Do independent local businesses need help with their online marketing?

“Online marketing?  You mean a website?  I’ve got one of those. What a waste.”  I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.  It seems that a LOT of business owners heard a few years ago that they needed a website or they would go out of business.  Bull.  For most of them, they paid a silly sum of money to have some designer put together a site.  It looked real pretty.  But, no one came to it, when they did, there was nothing on it to make anyone want to buy, or even give their name and address for follow up.

So, it ended up that a lot of business owners, paid out a lot of money to get the site built, still pay too much every month for basic hosting, and have not gotten a penny in business out of it.  To me, that seems like outright theft.  In fact, it is even worse.

Why?

Because, whoever built that site took money for putting it together, but even worse, they left that business owner thinking that they had whatever was needed to make money online… and that the internet just won’t work for them.  So, while their customers use the internet more and more, they have been ignoring it, thinking that their small business just isn’t right for making money online.  And that is hurting them a hell of a lot more than the few thousand dollars they paid to have that site built.

Every business can use the internet to increase their profits… without exception.  

And, it doesn’t have to cost very much to make the internet work for you.  I’m so tired of seeing this happen to business after business, I’m going to be spending at least the next few months educating and helping small local businesses use the internet to reduce their costs and increase their profits.  I’ll be putting on some seminars, writing a book, and putting together a new low cost program that (at least for now) I’m calling the Recession Proof System.  If you have a small business, I hope you’ll check it out.

Bill Shor