How My Website Made Me $100,000 In Sales Its 1st Year

By Author: Steven Becker
Total Articles: 16
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A properly designed and marketed website can launch you into a profitable business your 1st year - This is my story.

95% of Businesses fail in the 1st five years, according to the statistics and most businesses are not profitable in the first year. To clarify my title more accurately, I should say "How my website generated me $100,000 in Sales the first year that I worked on my business full time." To be more accurate, it was actually my second year; the first year it was a side job that I worked on alongside of my full time desk job.

But I have learned so much about websites and how to market them, that I can give you insights on how to market your website so you are on the 1st page of Google and give you a list of tools that I used to make my website successful; as well as, tell you little known facts that I learned along my journey that will make or break the success of your business.

Step 1 - Invest Wisely - But don't trip over Dollars to Save Pennies

I can honestly tell you that for me having a website is the single most important and profitable tool that I used for generating sales. ...
... If it was not for my website, which generated 95% of my income, I would not be in business. I learned quickly that in starting a new business keeping starting capital low was essential; after all, I always figured that there was a 95% chance that I would lose everything in 5 years. Try to minimize what you have to lose. But you are walking along a very narrow balance beam, because I also learned very quickly that you get what you pay for, so some things are essential in investing in. You will not start a successful business without having any money to spend, just invest it wisely.

The First area of investment is going to be in your website. Your website is a form of advertising and advertising is an area that cannot be overlooked. When it comes to advertising I would rather spend $10,000.00 on something that is going to give me a $50,000 in profit, than spend $100.00 that brings me nothing. I have found that the cost of advertising avenues reflects little on how well they will work. I have spent $1,000's on ads that just barley paid for themselves and I have spent $100's on avenues that brought me $1,000's in revenue and vice versa. I am so pro website because that by far has been my most profitable avenue of advertising so far.

Step 2 - Choosing a Domain Name and a Business Name - Make it Relavent

Like I said a Website is the most important step in to starting a successful business; but even more important that making a website is making sure people are able to find your website on Google. If you are not on the 1st page forget about making any money from your website. So take this into consideration when naming your business. Google gives a lot of weight to the title in the domain name. What I mean by this is when somebody searches for a something, let's say landscapers. Your website will have a lot better chance of being on the first page of Google if your domain is www.Quality-Landscapers.com and just for simplicity I would recommend naming your business after your domain name so people can easily remember it. So maybe name your business West Coast Quality Landscapers, or something like that. Before you go and register a domain you should make sure people are searching for the keywords that you thought they would be searching for. Google offers a free tool to research popular keywords. Use googles free keyword research tool to find a very popular search term, and then try to structure your website domain name and your business name after it. This is your chance to pick the keyword that people search the most that relates to the product or service you are selling.

Step 3 - Website Development

Website development is crucial. To make sure you are getting found on Google you need to have the right keywords, links, and content in the right spot. This can be tricky for the beginner, because more isn't better; instead a strategic location for each relevant keyword is key. Don't worry about knowing HTML, there is a program out there that is simple to use and allows you to make professional looking websites.

Ok, first thing first, trust me; I've looked all around and you are not going to find a completely free website building program that is of any value or one that will let you be on the 1st page of Google. For you to market your website online the program needs to be flexible, customizable, and include extras like the ability to add alt text, title tags, and descriptions. The website builder needs to also have the ability to add many pages, be free of additional advertisement, and have a short domain name.

Nobody is going to trust a business that has a domain of www.freewebsites.qualitylandscapers.com; plus Google will never put it on the 1st page. If you are bound and determined to go that route you are better off creating a squidoo lense. Now I have found a program that works, is very low cost, has great technical support, is very easy to use, and has video tutorials on how to do almost everything. I talk about it in greater detail if you visit the link to my blog at the bottom of the page.

The award winning program works and it is easy to use and has given me the opportunity to make $100,000 in sales my first full year of business. I was able to do this because of its simplicity, but yet customizable and robust features that produced a Google friendly professional looking webpage that ranks on the 1st page of Google for all my relevant keywords. In my blog I give you the website and the name of the business I started, so you can see for yourself what is possible if you use this program. It is by far the best and most cost effective web hosting and website builder out there.

Step 4 - Website Marketing - Building Backlinks

After you have created your website, it needs to be submitted to all the search engines as well as local directories if it is a local business. To get your website on the first page of Google, making sure that the website is optimized with the correct keywords in the correct areas, has optimized and interesting content, and is structurally Google friendly is the first step. But equally important is what you do off your website. You see Google places a high priority on back links. Back links are when a different website finds your content so intriguing that they put a link from their website to yours. But don't worry, you can go on other websites and make your own back links to your site.

All websites have something known as Page Rank. Websites that Google deems more relevant and of higher quality are rewarded with a higher page rank; if a page that has a high page rank links to your website it is considered much better than a website with a lower page rank. What has worked best for me is to use high ranking article sites like EZineArticles, Article Biz, and Go Articles, as well as countless others to write short articles about my profession and then at the bottom of the article put a link back to my site using anchor text for the keyword you are trying to rank for. In my blog I talk about some free and low cost tools that are available that help speed up the process.

Step 5 - Getting Ranked on Google's Business Listings

Have you ever tried typing in something like "Orlando Plumbers" in the Google search bar and saw that it brought up a map with local plumbers in the area? Well if you have a local business it is important to get ranked for this. To do this, you initially have to sign up and register your company on Google; there you will type in the address and all the information about your business.

However, if you don't have a brick and mortar store in the city you are trying to target; but instead offer services such as plumbing. What you can is to go to the UPS store in the major metropolitan area that you are trying to target and get a mail box, not a PO Box; you need an actual address. UPS stores offer this service as well as some print stores. This will give you an address to put in Google, now put this address on the bottom of every page of your website as the footer and next to the address put "Billing Address" so you don't confuse your customers and have people trying to find your plumbing store that does not exist. Also in Google when you sign up for the business account make sure you fill in all the information, such as services offered, pictures, YouTube videos, etc. Fill in everything; this will help in getting ranked higher in the local business directory.
Here is the link to my blog; it is a good free read and gives you a weatlh of information to make your business an online money maker.