The Simple Business Guide
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The One Crucial Sentence
This discusses the first meeting with a perspective client (a small business owner) and the one crucial sentence that you should ALWAYS use to start the conversation.
After you exchange hellos with the business owner, your very next sentence MUST be…
“I’d like to offer you a free month’s listing for your website on our town’s portal website.”
Now, it doesn’t have to be said in those exact words, but that is the basic premise of how you should open the conversation.
This is true because you’re either going to get one of three responses to this…
1. “But I don’t have a website.”
2. “I’m interested, can you please tell me more”
3. “I’m not interested, thanks anyway.”
Now, the response you get might not be in those exact words, but you’re either going to get some interest, no interest, or the business owner won’t have a website.
If the owner has a website already, and is interested in a free month’s listing, then you can proceed to get him/her signed up (make sure you explain that starting in the 2nd month, they’ll have to pay for the listing – or you can still give them the free listing with an option of upgrading to a featured listing).
Tip: After the business owner signs up and gives you the info such as his url, etc. Go home and take a good look at his/her site.
Is it optimized for the search engines properly? Does it look like it was done by an amateur? See if you can figure out a way to make the website better. Write out a detailed plan explaining how you CAN make it better. Then approach the business owner with it and say that you have an announced bonus for him/her – a free website critique.
Then proceed to tell him/her that you also offer a website makeover package where you can optimize the site, which in turns help it rank better in the search engines, which in turns brings more potential customers to the site.
If the owner doesn’t have a website, then proceed to tell him/her about the benefits of having a website, etc. (Tip: Do some homework before you talk to the business owner and see if their competition has a website. If the competition has a website, be sure to bring that up.)
Building The Site
This covers building a site for a local business. It’s really easy to do, and I use a content management system (CMS) called WordPress to do it.
WordPress can be easily installed in minutes through the Fantastico feature in your cPanel account.
NOTE: If you do NOT have Fantastico you should really consider a quality hosting account (recommendations below). There is one more way to install WordPress via cPanel but you are own you own…
You’ll find Fantastico icon on the main page of your cPanel account after you log in. (NOTE: Your cPanel may have a different theme, but the Fantastico icon should be there. If NOT, upgrade to a better host provider): Click Here
Click on the “Fantastico De Luxe” and you’ll be taken to the next screen. On the left hand column of the next screen, you’ll find the option to install WordPress.
Click on that and then choose “New Installation”. You’ll be prompted to fill in some information, including the directory that you wish to install it in (I recommend installing it in the root directory).
Fill in all of the info, including the admin username and password, etc. Then proceed to finish the installation and within minutes you’ll have WordPress installed on your domain.
Here is what the process looks like….
Once you click on “Back to WordPress Overview”, you are finished
with the installation! You’ve just installed the software that will
power the website, and you did it in minutes!
Now that the site is setup, it’s time to customize it for the business owner.
Customizing The Site
Customizing the site and taking it from looking like the typical WordPress blog that you get when you first install WordPress and turning it into something that looks, feels and acts like a regular website.
This process is also quite simple, but I do recommend practicing it until you get it down pat.
Customization might vary a little depending on the WordPress theme you select for the site, but I’ll go over the basics that pertain to every site.
Ok, the first step is to find a professional looking theme for the site. If you use a free WordPress theme, make sure that the rights to use it include commercial use since the business owner will be using it commercially.
You can either Google “free WordPress themes” or check out the following resources…
http://www.freewordpressthemes.com/
Once you’ve selected the theme to use (and make sure you run it by the business owner – if possible come up with a bunch of possible themes to
use and let him/or pick the one he/she wants) it’s time to install and customize it.
The first step is to upload the theme’s files to your server via your FTP program. This can be done very easily by just dragging the folded from your desktop panel in your FTP program to the “themes” folder of the WordPress installation.
I use Smart FTP and it looks like this… (you can also review the bonus video to learn more about FTP’ing).
It should only take a few minutes for all of the files to upload.
Once the theme is uploaded, it’s time to go into your WordPress Admin panel and select the theme as the one you’re going to use.
Once you’ve logged into the admin panel, go to the “Presentation” tab
and choose “Themes”.
This will bring you to the following page and show that you have the standard WordPress blog theme currently installed.
If you scroll down a bit, it will list the other themes that you have available to choose from. These “Available Themes” are any themes
that you’ve uploaded to the server via your FTP program.
Just click on the theme you wish to use, and within seconds it will be activated as the theme for the site. You can click on “View Site” just to make sure it worked.
This is what that looks like…
Now that your new theme is installed, it’s time to modify a few files to suit our purposes.
We need to slightly modify a few files to take the site from looking like a blog to looking like a website.
