Earn Extra Money

How many small businesses do you know that don’t have a website?  Believe it or not, there are thousands upon thousands of small businesses lacking websites — it’s amazing and it leads to an opportunity for you to make money.  There are very simple ways to create a small business website for free that are non-technical.  That means you don’t need to know how to write a single line of code in order to get started.  If you’re looking to make extra money by building small business websites for local businesses but you’re afraid of technology, refer your 13 year old to this post and ask him/her to explain it to you.

First, how is this a way to make money?  Well, quite simply, you can walk into every local business in your town and offer to build them a small business website.  You’re not offering a custom website with many consultations between you and their staff; you’re offering to bring them into the 21st Century, get them a web address and add a few pages of content that will be useful to their existing and potential customers (things like contact information, an about me page, a menu if they’re a restaurant, etc.).

If they tell you that they can do that themselves, ask them why they haven’t done it before.  If they tell you they don’t think it’s worth it to spend $300-$400 on a small business website, tell them that every time one of their customers searches for their business online and can’t find it, they go to another business (one of their competitors).  In addition, if you have informative content online, it is likely to be indexed by search engines, which means unsolicited visitors will stumble across your site.  Some of those visitors are likely to convert into business customers meaning that a small business website could bring in enough extra business to pay for itself shortly.

Remember, you’ll have to write content to add to each small business website.  I suggest at least five pages of text at about 400-500 words per page.  You’ll want to have all of the questions you want answered ready the first time you meet with the small business owner(s) so that you don’t have to keep going back to the business when drafting content for the website.  Alternatively, you can have the business owner(s) or a staff member write the text and send it to you.

Now, how do you actually build a simple small business website?  Well, there are two ways:

(1) Dev Hub

This way is:

• 100% not-technical.
• Has a lot of features but is not extremely customizable.
• Completely free.
• Does not involve hosting (it is taken care of for you and your client by Dev Hub).

A little more information: Dev Hub is a completely free web-based site editor that is no harder to use than editing an email.  It is perfect for putting up something along the lines of a five page website with a few pictures (just what a restaurant or similar small business would need).  I currently use Dev Hub for many small sites.  Dev Hub’s site editor remains free by making money from the websites that use its service if website creators choose to add revenue-sharing advertisements (meaning that both you and Dev Hub would share advertising revenue, but only if you chose to add advertisements to your small business websites).

For an example of a small business website built with Dev Hub, see LasVegasConstruction.com.

To get started with your own Dev Hub site, click here.

(2) Wordpress.ORG

Wordpress.ORG is a free blogging platform used by millions of blogs.  It is by far the favorite blogging platform of the blogging community.  It can easily be used to host pages of information as well (as opposed to a blog format), which is just what a small business website would need.

This way is:

• Not very technical.  You will need a hosting package, but (and this is a big BUT) many of the top hosting companies have an auto-install feature for Wordpress, so that you don’t have to do anything except go into your hosting control panel and click something along the lines of “install Wordpress,” depending upon your host.  I recommend BlueHost.com (used to host Earn Extra Money), as the customer support is superb (you can call or email them, but you can also go to the BlueHost.com homepage and use the live chat option at any point during the day, which lets you get your questions answered in real time without waiting on the phone – amazing).
• Extremely customizable.  On a Wordpress site, you can easily modify almost anything you would want to modify on a small business website.
• Free (except hosting).  Hosting should cost $60-$120/year for a small business website, but the Wordpress.ORG software is free.

Note: Make sure to go to Wordpress.ORG and not Wordpress.COM.  Wordpress.COM is very similar to Wordpress.ORG (they were built by the same people) but websites created on Wordpress.COM are more restrictive.

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