The Local Business Niche…

Hello everybody,

Thanks for coming to my blog! :-)

Today I am going to discuss a little about an offline business model that I have been dabbling with for a while and that is providing internet services to local businesses.

My fist client was a member of the family, he asked me for his opinion on a quote he had for a website redesign and search engine optimisation fee which is payable every month. Here are some of the figures the quote came back with.

• £3000 Site design including logo and header graphics

• £500 SEO set up fee

• £180 Per month SEO fee

So that seemed like a lot of money to me then I started reading the small print, the company could not guarantee that they could get my uncle into the search engines and could take 6 months before they would start seeing results… that’s £1080 and there was no promise of results!

I said Uncle give me a couple of weeks I will redesign the site and I WILL get it ranking. My uncle gave me a list of keywords he wanted to rank for and I was set to go.

A week passed and the new site was designed and uploaded the second week passed and we were in the search engines by the third week we were on the first page for 90% of the search terms then 2 weeks late we were in the top 3 for every term that they wanted and I had also hit a few other gems.

My uncle was ecstatic and he decided that I needed paying… I don’t normally charge family but he would not say no so every month I am paid a lovely chunk of change for getting and keeping a site in the search engines.

A year on and I have developed a full marketing strategy for them and their business is growing at an alarming rate of knots I have implemented a newsletter and special offers feature ect ect.

But whats funny about this the original company that quoted is now after my services as they are shocked as to how quick I was able to get a site ranking and the results they said where what his clients were after.

I now do a bit of consulting for him and a few other companies, I am pretty picky as to who I consult for and when a new client comes a long they have to convince me that I should work with them I dont have to do any selling at all and I can pretty much name my price.

The local business niche is by far a massive niche and there are a lot of tactics out there that you can use to get offline clients and build a great SEO consulting and web design company yourself.

What I like about the local business market is that its not full of internet marketers and so getting any site ranking is an absolute doddle… I can literally get a site on the first page at the top in less than a week and not only that it stays at the top.

Over the last few months I have been doing a bit of site design for members of one of my forums as I was getting hacked off with them being ripped off by other so called designers and search engine experts. If i want to make an extra £2k this week I will simply email my list and I will have that money exceptionally quick!

That is the local business cash machine!