Hello everyone, My name is Adam [[url not necessary for this discussion]] We are a new way for any website/business owners to have blogs created for them targeting a specific niche/keywords of their choosing. We research keywords, write the articles, and maintain the blog. While I'm not here to advertise for the website itself, we are working on new ways to contact fellow business owners (our usual customers). I'd like to here everyone's thoughts about where to contact the people who would be interested in using our service. We're aware of social media, PPC, and other advertising methods. We're looking for an easier way to find and contact website owners. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Right here on DP or Warrior forums for starters DMOZ might also be a way, or some blogodex or just google blog directory.
Hi, Here's my input after looking at your website. You want to target online businesses for this service, but you don't really tout the benefits on your website. You need to show people why it's important to have a blog ranked in the niche of their choosing or why their business needs this service because right now it looks like its more targeted to people who are already in this industry who know how to do this stuff already. Why would they pay you 200$ a month for a domain, 8 articles and hosting when they can do it themselves for 1/4th the price you are quoting. So with that being said I think you need shift your focus away from people who reside on DP and warriorforum. Unless someone is really new and has no idea how to setup a blog or do any of the things you mention on your website you are going to have a hard time selling someone that package. So what I suggest is you target local businesses who aren't online yet. Call around your local area and explain to them the benefits of having a website and how important it is for them to have an online presence to drive more customers to their stores. Show them competitors websites and explain that they are losing money by being left out. I don't think you will have any problem getting them to sign up for 200$ a month seeing as how many people probably have tried to sell them websites for thousands of dollars. Just my 2 cents. Good luck.
thanks jeff. I'll have our team look into advertising on these sites, and if they make sense. killafawk - The core concept behind the website itself is to sell the articles. We know its easy to setup a blog for the most part. The pain point we'd like to focus on is supplying the content for the blogs. Do you think that if the "pricing strategy vs. # of articles supplied" was altered would have any affect on your opinion about even someone like yourself considering a purchase? Although we could cater to local businesses, and offer to set up their website, we are trying to place the focus strictly on blogs, not so much a complete website. We want to let people know that a blog can 'accompany' your website, not be your core website. A blog can drive traffic to an existing source. Focus on long tail keywords, and overall expose your primary website even further. Am I off base on these thoughts? If so, please add 2 more cents
Just remember not to spam us or you'll get an axe thrown at your door . Let the people find you not the other way around .
I kindly disagree with your statement of letting people find you. If you're not proactive in your efforts to find a customer, you wont ever have any. I'm not going to spam the board. I know better then to do that. Just browsing for suggestions. Thanks everyone.
aunty - good ideas. Although we didn't want to have to contact each business separately. Takes a lot of time, but we'll probably do something like this so thanks. steven - Twitter doesn't seem to convert many leads/buys. Even if you have a lot of followers, they don't seem to take action or even visit your website.
i think you should stick on very nice and handsome forums. you will naturally find good webmasters and website owners there. contact with them and influence them into your business. once you find a good website owner then there will be flood of other website owner too.
Do you think that if the "pricing strategy vs. # of articles supplied" was altered would have any affect on your opinion about even someone like yourself considering a purchase? After reading your post and finding out that your real business was to supply content, it makes much more sense to me, But that's hard to figure out from the website you have up. You need to explain what your main benefits are and it seems to be supplying content to the blogs so people don't have too. That's a pretty good selling point because people are lazy and don't want to update the content regularly. The problem with this is the price you are charging to do this. 10 articles(which you changed from 8 I think) for 200$ a month is over kill. You can pay someone 5-10$ to get a solid 500 word article and all they would have to do is upload it to their website. Your price isn't in an acceptable range for people willing to say "screw it, ill pay the extra X amount of dollars so someone else can deal with this", But first you have to find the right people who are interested in something like this. Which brings up the same problem... You keep wanting to target people like DPers. Since they know what they are getting and can see the benefits from this service, but the people on DP won't likely pick up this service for these reasons... 1. People on here don't have a lot of money to throw around. They are in this industry to make money not give it away. They won't fork up $200 easily. The only way they would hand over $200 is if you were able to guarantee they would see a light at the end of the tunnel. You have to sell the benefits very hard to get $200 for a blog with 10 articles. They could buy someone elses blog with 1-2 years of blog posts on it for $200. 2. These people know how the industry works and when they start adding up the numbers they know that what you are offering is way overpriced, even for something they never have to work on. A domain name is 1-10$ and you can buy 10 articles at 5-10$ a piece in the BST section, and they probably already have hosting. That's 100-150$ over charge on people who do this for a living. You are going to have to add more value to this business model to get it to work if you are gonna target people in this industry. That is why I think your best success lies with local businesses. You say its based around blogs and not a complete website. Well a blog is pretty close to a complete website. Throw the local businesses number on the website and write articles about the business and its their website. not only that but it will actually rank for their local business keywords because it actually has content instead of a "welcome to blah blah business website, heres how to contact us". Sell the local businesses on the benefits of having a website that they never have to touch that will bring in more customers to their stores. I hope this helps, where shall I send the business consultation invoice? lol jk. Happy Holidays.
You could try them from the likes of LinkedIn, as well as guest posting on various business oriented blogs
Thanks again Killafawk. Your check is in the mail. haha. I was hoping we wouldn't have to target local business owners everywhere across the country. This sounds like it's going to require us to call business owners personally, and coax them into using our service. I understand all your good points though. golfpro1 - yeah, were going to get into linkedin, and see if we receive nay fruitful responses from various business owners.
Oh my dear it's so simple Elance, Freelance, indiamart and Guru is the best way to find online business. cheers
Hmm. I am not sure but Craiglist might help? You can also try searching on yellow pages or do guerilla marketing though I don't think it would be that much helpful for you. Having business directories can also be a good way to contact those business owners and then ask each one of those who is interested in your service or product. I suggest you prepare a portfolio of your works.