Have you ever visited a home business opportunity website and thought, “I can do better than that! There is nothing here but hype,
unrealistic business schemes, and information that barely touches the surface of what I’m looking for. Why did I waste my time?” You’re
not alone. Thousands of Internet searchers run into the same problem.
A Little History
In the past, home business opportunity websites were designed to offer variety. The theory was, the
broader the topics, the more traffic the website would attract, and the more advertisers would pay for key spots. Advertising rates
skyrocketed and website owners cashed in.
Then came the dot com crash.
The Internet was no longer new and ad blindness made it almost impossible to find advertisers willing to pay top dollar.
That’s when performance-based advertisements (also known as affiliate marketing) and pay-per-click
advertisers (Google Adsense™) came into play.
The idea was simple. Write articles that not only attracted visitors from the search engines, but convert
them into clicks and sales. But would it work? Articles were written to draw in the visitor, point him to key information, hook him,
pre-sell him on the product or service, and then get the sale (or in some cases, click).
And to everyone’s amazement, it worked!
Not only did it work, but website owners discovered a trend. While website owners could make a nice living from websites that offered
articles on several different topics, in several different genres, the potential for making a living from a single website dramatically
increased when they narrowed their topics and became experts—the go to place for information.
In fact, narrowing their websites to a single topic allowed them to pre-sell on levels they never imagined. As they become known as “the
place to go for answers” they began to build rapport with readers which allowed them to expand their information-based websites to
include niche specific consultations, seminars, workshops, products, services, and more.
Step Outside The Obvious
It’s easy to say, “I’m going to start a home business opportunity website and offer classified ads, reviews on each home business, and
articles related to those home business ideas.” And you can get away with it. A few trips to a
free content group will supply you with
enough information to put up a one-hundred page website in one month’s time.
But if you really want to do something that makes a difference in your life and that of your readers, you need to think outside the box.
- When looking for the perfect home business, for yourself, what were you looking for?
- What irritated you the most about the home business websites you visited?
- What inspired you the most and kept you coming back to your favorite websites?
- What did you wish you could find but no matter how hard you looked, you simply couldn’t find it? And can you interview successful
entrepreneurs in that field or area of expertise and develop a business website, product, and/or service to meet that need?
Define Your Niche
The first step to developing your home business opportunity website is to find a hole and fill it. Stop trying to get rich quick, stop
being everything to everyone, stop advertising to the masses, and start looking for an area of specialty—something that will meet a
want or need for your target audience—that you can fill.
Build Your Business
Building a successful home business opportunity website takes time, patience, and lots of hard work. Rome wasn’t built in a day and
neither will your business. Take the time to develop a business that can withstand the slow times and flourish in the fast times.
If you aren’t already an expert, become the expert through research, hands-on experience, and hiring the right people—what you don’t
know can always be outsourced.
Target a specific audience or market and capitalize on it. Take an idea with a broad or general scope and narrow it down. Then redefine
your idea, find a niche to call your own, and begin marketing and advertising to that select group of individuals. Avoid becoming another
super-mall filled with useless information or goods that’s designed to accommodate the masses and become "the source".
A Template For Success
Let’s assume you have a passion for helping mothers work from home, but you don’t want to be another “work at home mom” website. While
your goal is to target mothers, your main goal is to help them build successful home businesses that allows ample time to play with their
small children or attend their older children’s extracurricular activities.
You could become another website filled with recycled information, or you could carve out a niche that targets a very specific area
within a broad topic and become the expert others seek. For instance, you know work at home opportunities are everywhere and you know
there’s a lot of competition, but you’ve run a successful virtual assistant business for five years. In fact, you’ve gone through some
pretty rough times before your business really took off three years ago.
Your first inclination is to build a website geared towards selling information-based products designed to help women start and run a
profitable virtual assistant business, handle problem clients, sweet-talk corporate clients to putting you on retainer, and hiring
employees. You’d attract buyers through carefully written articles designed to pre-sell your information products. You’re even
considering writing a few articles for main-stream publications.
But as time passes you realize your information-based website and products should be a by-product of something larger. So you scour the
Internet looking for other virtual assistant businesses. You discover great information websites, workshops, and even a few associations,
but there’s something missing. Something is lacking and that’s when it hits you!
That thing that is lacking will become the core of your business. After careful research and plenty of “confidentiality” agreements, your
new business is about to open its doors.
As time progresses your website grows into a niche specific work at home opportunity website designed to educate, inform, and empower
women of all ages to become the top virtual assistant office in their geographic area.
In fact, your website includes a free public area filled with articles designed to pre-sell your products and services, and a paid
membership only area filled with surveys, articles, e-books, audio tapes, and virtual seminars. Your product line includes your “core
product” and it becomes the driving force behind your business, but you know that a virtual assistant has special needs so your product
line is eventually broadened to include everything a virtual assistant needs to succeed and nothing more; there’s recorders,
transcribers, brief cases, answering machines, notepads, computers, home office furniture, office supplies, and so forth. As your
business grows, you hire more help, which frees up your time to make special appearances, hold in-person workshops, and develop
training seminars that will one day become franchises.
And to think, it all started because you stepped outside the obvious and found a single niche.
About The Author:
Alyice Edrich is the author of several highly praised e-books designed to help you work from home. To discover how you can
earn $50 in two hours or up to $10K in your spare time visit her store:
http://thedabblingmum.com/ebookstore
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