Every business needs an internet presence. The internet is the first place almost everyone goes to find a good or service. No one uses phone books anymore. But the sad fact is that many small businesses aren’t on the internet. Many owners don’t understand how to create a presence online and think that they cannot afford to pay someone to do this for them. This is where you can step in.
Of course, you need to have some idea what you are doing. Thankfully, it is not hard to learn. Anyone can create a basic, and impressive website, through WordPress or a similar service. You don’t even need to know anything about HTML, although that is pretty simple to pick up as well. Anyone can create and update a Facebook Page and Twitter account. If you really wanted to be ambitious, you could learn how to create smart phone apps that could be customized for different businesses.
Your first step is to approach your local business owners. It helps if you have a relationship with them already. It makes sense to be involved in local civic and community groups. If they know and like you it will be easier for them to trust you.
Draw up a proposal to develop an internet presence for your first potential customer. You might even want to go ahead and develop a basic WordPress website and offer to upgrade it (using a better template) after you are hired. If the business owner is very unfamiliar with the internet, offer to handle all aspects of the accounts. For example, if someone emails in a question, print out a copy and fax it to the store. Make it clear that the owner will not have to worry about anything.
Regarding fees, be reasonable. You might even want to do your first job or two for free. Then when you approach your third store, you can point out that you already manage other local business websites. That gives you credibility. See if you can work out a reduced price if the owner will allow you to insert online ads for your business into the page. That way, you can just get paid when someone clicks on the advertising. Think about charging a flat fee, maybe $50 a month, or $600 a year plus hosting expenses.
Have the owner or manager call or email you with any information about sales, events, or anything else that should be added to the website.
Setting up a Facebook Page is free and easy. It is also easy to setup a Twitter account. The two accounts can be linked on Twitter so your Twitter updates can also become Page updates on Facebook.
This might be of questionable legality,but I’ve heard of companies that for an extra fee, maybe another $50 per month, offer to serve as a reputation manager online. They create accounts and leave positive reviews for the company at Yelp, Google, and other sites where you can leave reviews. They also respond to any negative reviews. Leaving fake negative reviews for the competition could result in a civil suit, if your comments are not true. I do not recommend doing this, but know that it is often done. You have to always make your own decisions about what you believe is legal and moral. If you are going to become an internet troll, at least keep in mind that your postings can all be traced back to whatever IP address you are posting from, unless you are using a proxy service such as Tor (and even that may not be as private as once thought). So if you are going to engage in questionable behavior (against my advice), at least don’t be stupid about it.
Finally, you could learn to make apps and in addition to making apps for yourself, you could make ones for local businesses, perhaps to inform customers about sales and special deals on their smart phones.
A few years ago, Google came out with its App Inventor software. It allowed people, just like you and me, to create apps for our smart phones. The project was later abandoned by Google, but was picked up by MIT. It costs nothing to download the software. There is no registration. There is no catch.
After you have installed the software on your computer, you can work through the various tutorials to create apps. They start you out with simple ones and then the tutorials become gradually more complex. There is no code. There is only a graphical interface. It is like using building blocks. Working through the tutorials, you soon realize that building apps is not hard, but is rather time consuming and tedious. But after time you get faster and better at it.
Tweak a tutorial to create a basic app that gives people a notification on their phone when the store wants to advertise a sale or event.
Get customers to download the app by creating a QR code and posting it in the store. Claim that special offers will be sent only to those who downloaded the app. Make showing the app on the phone at the register a condition for receiving a special discount. It will encourage people to download it and will be a great way for the store to stay in touch with the customers. Offer to do the app for free or a reduced price if you can insert advertising into the app and be the sole beneficiary of all the ad revenue.
Remember that any money paid to you will be written-off by the business owner as a business expense, so it is important that you declare all your income (which I advise you to do regardless). Also remember that you can write-off your actual business expenses. Consult with a tax expert for the details. It bears repeating that nothing in this book should be seen as legal or tax advice.
If your first customer is happy with you, ask him or her to serve as a reference or to provide an endorsement on your business’s website. This will help you to get additional business.
