There are many different things that you can do and many methods to follow and the following will therefore just act as a few examples so that you can see the rippling effect that it would have on your business.

Your own website

The starting point should always be your own website with the main goal to provide as much information as possible about your area of focus.  If you for example sell handmade toys online you should not only provide information about the individual products but also provide additional, valuable information related to handmade toys, educational and parental issues etc.

There are many other websites and businesses that sell almost identical products but by providing additional, valuable information it would be easy for visitors to see that you KNOW what you are talking about and the additional content also let your website rank high on search engines.

Search engines play a key role to draw a LOT of traffic to your website and a theme oriented website where there is a lot of unique content regarding that specific topic is very important.

Additional Sections

With our own web hosting service (www.business-hosting.co.za) you can install additional sections / programs with the click of a mouse.
A Website Blog

You can for example create a blog in a separate folder and then use it to add additional content somewhat separate from your official website.  Blogs are normally regarded as a rather non-official so it would not matter if you write in a very relaxed tone. (For example post on regular base a blog article about your day-to-day activities – This interesting customer that you met, this or that unique needs of a customer and how you managed to solve it etc).

While almost everybody will agree that an official website such as for eCommerce should be official and professional people never like it to conduct business with a faceless entity and a blog is therefore an ideal opportunity to let visitors and customers know and trust you better as the person behind the business.

A Website Forum

A website forum is almost the same as a blog but allow much better and easier interaction from visitors.  In the case of the handmade toys you can create a forum with categories such as products, education and parenting and then invite interaction and debating by posting relevant articles. (You can for example start a discussion about the new child protection law etc).

People love it to give their opinion and the internet, via a forum, is the ideal opportunity to let other people WORK FOR YOU without costing you one cent.  You can only write so many articles and posts but if you manage to get say 100 people to respond about different topics your forum and website can soon became very popular while the CONTENT itself would also be very valuable.

Additional Websites

With your own website as above you’ll be able to draw a lot of visitors that is interested in your specific products or services but remember that’s it should be a theme based website and therefore have some disadvantages.

If the content of the website became too broad the website lost it’s advantage as theme specific website so the best is to create additional websites if necessary. (With our hosting packages you will be able to host multiple websites without additional costs)

If your wife or staff are for example interested in gardening, cooking, boxing etc you can simply create a website for each of this and then let them build their own website just as they want under the condition that each website have a link and/or banner ad to your own website.

Do you start to understand the general idea of how other people can help you to promote your business, products or services for free?

Herewith some information to help you save some money.

• It’s not common in South Africa but with for example our own web hosting packages we offer a feature called “Addon Domains” where you can for example HOST two or more domains / websites within a single web hosting package so that you can actually host up to 15 websites but only pay for one hosting package.   -  (Business Hosting package R95 pm = 2 domains / websites, Professional Hosting package R165 pm = 5 domains / websites and Corporate Hosting package R235 pm = 15 domains / websites)
• Our web hosting control panel also allow you to choose from a few dozen full website programs that you can install with a few mouse clicks and while it require some effort to learn how these website programs work it’s well worth the effort and cost nothing at all.
• The only drawback is that this website programs have a standard and maybe not so good looking layout but even then there are some options available because some of them allow you to choose from several thousand different layouts with a few mouse clicks while others can be customized for you at very low cost.
• There are also ten thousands of other programs and scripts available on the internet either for free or very low that’s designed for a specific purpose so if you need something specific just ASK.
• Something that you must understand is that even while the “looks” of a websites is somewhat important, the REAL value of a website is not in how it looks but in it’s CONTENT so why spend many thousands of rands to let someone design a website to look like you want it to look while it’s after all the functionality and content that’s 100 x more important??

(One of the websites that can be installed for FREE as above are promoted by a specific company at R5995 JUST for the “custom layout design” while the functionality and other features are precise the same. In fact, it’s is the very same program with just a change of “face”)

You can pay R500 000 to let someone design a website that looks 100 x better than Google and have the same features, but over a year your website will still be worth not much while Google will still be worth millions (or billions) JUST because of their content (the number of websites they have listed) even while their website don’t looks like much.