Chapter 4, BOC

"You should ask yourself why you want to build a web site in the first place.", Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, Meyerson, pg 25.

As a freelance web designer, I get approached by a lot of small businesses who have need for a website. Most of the time, these entrepreneurs have no idea what they want or what the message is that they wish to convey with their website. It's common and very unfortunate.... for them. For me, this just isn't the case. It's because of these clients that I had to take a really hard look at what marketing is and how to help these people become successful with a web presence.

A few months back, I was approached by a belly dancer who has had her website up for approximately a year and a half. In that year, she has never been contacted for a performance via her site. Unfortunately, she is among the many who pay someone to create some eye candy on a page and then walked away from it. She does not engage in any of the social networks and never bothered include her web address on her business card. In fact, she would mention her web site in passing if someone happened to ask if she had one.

So, for the next two weeks, she and I hashed out a plan for her new site. Yes, it's eye candy and she' s so very happy with it. For that I'm glad. Unfortunately, she hasn't followed through on the action plan we put together. As a matter of fact, I'm still waiting to get video so we can upload it to the site. We have an appointment this weekend and I'm hoping we can revisit the original marketing plan and put together another action plan, maybe something that will be easier for her to commit to. I'll keep my fingers crossed.