Creating A Corporate Office Image From Your Spare BedroomCopyright 2000 by Elena FawknerLike it or not, there is still a segment of the population who will erroneously conclude that you and your business are less than professional and competent just because you run your business out of your home.Dumb? Obviously! Narrow-minded? Yes! Wrong? Absolutely! Unfair? No question! Want their business? Well … yes. OK, then you’re going to have to play the game and beat them at it. Here’s how to do it. It’s a little sneaky, but hey, all’s fair and they did start it.INCORPORATEFirst off, incorporate. Nothing screams “CORPORATE!” to our friend the dumb, narrow-minded, wrong, unfair Potential Client as an LLC, Pty Ltd or PLC (depending on where you conduct business) on your letterhead and business card.Not only does this appease Potential Client, there are some very good tax and other advantages to incorporation which are well worth the modest cost. Talk to your attorney or accountant about this.OFFICE ADDRESSThe next problem you have with Potential Client is that you don’t want your home address to give you away. What do you think looks more professional in Potential Client’s eyes: 123 Cherryblossom Way, Apt. 103, Suburbia or 123 Major Blvd, Level 37, Big City’the answer is a serviced office. These don’t have to cost a lot of money if you use them pretty much as a post office but they CAN give your business all the big-city prestige your Potential Client is looking for.An additional advantage is that you can use your serviced office to meet with Potential Client. After all, the last thing you want is to have him coming to your REAL office! Heaven forbid! Most serviced offices will make meeting rooms available for a flat fee.TELEPHONESThis is probably the trickiest part of all. How do you know it’s safe to answer the phone in your home office even though the sounds of your young children playing just outside your office door will be heard by the caller? You simply don’t.There is a simple way of dealing with this. Only give your home office number to existing clients. They already know you are professional and competent and should therefore have no issue with the fact that you work from home.For anyone else, give out the number of an answering service that will answer the call in your company name and can tell callers that you’re in a meeting with another client and take a message. Your serviced office will offer this service as well.You can then return the call at a time when you know tell-tale background noise won’t give you away.In fact, a trick some people who work from home use when returning calls is to run a tape of office background noise. This both gives the impression you are working in a large office AND it masks any slight tell-tale household noises that may, despite your best efforts, give you away.Once Potential Client becomes an actual client and you’ve proved to his satisfaction that you are professional and competent, you can tell him that you’ve decided to start working out of your home to reduce unnecessary overheads and give him your direct phone number.No matter how enlightened your client-base is as a general rule, it is imperative that the telephone be answered in a businesslike manner. I don’t care how sympathetic, supportive and admiring your clients are of your decision to balance your work and family commitments by running a successful business from home, there is nothing cute about a five year old answering your business line. It’s unprofessional, not to mention downright annoying.Speaking for myself, I also find it annoying and unprofessional for a spouse to answer the business line. I’d much prefer to leave a message with your answering service than your wife or husband, thank you very much. At least I can be sure you’ll get the message. But that may just be me … decide for yourself.So have a separate phone line for your business and lay down the law to your household that no-one, NO-ONE, is to answer it but you (unless, of course, you’re employing your teenage children in your business in which case they should be instructed on how to answer the telephone in a professional manner). If you’re away from your office, divert your calls to your answering service.EMAILSomething else to think about is the image of your email address. Which is Potential Client to consider more corporate/professional: maryann@isp.com or m.entrepreneur@mycompanyllc.com?It’s worth spending $35 a year on your own domain name just for the professional email address, even if you never intend to create a website. Mind you, if you’re going to have your own domain why NOT create your own website? But that’s another article …STATIONERY AND PROMOTIONAL MATERIALSIt goes without saying that your stationery, business cards and other promotional materials should reflect a professional corporate image. If you have incorporated your business, this is a good start. A company name on letterhead and business cards can’t fail to convey a professional image provided they are professionally printed on quality stationery stock.OFFICE EQUIPMENTThere’s no point having quality stationery if you’re going to use a cheap and cheerful inkjet printer for your correspondence. Invest in a medium quality laser printer instead. They don’t cost a lot of money these days and you can get a unit that triples as a fax machine and photocopier for only a few hundred dollars.So, what do you think? You may be thinking “I wonder whether it’s really worth the effort to try and please just a small number of potential clients”. Is it worth it? Maybe. But look back over the suggestions I have made. Are they really anything more than basic, common sense, professional business practices? Regardless of what your potential and existing clients may think about the concept of businesses run out of their owners’ homes, first impressions do count. Wouldn’t the above approach be a good one to take with ALL your potential clients whatever their personal disposition? Just something to think about.——** Reprinting of this article is welcome! **This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you include the following resource box; and (2) you only mail to a 100% opt-in list. (Articles are no longer being made available via autoresponder due to large numbers of bounced mails due to full mailboxes.)Here’s the resource box to use if reprinting this article:——
Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online … practical home business ideas for the work-from-home entrepreneur.