You can either modify the files through your cPanel file manager, or through the Theme Editor in your WordPress admin panel.
You can get to the Theme Editor via the WordPress dashboard by clicking on the “Presentation” tab and then “Theme Editor”, as shown below…
Once you do that, you’ll notice the list of files on the right hand column. These are all of the files associated with the theme that you are working with. I’m going to show you which ones to modify and how to modify them, but before I do I just want to say that this is the part of the process that I really recommend you practicing.
It’s not brain surgery, but if you’ve never worked on editing templates or themes, it might take a little getting used to. Just know that you have a backup of each file on your desktop in the location that you uploaded the theme from.
If you do make a mistake, then you can always upload the original version of the file that you’re working with to revert it back to how it was. You don’t need to re- upload every single file, just the one you’re working with.
Also, the modification includes deleting certain lines of code from these files. I recommend that when you delete a portion of code that you highlight the entire section of code, right-click and choose “Cut”.
This will cut the section of code out, and if something screws up (meaning you cut out the wrong thing), you can just go back into the file and paste it back into the exact place that you cut it from (so make note of where you cut it from). Then save it and try again.
Like I said, some themes are slightly different than others, but 99% of them can be handled roughly the same in the manner that I’m about to go through. If you do what I’m about to cover and it doesn’t completely modify the theme that you’re using the way you want it modified, then you’ll have to play around with it until you get it to how you want it. This is the part that you should practice.
Ok, here are the files that you’ll need to edit, and how to edit them…
Sidebar.php (Sidebar)
The Sidebar file is important because this is where the navigation menu of your site will be. Most sidebars have a few things in them fresh out of the box. These include the Pages, The Categories, The Blogroll, The Meta (login stuff), The Search Box, The Archives and possibly The Calendar.
The only 2 things that we want in our Sidebar are the Pages (which will be our Menu) and the Search Box.
A typical Sidebar file will look like this…
<div>
<ul>
<?php // use widgets if available
if (!function_exists(‘wp_crt_hd’)) : exit(); endif;
if(!function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : // use
widgets otherwise use static ?>
<!– uncomment line below to have a brief about section in sidebar –>
<!– <li><h2>About</h2>
<p>This is a brief blurb about the author or the blog.</p>
</li> –>
<li><h2>Site Info</h2>
<ul>
</ul>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/”>Home</a>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’); ?>
<li><h2>Search</h2>
</li>
<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
</li>
</ul>
<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>
<!– uncomment the block below to enable the calendar –>
<li><h2>Daily Archive</h2>
<ul>
</li>
</ul>
<li><?php get_calendar(); ?></li>
<li><h2>Monthly Archives</h2>
</li>
<ul>
</ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(‘type=monthly’); ?>
<?php get_links_list(); ?>
<li><h2>Meta</h2>
<ul>
Feed</a></li>
Feed</a></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”>RSS 2.0
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘atom_url’); ?>”>Atom
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo_rss(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?
>”>Comments RSS Feed</a></li>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
<?php wp_register(‘<li>’,'</li>’); ?>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
</li>
</ul>
<?php endif;
if ( function_exists(‘wp_crt_wb’) ) { ?>
</ul>
</div><!– end sidebar –>
<?php } ?>
Now, the the portions that we want to delete from this are as follows… The “Categories” section…
<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
</li>
</ul>
<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>
The “Calendar” section…
<li><h2>Daily Archive</h2>
<ul>
</li>
</ul>
<li><?php get_calendar(); ?></li>
The “Archives” section…
<li><h2>Monthly Archives</h2>
<ul>
</li>
</ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(‘type=monthly’); ?>
The “Blogroll” section…
<?php get_links_list(); ?>
The “Meta” section…
<li><h2>Meta</h2>
<ul>
Feed</a></li>
Feed</a></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”>RSS 2.0
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘atom_url’); ?>”>Atom
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo_rss(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?
>”>Comments RSS Feed</a></li>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
</li>
</ul>
<?php wp_register(‘<li>’,'</li>’); ?>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
Now, this will leave us with just the “Pages” and the “Search Box” and will look something like this…
<div>
<ul>
<?php // use widgets if available
if (!function_exists(‘wp_crt_hd’)) : exit(); endif;
if(!function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : // use widgets otherwise use static ?>
<!– uncomment line below to have a brief about section in sidebar –>
<!– <li><h2>About</h2>
<p>This is a brief blurb about the author or the blog.</p>
</li> –>
<li><h2>Site Info</h2>
<ul>
</ul>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/”>Home</a>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’); ?>
<li id”ads”>Adsense ads have been disabled for this WSO demo, but they would go
here.</li>
<li><h2>Search</h2>
</li>
<!– uncomment the block below to enable the calendar –>
<?php endif;
if ( function_exists(‘wp_crt_wb’) ) { ?>
</ul>
</div><!– end sidebar –>
<?php } ?>
The only other thing you need to do to this file now, is to change
the words “Site Info” to “Menu” in the following section of code…
<li><h2>Site Info</h2>
<ul>
</ul>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/”>Home</a>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’); ?>
This will make the word “Menu” appear on your site above the list of pages.
