How to Sell a Service on the Internet

In today's Internet economy, all businesses, whether local or international, must have

an online presence. Selling a service business on the Internet is easier than it ever has been

Instructions

1

Make a decision as to what service you are going to offer: consulting, programing, writing, translating, teaching, are some good examples or services that you can provide from anywhere.

You can also provide a service such as gardening or home decorating, for example, but your reach and advertising strategies would have to be limited to the local area.

2

Identify your target market. Write down everything that defines your ideal customers. Consider their age, interests, economic status and what problem or concern they are currently having that your service can solve for them. Also evaluate barriers that might cause them to hesitate about purchasing your service. These will be addressed in the information that you provide on your website. To find this information, take a look at forums that are specific to your service. You can see what people are asking and what the answers are. Check out other websites and blogs that deal with the service you will offer. If you are already operating offline, send out questionnaires to your current customers. Use the free Wordtracker Question Tool that tells you what questions Internet users are typing into their search engines. When you access the tool, simply type in a word that pertains to the service you are offering, and see what questions come up in the results. Subscribe to trade magazines that publish news and content about your service.

3

Choose five to ten keywords. In the online world, keywords are everything in terms of making your business visible. A keyword is whatever your potential customers are typing into their search engines when they are looking for a service like the one you offer. So, for example, if you are offering your services in translations from English into Spanish, the people that are looking for this service might type in "English to Spanish translation service" or "hire translator English to Spanish". Each of these examples is referred to as a keyword (or sometimes a keyword phrase). You can find the exact keywords that people are typing at the free Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool. Simply type the general category of the service you plan to offer, and Google will spit out all of the relevant keywords that users type. This free tool also gives you the search volume, the amount of competition, and other statistics about each keyword. Choose five to ten of the keywords Google provides you with that best represent the service you will offer.

4

Purchase a domain name. Go to Godaddy.com or NameCheap.com to purchase a domain for your website (it will cost about $10 per year). The name you choose should be the keyword that best represents the service that you are offering. So, for example, if the best keyword phrase is English to Spanish Translations, your domain name should be EnglishToSpanishTranslations.com (or .biz, or .info). If the name you choose is not available, add another word (such as "buy," "best," "purchase," or "get") in front, or a word at the end like "here" or "now." You can also put dashes between the words like English-To-Spanish-Translations.com as well. When your site domain name is keyword optimized like this, your page is more likely to appear in the top search engine results when someone searches for that term.

5

Obtain hosting. You can get a hosting account at Godaddy, HostGator, or any of the other many hosting providers online. Hosting usually costs between $5 and $20 per month, depending on the amount of storage you specify. Follow the tutorials on the hosting account you purchase in order to set up the account and host your domain name.

6

Set Up a PayPal Business account. This is free, and it will allow you to place a PayPal order button on your website. Follow PayPal instructions to do this.

7

Design your website with an HTML editor. Purchase the Dreamweaver HTML editor or you can use a free service such as NVU. Follow the HTML editor service instructions on creating pages. The background of your site should be lightly colored or white. Your home headline page should be your most important keyword. Other pages or headings on your site should include the other 5 to 10 keywords that you chose. Each heading or page should offer an article that pertains to each keyword, and the article should include information that is valuable to your potential customers: "5 Things to Look for in a Spanish To English Translating Service," for example. At the bottom of each page, describe the service that you offer and include your PayPal button or a number to call to place the order. Also make sure that all of your contact information is on each page.

8

Upload your HTML page or pages to your hosting account by following the hosting account instructions.

9

Drive traffic to your website. You can do this with free promotional efforts through Facebook, Twitter, forums and blog posting, free online classifies, YouTube, or paid advertising such as PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, banner advertising, ezine (online magazine) newsletter advertising, and more.