Make money and market your business at the same time

I often speak to business owners who have e-commerce sites. Their internet presence is designed for easy navigation in order to offer an uncluttered shopping experience. If for example a company specializes in computer video and audio cards, they may have hundreds of items with short descriptions for each of them.

The main concern is usability. Although it could be very helpful to have pages with long reviews, forums, explanations of what component may work best depending on user requirements, many owners feel the site could become a sea of information where someone could get lost in it.

There is a solution that will benefit both the business owner as well as prospective buyers: design an informational site! The benefits of a separate site with fresh content are many. It can serve as a platform to educate people who may just be looking for products but are not sure what they need and if they need it.

The informational site's purpose is not only to educate but also to create excitement about a product or service. This is where you can expand on anything you did not want to say or do on the commercial site. Describe the pros and cons, invite people to post in a forum, write updates on upcoming products or elaborate on future trends.

If you wish, you can post ads on the site by using services such as Adsense. Google's Adsense is free to web site owners. By deciding the ad designs in its easy interface, Google will automatically display ads that are pertinent to the content displayed on the web site. Every time someone clicks on the ads, the site owner gets paid. There are individuals and companies who make tens of thousands of dollars a year or more with Adsense.

The first objection I hear about this is: "Yes, but what if my competitors are displayed in the ads? I am basically giving them another advertising platform!". The answer is yes, it can happen. Google has a tool to selectively filter particular advertisers. If you see a competitor on your informationa page, you can go into your Adsense account and filter their site out. Personally I do not like to do this for a couple of reasons. First, by using filtering it is likely your advertising revenue will go down. Second, it is very likely that if someone is shopping or searching for something on the Internet, they will probably find your competitors anyway.

Last, always keep in mind you can post a link to your commercial site to drive interested buyers to your product. Always remember that the informational site is not to be meant as a copy of the commercial counterpart. It needs to be different, fresh and have completely new content. Search engines such as Google dislike duplicate sites and will come down hard on anyone who clutters the web with unnecessary "copies".