Make Money from Home by Promoting Local Businesses

Local businesses don’t realize it, but there’s an entire market in the Internet that has no idea what their products or services are all about. If you want to make money from home and have the ability to let them realize this fact, then this is an excellent opportunity that you should look into.

What I’m talking about are local parlors, restaurants, travel agencies, auto repair shops, and local product providers. Believe it or not, they will gain a lot by expanding their marketing efforts online – if they market their business at all in the first place.

Just think about it: in your state, there are easily hundreds of businesses that could use your help. Whether you are an Internet marketer or a website designer, you can make money from home by promoting local businesses. You must have heard several grim stories of local businesses being forced to lay off their employees or worse, shut down, because they’re simply not as profitable as they are before.

I’m not saying that promoting local businesses will stop them from all these painful repercussions. However, if you promote them right and strategically, they will most certainly be saved from what most local businesses have devastatingly experienced.

How do you convince these local businesses to open up to the Internet?

It’s perfectly understandable for them to be hesitant. Not only do they lack knowledge about how Internet marketing works, they’re also afraid to add another pointless business expense that will let their business sink even deeper.

For one, explain how expansive the market for their local business is in the Internet. Existing customers who can become loyal customers that will contribute a steady stream of income to their business comprise one segment of this market. Another segment includes people who are about to move in to your area and are therefore using the Internet to research for businesses that are accessible.

Make Money Promoting Local Businesses

Also, explain to them how other local businesses are beginning to use the Internet to market their products. There are completely web-based businesses that sell their products and services anywhere around the world.

This is sneaky competition most local businesses are unaware of! And then there are other competing local businesses that are beginning to use the Internet to their advantage. If they don’t go toe-to-toe with them, their business can suffer from significantly reduced profits.

Third, explain to them the result of a study by Nielsen and NetRatings last July 2004. According to the study, around 24% of searches in major search engines are local-based. This is likewise confirmed by a study in September 2004, where 74% of respondents said that they used search engines to look for local businesses.

Lastly, compare the rates of marketing using traditional media versus new media. While advertising their products and services using the local newspaper or television commercials can cost thousands of dollars, marketing their local products online does not cost half as much. In fact, they can promote their products online for as little as a few hundred bucks! That includes the hosting of the website, email marketing, and the maintenance of blogs. Also keep in mind that all these are ways by which you can make money from home.

With these reasons, it’s practically impossible for local businesses to refuse the idea of marketing their products and services online! Once you get them to agree, you can officially start to make money from home:

1. Collect relevant and necessary information about the local business

Before promoting the local business, obtain information as regards their target market, the branding, the history, the people behind the business, the existing advertising efforts, and everything else that can help in promoting the local business online. In the end, you must be able to create a unique identity of what the product is all about.

2. Create a road-map for an interactive website

This is where you start to make money from home. With the information on the local business, you can start creating a comprehensive website from them. Make it clean, simple and interactive. By interactive, I mean that the website must enable users to avail your products and services from this website. Consider the websites of the following local businesses below.

A website of a local fitness center in Georgia. Notice how clean the layout of this website is.

Another local fitness club in Georgia, this website is interactive enough to allow you to schedule an appointment and even manage your own account.

The website of a local culinary school in Ohio. The website allows you to register an account and enroll in classes wherever you are.

3. Create a communication channel between the local business and its existing customers.

By the time you’re finished with the website, there are more ways for you to make money from home. You should create a connection between the local business and the people who will provide the initial traffic, its current customers. Ask the local business to get the email address of its customers and send them invites to the local business’ website through email.

4. Market the business by sending newsletters and articles to article directories.

Your plan of promoting the local business to make money from home is just not over yet. The next step is to actively promote the website with a little help from niche marketing and SEO. While you’re at it, you should also invest in article marketing, which will involve generating articles based on highly searched keywords of the local business’ niche and submitting them to article directories.

5. Create an updated blog informing locals about the latest news on the area and the industry.

With the preceding four steps, you will have created a traffic base large enough to hook a certain number of people to the local business. The next step, then, is to make sure the website is updated about the latest trends on both the industry and the place where the business is based. By doing so, you can make money from home and help a local business earn more.