the hundred dollar business

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I spent this morning editing The Cozy Home Spa website, based on some recommendations from Janet Meiners as well as basic marketing common sense.

The next step, now that the site is “basically” set up, will be to add more products, refine the site, and most importantly, promote the site & do some basic internet marketing.

Here’s a rundown on the technical things I did to get the site ready:

1. Created a static front page, so that new visitors to The Cozy Home Spa will get an introduction to the products, shipping prices, and find the link to the blog.

(This is super easy:

• First, you need to add two “pages”, (not posts) on your WordPress blog. I created one called “Products” and one called “Blog”.

• Then, in the Wordpress dashboard, go to “options”, and then “reading”.

• Click on which page you want to be the “static front page”, which doesn’t change (i picked my “products” page to be the front page), and which page will be the “blog” (where you write chronological posts– i picked my “blog” page).

Here’s the static page, that will stay the same, at www.thecozyhomespa.com, and here’s the blog page, which will update whenever I write a new post, at www.thecozyhomespa.com/blog.

2. Added product photos.

3. Beefed up product descriptions (see example).

4. Added the “About” page, to introduce why The Cozy Home Spa exists, along with a photo of me (yay?!) and my contact info.

5. Added a “Contact” page with my photo, email, & phone #.

6. Added the blog component, www.thecozyhomespa.com/blog, with a link to the blog on the left sidebar on the site.

Here are some of the benefits of having a blog:

• If you write consistently around a few certain topics, your site will begin to register in search listings for those keywords

(For example, I wrote one blog post with the cinnamon soap category, and now if you search for “cinnamon bar soap”, thecozyhomespa.com comes in #1 on Google, even though there are many other sites that have cinnamon soap.)

• You can create an interested, engaged community of people who check out your site regularly to see the latest news about your company, industry, etc.

• By writing short blog posts as informative, educational articles (like this one), you establish yourself as an “expert” in the industry, which builds your personal & corporate brand like hotcakes.

7. Added “Buy Now Buttons” from Google Checkout for each product, along with quantity options (1 bar, 2 bars, etc.)

8. Divided products into 3 categories (gifts & accessories, pre-made products, and “make your own” kits) and wrote a brief explanation of the categories on the main page.

9. Adding shipping prices with a “buy now” option.

10. Added a “Search bar” (it’s available under the WordPress dashboard, “presentation”, “widgets”, add search bar.

11. Added a “Subscribe by email” box from Feedburner.

12. Added the “Certified by PayPal” button from my PayPal business account (I’ll be adding PayPal as a purchase option).

13. Included an RSS feed and “recent posts” widget to the left side of the page so new visitors can access and subscribe to the blog.

***I know there’s a lot more that can be done to the site, but hey– it’s a start. The best part is that all of these options are free and easily do-able using Wordpress.com, Google Checkout, Flickr Creative Commons, a digital camera, Snipshot.com, PayPal, FeedBurner, and a bank account.

That means that any of you, if you’ve been wanting to open an online store, could do one as well. Hey, why not?