Tahoe Web Service

The Tahoe Web Service classified program is a great option for any active website that wants to capitalize on its traffic by selling ad space or providing a free classified for their users. The program is a standard feature at Tahoe Web Service and is available to everyone with a hosting account.

The classified is very configurable allowing you to specify categories, sub categories and pricing and options to us. This program will allow users to post free ads or you may charge them for the ads. The program will auto expire ads at the time interval you specify, so all ads are current. The maximum ad duration is 3 months with a minimum ad duration of 1 day.

Ad pricing can be set by category, so you could allow free ads for “lost pets” and charge $10 for “realestate for sale” and charge $5 for a car for sale. This allows you flexibility in ad value.

The program supports up to 500 concurrent ads with 1 photo each. Photos are optional and you can even charge an additional fee to insert a photo in the ads. You can let users edit or delete the ads or just let them expire at the set interval automatically.

You can also charge a premium for featured ads. The featured ads will appear on the main page as well as appearing in bold print in their main listings and searches. You can choose to fill the slots with unpaid ads when there are no paid ads available. As soon as there are paid ads the system will stop displaying the standard ads.

The program also allows users to search all the ads so they do not have to scroll through 50 pages of 10 ads each as your classified fills up.

This classified will work well if you want to run a small classified for an organization such as a church or club or an all out business to business services classified. It will work as a personals classified, a jobs classified, an industry specific classified, a local community classified or pretty much a classified for anything you can think of.

The program can also be a huge income generator. If you run ads for 30 days and charge $10 for each ad, 500 ads would give you a monthly income of $5,000.00 or $60,000.00 a year. Even with only 100 ads at $2.00 each that is $200 a month less the cost of hosting.

A program of this caliber has massive potential and appeal. The earning potential is huge and the possibilites are endless. But don’t get over confident and don’t lose sight of what your website already has in the search of the big advertising bucks.

It is always easier to launch your classified in a smaller or targeted market. If you run a car club, offer the listings to your members and others will surely add their own cars. Or target a local market or community that is reachable through local advertising. If you can get people to your classified, the programing will do the rest.

This is a fully automated system that can change the dynamic of your website and make it an interactive and informative marketplace for your industry.

The program should be used for what it is and you should not expect to be launching the next craigslist. It will serve as a great small classified and a powerful tool on your website. A website can be built around the program or the program can be an extra for the main site content. In either case, it is a powerful tool and is available to every website.

You are free to contact us if you would like this system installed on your website. Or if you would like to try your hand at running a full classified website you can purchase a domain name with hosting to give it a shot. Please note you must be using our shopping cart for this system to work. If you had us build you a website and did not want the use of the cart you are going to have to figure out a way for us to make the cart work on your site (looks wise).

You can view a sample of a live working classified we launched a few days ago. You are free to post your website or services on this classified. If you are posting a paid classified please contact us and we will allow your ad to be placed for free. View the classified at www.theliveclassifieds.com

 Do you treat people with whom you do business with correct? Tahoe Web Service thought we would come up with a few things that might help you out when it comes to customer service when launching your business online. Many times people forget about customer service when dealing with sales online. The online sales world is so automated we forget that one is dealing with real people. