Today's aims: Bake mincepies, bake a loaf of bread, play with Google.
PART ONE, FIRST DRAFT
As many of you already know, one of the Frugaldom challenges for 2011 is to set up a self-sufficient microholding. Shona Prophett is important but we need to get the balance right, first. We need to neutralise all spending and we need to ensure people can find us when they search for us on the Internet.
I'm fascinated by companies like Google - they can earn people fortunes or they can cast aside what you think is a fantastic site, no matter how relevant it seems to the topic you're researching. The 21st Century solution to succeeding with anything online seems to be, employ an SEO specialist and engage in relevant social media. But is Search Engine Optimisation worth paying for when you're a frugal newcomer to small business? I certainly wouldn't pay for social media services because I don't believe that all the followers actually read what you publish, so number of followers is irrelevant. Some, however, do click through the links and read, respond or, better still, spend, so it pays to be found on the Internet.
Frugal 'Microholders' can't afford the ridiculous cash fees requested by do-good Search Engine Optimisation specialists and, let's face it, does any of it really matter? It's not just the end results that count, it's how people search and that's the secret ingredient we may miss from our frugal recipe for microholding success. It's also a question of how you want to be found in the first place. Unless we have a site containing goods, services and/or information that people are likely to search for, what gets found means nothing to us at the moment. But the Frugal Entrepreneur has to build a business from nothing. Your new microholding is going to depend on customers finding you, because you don't have an advertising & marketing budget, you don't have free merchandise, you don't have any professional promotional expertise and you don't have a business mentor offering FREE help. I'm assured by many that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION is paramount to success, so let's start there and play with Google for a while, just to familiarise ourselves with how the results appear. Afterall, we have all taken advantage of the FREE DOMAIN NAME AND WEBSITE offer provided by www.gbbo.co.uk, haven't we? We all have an online presense ready for launching these homebased microholding businesses in 2011.
To me, search engine optimisation is a bit like baking: you add all the right ingredients, get the mix right, pop it into the oven and then it's baked to perfection within an alloted time... Or a bit like planting seeds in that perfectly prepared garden: you provide the right mix of care, feeding and watering, then after their alloted time, your seeds become perfect flowers, fruit, vegetables... But as we all know, life isn't like that! Neither, I believe, is Google.
Right now, I need to have lunch, get the mincepies into the oven and another loaf into the breadmaker, but I'll be back with Part 2 of my free 'Frugal Google Solutions' soon and I hope you'll be able to add your own comments and make some helpful suggestions.
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