Create your own blog or website today and get more profit from your business

DO you need a teacher? Millions are online!;Do you need a House? You can buy online!;Do you want to learn how to cook? Joyce Etim Ibanga can teach you how to make delicious variety of Foods especially Calabar varieties which happen to be the best in Nigeria.

Do you need skills? Or you want to learn? Everything is online!You can pay and get services and products even at your door step.Hence my saying: The World is now Online holds true because, you reading this, it means you are also online.

Why do you think your business is not moving fast? What is the cause of your low profit ? Well, the answer is because people are in the market and you are not selling in the market that people are in. So the people are buying from your competitors who are in the market and you are still selling yours at home. This Market I talk about is the INTERNET.

Because everyone is now online, people order things online and with just the pressing of few buttons, you get what you want delivered to you at your door step. So why not get your products, goods, services etc online too?

I was searching for a PopCorn machine in Jos, Plateau state around November, 2015, but I was surprised that no any supplier of this machine was online. I kept searching using different words and phrases but to no avail. I decided to order from abroad (Outside of Nigeria) but the cost of delivery was three times the price of the machine. So I wanted ordering from other states within Nigeria to Plateau State, but then I said to myself, let me first ask some people on our Facebook group, may be some might know where to get the machine. When I asked the question on where to get a Popcorn Machine, I was amazed that we had plenty distributors in Jos but none of them was online. I went to one of the shops described to me and the man did not even know what a website was not to talk of knowing how to get the goods online. I left this one to another person whom I ended up buying from him. This shows how easy it is to outgrow such a competition especially if you know the internet very well and you are into the business with such group of people.

Well, I just gave the story from my experience and many sellers are losing buyers because the buyers cannot simply locate the sellers. It is left for you now to get your business on the INTERNET and increase your profit and beat the competition.

The advantage of using the Internet to grow your Business can be seen from my experience above.

How to get a business online?

Getting a business online is pretty easy, all you need to do is to know where your customers are located and then go after them. I will be outlining and explaining the various ways you could get your business online.

1. Advertisement: Many people are concentrated or found in certain places online and it is left for you to know the age group that buy your products more and then advertise where you think such people are found. Take for instance that you are targeting Youths who are crazy about Phones and Electronic Gadgets. If you sell Phones or Computers, you target the youths and you can find them mostly on social media such as Chat rooms and Forums. Advertising on such platforms presents your goods, products or services to the buyers and you stand a chance of boosting your profit. Advertisement does not cost much and even if it happens to be costly, it is normally proportional to the number of people that will see your product. You could get beautiful pictures of your products and pay the owner of the website or blog in order to display your products to your buyers. That is simply what advertisement is all about. It is now left for you to decide to display your products in the form of pictures, or text or both or audios or videos or any form which you think is acceptable by the terms and conditions of the website or blog which you intend advertising on.
2. Join a Forum and Spam the Forum: This is another way (but a bad way) of getting your products across to your buyers. You can decide to join any forum including this forum, jotscroll.com , in order to be able to make comments and post articles just like normal users. While posting articles, you can add the pictures, links (URLs) or even write about your product. Though this is easy and cheap for you, it only ends up tarnishing the image of your product because when people become tired with your articles written always, they will neglect anything you write about and so you end up losing and not gaining. Though you could do this in a wise way by not posting frequently, it only slows down the growth of your business because you have to post from time to time; hence, spamming (the act of repeatedly posting unwanted things to users) is bad and frowned by the web community. If you spam any forum, it will not be long before the Moderators or Administrators block you or even deactivate your account, therefore, this is not a good way of getting your business online.
3. Create a Fan Page on any Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Instagram etc and then try to get followers who will see your updates anytime you post on your fan page. This is a great and cheap way of getting your products across to your customers. This is great in the sense that, anytime they like or comment on your post, all their friends get to see your products and so it has a multiplier effect especially when you update meaningful things on your fan page. This is a very good way of wielding power in your business. The only problem with this is getting the followers.
4. Own a Website or create yourBlog and put up your Items: this is the perfect way of getting your items online. I decided to make this come as the last because I am concentrating on it and so I will write extensively on this. Having a website has numerous benefits to your business and I will tell you about it all here.

Benefits of having a website for your Business

1. You have full control of everything: When you own a personal website, you have no limit to the number of write-ups; you can post at will and at any time. You do not fear being blocked by anyone and you are not spamming the web in any way. You can decide to choose what you want your customers to view. Take for instance, in a Forum or a social media group, whenever you post something, it takes a matter of minutes before your post is pushed down by other users posts. Once your post is pushed down, no one sees it again. The worst of it is that, sometimes, other users can post useless things which tend to make the forums not lively. But if you really want to build a brand for your Products and business, the best thing to do is having a website of your own. This will enable you to post and then search engines get to index it. Once search engines index your post on your website, anytime that someone searches for something similar to what you have written, your products are displayed to your customers and this type of internet users tend to buy things more because they are actually looking for your product that is why they searched. Most forums and Chats cannot give you this functionality. Another reason is that you cannot display your products the way you want on social media except the way the owners have made every post to appear. Assuming that you want your products to have names and prices and should be displayed like 10 items per page, including the description of every product, a social media cannot offer this for you, and the only way is having your own website or blog and then customizing it to your taste.
2. You are an administrator/a moderator yourself : if you have your website, you are solely responsible for whatever you post on it which means that you do not have to fear starting all over again because you might have been blocked by moderators of forums due to the forum rules that you might have violated. In order to stay out of this trouble, the best thing is having your own website. Sometimes, even without breaking any rule, once you start being successful, other users might start becoming jealous and they could cause trouble to you by making bad comments about you so that people will not trust you product. SO in order to avoid this, start your own website or blog today.
3. If your social media account happens to be hacked, it might destroy all that you have done. But with a website, you have the choice of backing up your website for such bad instances, so that you can easily recover everything and you will not have to start all over again. The social media could break down and your business could go down with it. They could change their policies and your business would have no choice than to follow their policies, so the best is creating your own website or blog.
4. You stand a chance of making money with your website: you could make money with your website especially when you have built a brand and people have known you for good. You will then begin to attract advertisers to your website or blog and then you start making money in addition to the one from the products you may sell. This is a very good means of doubling your profits. Making money in this way is not possible through social media and even when a social media enables you to earn with your account, there is no guarantee when they change their policies and conditions of service.
5. You get to be trusted more compared to your competitors who use only social media because a business that has a website has more honour and respect that one that does not have a website but rather uses a free service.
6. You can receive money by use of master, visa, verve and many more by simply integrating them into your website. This will enable you to sell your products in an easy way even while you are asleep, customers could be busy purchasing your products and the alerts from your bank will be the only sound that will wake you up from your sleep. This is what I would have done had it been there was a popcorn distributor within Jos that had this facility.

Now that we have seen the best way of getting your business online and the advantages of doing so,

How can we create a website?

Creating a website comes in different ways and all depend on your taste of what type of website you want.

We have blog for writing, Ecommerce website for selling things, Forum for chatting and many more. If you intend promoting and selling your products, an Ecommerce website is best for you. If you intend making money by writing, then a Blog is best for you, if you intend making money by gathering people of common interest in one place, then a Forum is the best. Whatever your taste is, there is always a website that suits your needs.

Below are the things you needed to know before starting a blog orwebsite of whatever type:

• Domain Name: you need this as the identifier for your website. This is the name that users type into their browsers to get to your website. This should be the name of your business because it helps you to rank well in search engines ranking when someone is looking for your products. Sometimes the domain name you want could be taken by someone and you can either buy it back (which may cost you more) or you could get another one similar to what you need. The domain name for this current website is jotscroll.com which means anytime you type jotscroll.com , it will take you to this website.
• Web Hosting: This is the process of making your website to be available on the internet always and on every device. You can pay monthly by some companies or yearly or more.
• Programmer: This is where I come in, it is what I do and it is what I enjoy doing. This is the person that writes the codes and puts everything in place in order for you to have functional website. This people are rare and I am happy but not boasting of being One of such. This people can maintain your website, they can repair it for you, they can upgrade the website or blog or they can even create one for you. I do all of this and it does not take long. If you have a good programmer who has you in mind and the success of your business, you have finished half of your task. They can help you a lot. So if you need one and you are within Nigeria or especially Plateau state, you can count on me to do a clean and perfect job for you and at affordable price with additional advice.
• Cost of setting up a website, maintenance and repair should also be taken into consideration before starting an online business.

Now that you know what it takes to create a website, where can you get a programmer in order to create a website or blog for you?

Finding a Programmer, or a Web designer is easy. The problem is finding the right person to do it well for you. A simple google search could fetch you some programmers near you. Getting a Programmer (web designer) near you is the best because you can easily contact the person when anything arises. You can google something like this: Computer programmer or web designers in Jos, plateau state (if you live in jos) and if there is one near you, you will see the results in your browser.