Today’s post comes from Jason Shindler, owner of Curvine Web
Solutions
Almost
every consultant has a Web site. The question I’m asked often is how do you
actually make money from your Web site. I’ve prepared five tips to help you
turn your Web site into a money making machine.

1.
Invest in a quality Web site. A lot of consultants and other single person
business owners try to do it themselves or save money by bartering or finding
someone to do it for free. When you are just one person, you need all of the
backup you can get to spread the word about your business. Spend the money and
hire a professional to design and implement your Web site. 

2.
Promote your Web site. Once you have this great Web site, you need to work to
get it in front of the right people. This does not happen automatically. One of
many ways to do this is to find places online where your potential clients
congregate and begin by announcing yourself and asking them for feedback on
your Web site. For example, let’s say you are a speaker who specializes in HR
topics. Find a group on LinkedIn that HR professionals join. Post a message
pointing them to your Web site and ask them for feedback. You’ll get two things
from this — real world feedback on how to make it better and a way to get your
potential clients to read more about you using your Web site. 

3.
Evaluate. Once you have had your Web site up for some period of time, you will
want to evaluate to see if it working the way you expected. Here are some
questions of the many you will want to answer: Which pages attract the most
visitors? Which pages are users leaving you site from? Which marketing
techniques attract the users that spend the most time on your site? You can use
Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics,
a free program available from Google. GA will help you answer these questions
and many more.

4.
Make Changes. Use all of the knowledge you have gained to try out some new
techniques on your Web site. If a bunch of people are leaving your site on one
page, make an educated guess about why they are leaving. Try varying the text
or pictures on that page and see if there is an impact. Try adding more
content. The key is to try something!

5.
Repeat. A lot of people think that you put a Web site online and it makes
millions of dollars. You must continue to work at this for it to be successful.
A Web site is like a business card. It is no good until it is in the hands of a
potential client.

Jason
Shindler is the owner of Curvine Web Solutions, a Web site development firm
located in Bellvue, WA. You can read more about Curvine at http://www.curvine.com, or visit their blog
at http://blog.curvine.com/wordpress/.