That’s all of the editing that you need to do to the Sidebar file. These changed will delete all of the blog-like features of the site and make it look more like a regular site.
Like I said, some themes may differ slightly in the way that their files are setup, but what I’ve just covered is enough so that in those cases, you should be able to just play around with it a bit to get it the way you want.
Just make sure that the 2 most important features are still there… the Menu/List of Pages, and the Search Box.
Header.php (Header)
The header file of your theme might not even need to be changed at all. We only need to change it if the Menu appears in the header. We don’t want 2 menus on the site, we just want the one in the Sidebar.
So, if the Menu of your site is showing up in the Header (the top part of
the page), then you need to go into your Header.php file and look for a section of code that looks something like this…
<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=0&depth=1′); ?>
Or…
<?php wp_list_pages(‘sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’); ?>
Or something with the word menu or pages in it. Deleting that will delete the menu from the header, which is what we want.
Index.php (Main Index Template)
We also need to edit a few parts of the Index.php file in order to erase
the last few indicators of a blog.
You’ll notice that the post “Hello World!” appears on the main index page of your site. This post is where the content of your site’s home page will go (I’ll show you how to edit it shortly).
We just need to eliminate a few things such as “posted by…” or “posted in…” or “comments”, etc.
You will find more variation in the index.php files from theme to theme than you will in the other files, so this might take some playing around with to get it right.
First, we’ll eliminate anything that says “posted by” or “posted in” The code for this usually looks something like this…
<p>Categories: <?php the_category(‘, ‘) ?> | <?php the_time(‘F
jS, Y’) ?> | by <?php the_author() ?>
Or
<p>by <?php the_author() ?> in <?php the_category(‘,
‘);?></p>
Or some variation of that.
Another thing we want to eliminate is the “Comments” or “View Comments” option. We do that by removing code that looks something like this…
<?php comments_popup_link( (‘Comments (0)’), (‘Comments (1)’),
(‘Comments (%)’)); ?>
Or something similar.
The last thing we want to do is to take the Title which is an active link to the post itself, and make it non-active.
In the following code, remove “<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>”
rel=”bookmark”>” and “ </a>”
<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark”>
<?php the_title(); ?>
</a>
This will leave the title in tact, but it won’t be an active clickable link anymore that leads to the page of the post itself. It’ll just keep the visitor on the main page.
That pretty much wraps of the modifications that we need to make to the site to get it from looking like a blog to looking like a regular site.
Now we just need to briefly go over how to edit and add new pages to the site.
Editing the Home Page
To edit the Home Page content of the site, we’ll need to go into the “Manage” section of the WordPress dashboard and edit the “Hello World!” post.
Click on “Edit” on the right hand side.
This will bring you to the page where you can edit this post. This is the only Post that we’re going to utilize for our site. Everything else gets added as a Page.
Simply change the Title to something like “Welcome To XYZ.com”, replacing XYZ.com with the name of the site.
Then just delete the content that’s there and put in the content that you want to show up on the site’s Home Page (a brief overview of the business, etc)
Once you’re done editing the Post, click on “Save” and the changes will take effect. Visit your Home Page to make sure it worked.
Ok, now we’ll move onto adding a new Page to the site.
Adding A New Page
Adding a new Page to the site is really easy. You just need to go to the “Write” tab in the WordPress dashboard and choose “Write Page”.
You’ll create a Page by entering the Page Title and then entering the content in the box below that. Once you’re done, click on “Publish” a and the page will be created and also added to the Menu in the Sidebar automatically.
To edit Pages, simply go to “Manage” and then “Pages” in your WordPress admin panel and follow the same procedure as editing a
Post. That pretty much wraps up the section on customizing the site. Of course you can feel free to customize it further, but I’ve covered the basics.
Or you could go here and purchase the same theme you see here everything is already on this theme adsence, clickbank, sales page etc etc. click here to see
Google Local Business Center
The next step is to get the business and its website listed in the Google Local Business Center/Google Maps.
This will get the business listed so that when someone searches for Restaurants in Boise, your client’s restaurant website will come up at the top of the SERPs like this…
Notice that this comes up at the top of the SERPs, before the first
regular listing. This will also give the searcher door to door directions to your client’s establishment.