http://www.ahbbo.comThe Number One Answer is Search Engines…Bill PlattWe surveyed 100 people…What is the best way to draw traffic to your website?Our survey said…Search Engines 53
Article Distribution 30
Ad Swaps / Links at other sites 14 Banner Advertising 8
Signature Files 5Ironically, it seems possible that we could have selected a different set of people and the answer for search engines would have been zero. At least, a web designer was telling me that this morning.One of his web design / web hosting clients has hired my company to help with building her website traffic. One of the changes we had suggested was to offer her visitors both a Frame and a No-Frame site, with the express intent of using the No-Frame site to capture spider search engine traffic with her already keyword-rich website.Our client currently has a Framed site which she likes the appearance of. Otherwise, we would have suggested to only use a No-Frame site.At every step of the way, her web host has been causing us great difficulty in the process, because as he said, “Search engines do not bring any traffic to a website.” Even when his client told him to make the change, he refused because “it is a waste of time.” Since he holds the username/password to the site and will not allow me access or his client direct access, we must deal with him. (I have never met a web host who ran his business like this either… I am helping his client to search for an alternative hosts now.)I talked to him on the phone this afternoon, and he told me, “You know that statistics show that search engines do not generate much traffic to a website.”I don’t know whose statistics this man is looking at!I suggested to him “No, I don’t know that. I run more than a dozen domains and all of my domains generate a considerable amount of search engine traffic. My original site knocks down over 50% of its visitors from search engine traffic, and the site serves thousands of visitors every month.” I love using this website as an example because I have not promoted it hardly at all since August of 2000.When I began this particular site, it was intended as a computer technical support destination. Around the beginning of 2000, I began making a shift in my own web activities. As such, this site is now really a potpourri of activity, though more than 60% of the site remains under the umbrella of computer technical support. Due to the fact that most of my computer support newsletter exists in the archives of the website, this site is very keyword rich!In order to drive my point home about the effectiveness of search engines on the web, I have taken a step that most people would consider crazy. I am making public three and a half months worth of my site’s statistics. I can afford to do this because this site, http://WindstormComputing.com, is not my primary bread and butter anymore.Be forewarned, these pages are big, so if you have a slow machine, you probably don’t want to participate in this exercise.The first page I will be showing you is for the first eleven days of May, 2001. In those first eleven days, there have been 458 visitors to my website from search engines. In all, the site has been visited by 682 people, and they have looked at a total of 1855 pages. Of those who came calling, 67% of them came from search engines.You may view these actual site statistics at: http://imiobc.com/keyword_rich/lrefers0501.html (134 kb)The second page is for the month of April, 2001. In April, there were 955 people who came to the site from search engines. This was 46% of the total of 2073 site visitors. These visitors viewed 6521 pages.You may view these actual statistics at: http://imiobc.com/keyword_rich/lrefers0401.html (362 kb)The third page is for the month of March, 2001. In all, 1441 people came to the site via search engines, which comprised 55.5% of the 2599 visitors. The sites visitors looked at 5899 pages while they were onsite.These statistics are located at: http://imiobc.com/keyword_rich/lrefers0301.html (355 kb)Going back a bit, the next page I am making available is October of 2000. In this month, 1603 people found my site through search engines. This number represents 53.5% of the sites 2995 visitors in October. All together, these 2995 people looked at 11,843 total pages.These statistics can be found at: http://imiobc.com/keyword_rich/lrefers1000.html (440 kb)Now, as you look at each referrer, you will note that the domain from which the traffic came is listed on top of each list, then the actual page on the domain is listed at the right side with a link attached to it. You can actually click the link at the right to see the actual search results used to find my site.If you click on these search engine results used to find my site, keep in mind search engine results change over time, based on new data going into the engines. As a result, you will often be able to see my page listed, in the search results of the page that opens, only in links that are fresh.Another thing to note is that to the right of the actual page link is a lot of black text. This text represents special form information that was used to narrow the search results. Often, you will see “&query=blah+blah” or “&q=blah+blah”. This refers to the search terms actually being “blah