers. Offer to build a simple web site to advertise their weekly specials or coupons. You'll have to some research to come up with acceptable rates. You could design a site for $30 to $50 then negotiate a monthly amount for maintenance and charges for changes. Your rates would depend on how many changes would be required. I think a monthly maintenance amount is important because you will have to check a site often to ensure it is up and accessible. There are free stat counters available to check the number of hits a site receives.

2. You can save yourself time by scanning the advertising in local daily and weekly papers. Since the advertising rates in weekly or free advertising papers are the lowest, give them particular attention. If a business is advertising and does not include a web site, you have a prospect. The first thing any merchant will do is advertise his web site. Some good prospects are green grocers, cafes, drycleaners, beauty salons, delicatessens and fabric stores. Any small independent business with repeat customers is a potential prospect.

3. Offer to send out a newsletter to customers for an additional cost per submission. If the merchant wants to send out a newsletter occasionally to his customers, he should collect their email addresses.
4. The merchant should hand out a small ad or card to each customer directing them to his new web site, and he should also add his web site to any other media ads.

Your beginning costs for this enterprise are basically shoe leather and some printing of advertising materials. You'll need business cards, rate cards and contract sheets outlining your services. You can use free web hosting, free programs, free banners, free graphics, and free templates to build your web sites.

A typical web site page might comprise a top banner with the merchants name, a table with the store location and phone, a secondary table with his rates for services, and a third table with his weekly specials or a coupon. The reason for using tables for each segment of your page is that they are easy to edit. Once your simple site is up, you can easily change the specials or coupons without much work. I recommend coupons on each site because any honored coupons would demonstrate the effectiveness of the site. If the merchant has a picture of his store, logo or letterhead, you can scan it and insert the image into a table on the web site.

Explain to the merchant that you can use free domain hosting and free domain names, but it always looks more professional for a business to have its own domain name and .com is the most recognized. However, one of the others might have a name more appropriate to the business. The costs for acquiring a domain are usually less than $10 with free hosting for a small site.

These options should be outlined and explained to the merchant so that he understands the scope of your service. You should have a contract sheet with the cost of designing the site, cost for monthly maintenance, cost for weekly or monthly changes to rates specials or coupons, cost for maintenance of customer email lists and cost for preparing and sending out newsletters.

If the merchant wants a domain name or web hosting, he should be asked to pay for it up front. As you do need to meet with local merchants, it's necessary to dress appropriately, be business oriented and be well groomed. Avoid wearing very casual clothes unless you live in a beach community.

After your initial contacts with the merchant, billings and web site changes could be handled by telephone and email.

So there you have it. A simple business, it's not rocket science. I would do it myself if I didn't travel so much. You would be providing a very necessary service to the small business community.