There is no doubt that since the recession hit in 2007/2008, there has been a significant growth in small to medium enterprises, people working from home, for themselves; and also a growth in the number of freelancers.
Sometimes, this has been as a result of redundancy, an opportunity born out of an unpleasant situation, perhaps a stagnant job market in that person’s particular field that leads to thinking of alternative ways to find work; maybe frustration with pay freezes year after year whilst the cost of living continues to rise, these factors and more contribute to the birth of the freelancer, consultant, small business owner; it could be said that the growth in this self employed business world is a physical manifestation of the phrase ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’.
Regardless of the reasons that led to someone deciding to work for themselves or set up their own business, one element that cannot be ignored are the added opportunities afforded by the digital age. The internet continues to evolve at breakneck speed, and in the modern business world, you ignore it at your peril.
However, there remains one particular stumbling block. For those few that are well financed, the option remains to simply pull out the cheque book, or these days the credit card and Paypal account and outsource those online business requirements such as websites.
For many years there was no alternative, you either knew how to code and create a website or you didn’t. The next step in the web space evolution was the creation of new platforms that made webspace creation more accessible to more people, so long as you were prepared to put in the time and effort, but the technical aspects fell short of being akin to requiring an IT degree to figure out what you were doing. But this wasn’t yet something that everyone could get to grips with. Indeed, the internet is awash with requests for web developers, or those with that technical knowledge to ‘finish off’ what they started or to add features to websites where the owner has got to a point beyond which they cannot proceed themselves.
Thus creating an online presence still wasn’t available to the masses, nor was it as easy as it was felt by many that it should be.
In the last few years, the most recent developments in webspace creation are the many platforms that seek to provide the simplest way yet to design your own websites or web pages and they each have their own pros and cons. They each have their flaws and fall short of being the tool that everyone can use.
Woto is a great free way to create online content
About 4 months ago I came across www.woto.com (formerly known as cloudpage.com) which is close to being a genuine WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) webpage design tool that takes a lot of the pain away from webspace creation and has a very simple user interface. It also has a lot of tricks up its sleeve too.
There’s a handy SEO section with guidance notes, some great tools that enable you to add video, add paypal buttons, optin form code, social media connectivity, and more, which means that it can be used for sales pages, lead generation forms (squeeze pages), product launch pages, stand alone article pages for backlinks, the list is endless. Even if you already have a website, there are many different applications it can be used for, to support what you already have.
If you want more than just a single page there are options. Using anchor text (similar to that used on pdf documents) you can create a menu system that takes you to different sections of the page. Alternatively, and this is well laid out, when you go to create a link, there are options to connect to other pages you’ve created and so you can interconnect multiple pages with relative ease. In the end, not so different from what you already know as a website.
The functionality doesn’t end there though, you can share content with people, that is password protected, you can schedule content to only be available for a certain period of time (great for marketing special offers, no need to have to remember when to remove it) and you can pass a page between yourself and others so that more than one person can contribute.
Making changes is simple and straightforward and can be reviewed instantly, and it takes very little time to get to grips with all of this functionality, probably because the interface looks like a word document which almost everyone will already be familiar with.
Where it gets really interesting is when you consider that it is completely free to use. No need to buy a domain name (you can if you want, and connect that to the webpage you create). No need for web hosting. No need to spend money outsourcing to someone to create it for you.
So for the solopreneurs, new startups, or those with businesses that are yet to have an online presence, you can very easily create it yourself. Design a sales page, take payments, market to that page and start generating business, in a very short amount of time.
From what I can glean from information available online, it is going to continue to develop and I am sure there is lots more to come, but even now, the applications that it can be used for are already wide and varied, and I’ve even started using it for clients’ landing pages whereas before we might have gone down the road of buying a new domain to host it.
If you have some time, why not check it out and see what you would use it for, and if I can help in any way let me know. I’m no expert, far from it, but I’ve managed to make this work for me in many different ways. It has saved me money and a lot of time.
If your online business presence is working correctly you should be spending your day dealing with customer enquiries and fulfilling customer orders.
You might have read my recent blog post where I wrote about the changes that Google had made in early 2011 about how they score websites. I also mentioned that one of the reasons they made the changes was to target and downgrade the rankings of websites with false backlinks or bookmarks. The rule of thumb when it comes to SEO is, get a good score so you rank highly for your market, and get lots of traffic. Rank badly and its unlikely you’re going to get any organic visitors to your site, that is to say, not many people using search engines for your product or service, are going to find you and as a result they are unlikely to click on your listing, to get through to your website. (Please note, this is not the case for paid for advertising such as Google Adwords. With a Google Adwords account, how many clicks you get is determined by the nature of your advert, and how much money you’re prepared to spend, not by the ranking of your webpage.) 
Too many businesses set up a Google Adwords campaign years ago and haven’t done more than give it a cursory glance every now and then. Chances are, its just sitting there doing its own thing. There are some simple steps you can take which will give you the answer as to whether you should continue to spend money on Google Adwords, or similarly, if you’re thinking of using this form of online advertising, whether it is going to be worth the time and money for your business.
