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Can small business
prosper using the Internet?
As a small business owner selling services or hard goods to your local clients you may not think
that the internet would help your business. After all it is called the World Wide Web. How could
it help local small businesses like yourself?
The answer lies in the way people search for information. Prior to the internet people would look up
the Yellow Pages and business directories to find service providers or merchants. Today more and more
people have access to the internet and they would use the internet to find all kinds of information.
Last survey shows 169 million people in the United States use the
internet on the regular basis. It is far more convienient
and faster to use Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines to find services or products than going through the
Yellow Pages books. Do you know that internet search is the number
two reason people go online? Number one reason is checking e-mail.
Last September (2003) Google and Overture - two major search engines - released beta test versions of
their localized search engines. Soon it will be even easier to find service and products providers in
your local area via the internet. The statistics released by Jupiter Research suggested that local search
will be the next big thing: 63% of online users research products and services locally; and 70% of shoppers
do their research online but shop in their local retail stores. However for your business to be found in
those searches you must have a presence online.
Currently you can get your business included in some Internet Yellow Pages listing which make it a little
bit easier for people to find you via internet search. But all they would see is your name, address and
phone number. Nothing to set you apart from your competitors who are also listed. That is just like the
regular listing in the old Yellow Pages book. Your listing would be lost against your competitors' half page
or full page ads. Having your own web site is equivalent to having several full pages in the Yellow Pages book,
in full color, dedicated to your business. You have all the space to tell the potential customers who you are,
your experience and why they should do business with you. Unlike the printed version which only allows you to
make changes to the ads once a year, you can make changes to your web sites as often as you want to. You can
run special promotions for special events through out the year, change your products listing and prices,
introduce new services, etc ...
You can do all that for a fraction of the cost of a full page ad in the Yellow Pages book.
Below are the display rates in the printed Yellow Pages book for 2003. (Click
here to see the actual fax from Yellow
Pages).
| Ad Size |
Black |
Color |
| Two Fifths Page |
$2,457 |
$3,072 |
| Half Page |
$2,829 |
$3,537 |
| Three Fifths Page |
$3,198 |
$3,998 |
| Three Fifths Page (vertical) |
$3,302 |
$4,128 |
| Four Fifths Page |
$4,117 |
$5,147 |
| Full Page |
$5,478 |
$6,848 |
| Full Page Plus |
$8,376 |
$10,470 |
| Double Truck (2 full pages) |
$11,168 |
$15,636 |
No, these are not yearly costs.
They are MONTHLY rates!
Yet for as little as $1,000 you can have your own business web site built, your own
domain name and 12 months of web hosting. Each of the subsequent year should cost you about
half of the initial cost to host and maintain your site. The benefit of having your own business web site is huge.
Get a jump on your competitors before they discover this secret.
Give us a call today 281-795-2618.
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