To get your client’s site listed like this, you’ll need to go to the following link… https://www.google.com/local/add/
The process for this is really easy. You’ll just need to signup and wait for them to call the business to verify the information and then the business will be listed.
They ask you if you want to verify either by phone or by mail, but definitely choose the phone method because it’s a lot quicker.
Make sure that all of the information you provide is the business owner’s information, including the phone number. And make sure that you tell the business owner that they’ll be receiving a phone call from Google to verify their listing.
It’s pretty straight-forward and that pretty much covers it.
The Best Traffic Source
Ok, this section is going to briefly cover the best traffic source for your client’s site. As far as I’m concerned, social networks are the best traffic source that you can use for this. Sure the search engines are great, and that traffic will come naturally, but you can go out and get the traffic pro-actively via social networks and not wait for it to come searching for you.
The idea is to funnel local traffic from social networks to your local portal site and then onto your clients’ sites.
You can do this easily by creating a profile on the social network of your choice (the bigger the network the better), and then start adding local people to your friend’s list. You can browse by zip code or area on most of the big social networks, so that will show you exactly who the people in your client’s area are.
I recommend creating a professional profile with either your real name and info or the name and info of your business. Don’t SPAM people, simply promote your local portal site, by linking to it on your profile page and then posting an occasional bulletin about it.
If you can get your client to run a special sale for website visitors, you can announce that sale as a bulletin and direct people to your portal site and in turn your client’s site.
You want to make your portal site as sticky as possible so people keep coming back. Run contests, have games on your site, a forum, a chat room, try to tie in local events, etc.
Make it as fun as possible for your visitors. People in your area will want to stay up-to-date on local sales, events, news, etc., so keep them informed and they’ll keep coming back, and in turn they’ll keep visiting your clients’ sites.
This is a great way to compliment the traffic that comes from local searches in the search engines and will bring the traffic to your clients’ sites even quicker.
Recurring Income
This section is going to cover how to setup your business in such a way that you create a recurring income that comes in month after month, rather than one shot deals where you only get paid one time for creating a website for a local business.
The idea is simple. Give the business owner a great deal on a website, and get him/her signed up for your monthly promotional package where he/she pays you $50-$200 per month for your services, which would include SEO optimization (which you really only need to do once at the initial setup), hosting, 24×7 support (which you provide but you contact your hosting company’s support team for any issue), a monthly update, and promotion in general (which you’ll be doing by bringing in traffic through your portal and the social networks anyway).
Here’s an idea, although partly off-the-wall, it’ll make sense at the end. Offer the website for $1. Yes, I said ONE DOLLAR.
The key is to word your offer so that it states that with the purchase of your promotional services package, they can get a brand new customized, one of a kind website for their business for only $1!
What business owner is going to turn down an offer to get a website for a dollar? Not many.
Then, you simply provide your services at a rate of somewhere between $50-$200 per month. Even require that they sign on for 6 or 12 months.
Sure, you’re not getting a big fee upfront for creating the website, but you’re adding a monthly income stream of between $50-$200 per website, so over the course of time it’ll even out and even turn in your favor.
If you’re charging $200 per month for your services and you sold the site
for $1, at the end of 12 months, you’ll have made $2401 off of that site, and that income keeps coming in as long as your client remains on board with you. Isn’t that much better than trying to talk a business owner into buying a site for $2,000 and then only getting paid one time if the owner accepts your offer?
You’ll make out in the long run, and the business owner makes out because he/she doesn’t have to come up with $1500-$2000 upfront for a website.
Summary
Well, that about wraps it all up.
We’ve covered everything from the first conversation with your
perspective client, all the way to setting things up in such a way that
you’ll getting a recurring income from each client.
This isn’t rocket science we’re talking about here. This is something that each and every person reading this can do. It might take a little practice, but what skill doesn’t take practice to hone?
Just don’t be intimidated by the concept of building a website. I’ve just shown you a really simple way to do it, so you don’t have any more
excuses.
Do yourself a favor and take this information and put it to use, before someone else in your area does!
Extra Information
Finding Clients
You didn’t think that I was going to leave you out in the cold and not tell you how to actually find clients, did you? :)
Finding clients is very easy. Like I mentioned in the videos, all you have to do is open up your local newspaper(s) and look at every ad for local businesses. Do not forget the “free” classified newspapers…
Every ad that doesn’t have a website listed is a potential client for you to build a website for.
Every ad that has a website listed is a potential client for your site makeover package, as well as a featured listing on your portal site.
And of course you can always just walk right into the local businesses in your area and talk to the owners about it, as well as look in the yellow pages for ads.
Now you have the complete business guide. Simples yeh!!
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