blah”. Sometimes, you will see something to the effect of “&start=10″ or “&first=10″. In both cases, this tells you that the search results begin at ten.As you review these site statistics, you will be amazed at the wide range of search engine terms used to locate my domain. You may also be dumbfounded by some of the keyword phrases that people type into search engines while looking for the results they desire. The one that really got me was “dangerous creatures caused invalid page fault”! If “dangerous creatures” is not a video game, I am lost.Amidst all of the different search terms listed in these pages, you might also note the frequency of my top site keywords, “free website content”, “free ezine content” or some variation thereof. The pages that rely on these key terms see the highest number of visitors on my domain each month. I have done well to place these pages in the #1 spot on several search engines.This site represents my first domain. If you were to have access to the statistics on my other domains, you would be astonished at the numbers coming through my domains from search engines and from other sources.My point is that while you should always take a multi-pronged approach to building traffic to your website, you should never dismiss the power of search engines as one of your most viable traffic building solutions.RESOURCE BOX:
—————————————————————– Bill Platt. Let our experience work towards building web traffic for you business at http://IMIOBC.com . Our team of professional search engine placement specialists and ghost writers will put your business on the Net’s radar. Custom promotional articles: http://GhostArticles.com —————————————————————–The ONE Thing That MAKES A Program SELLJoe BinghamThere are literally hundreds of information products on the Net.What is the ONE thing that can make YOURS be the one that people buy?Let’s say I decide to get into selling car stereos, and you come into my shop. I start showing you a few cd players, and you’re interested. But then, I tell you I don’t have any amplifiers or speakers, no speaker wire and no way to mount the system in your car. Not only that, but I don’t know anything about those items either.What are you going to think?First, you’ll wonder who I stole the cd players from, and then, you’ll wonder why I am so uninformed.What if I then tell you it will take me 3 days to deliver your cd player to you after you pay for it?What will you do?At best, leave thinking of another place to go shopping, and at worst, you’ll be calling the police.Some of the best selling products on the Internet are information packages.That’s right, packages.No one wants to buy each and every little thing separately. For that matter, even though you could probably find a FREE report covering every aspect of Internet Marketing, people will still pay for a total package to be delivered straight to them, in the interest of saving time and effort. It’s easier to pay for it all at one place than scavenge around for a month looking.The Internet is instant. People want it to be instant. Provide instant access to a complete package, and you’re in the money.Need proof? There’s clothing stores, there’s hardware stores, there’s electronics stores, and a dozen others.There’s also Wal-Mart Super Centers. There’s also malls grouping the clothing, hardware, and electronics stores together.Now sure, individual stores for specific things are still around, but which store’s revenue would you rather have? Personally, I’m opting for the Wal-Mart Super Center.Get it all and get it at ONE place. That’s valuable, especially on the Internet. It can be serious work looking around for everything you want to know. If you can have it all right here, right now, so you can start to create your own business, that’s especially valuable.This isn’t to say you have to sell one of everything to make any money, but you do need to cover all aspects of what you are selling.If your offering marketing information, offer several tools to help people get started as well. Cover the overall aspects of marketing, then give specific advertising tools, access to related sites, your personal sales letters for examples, an affiliate program where they can make money, information on testing sales copy, information on psychological sales factors, additional sources of related topics, and whatever else your potential customers might feel the need of knowing.Even if your business sells health products, not information, you must still realize that selling anything requires marketing skills, and offer marketing information in your business package if you want your affiliates to be successful.Gather it all up. Organize it an present it professionally. People will pay to find everything they want and to have it now!What is the ONE Thing that MAKES a program SELL?When the program offers Instant access to a Complete package.—————————————————————– For an example of a program that Covers MULTIPLE Aspects, offers Added BENEFITS, and is INSTANT, check out Yanik Silver’s Instant Internet Profits sponsored by Colleen Stephens. http://instantinternetprofits.com/cgi-bin/at.cgi?a=154923 Article written by Joe Bingham, editor of the NetPlay Newsletter http://www.netplaynewsletters.com ***********************************************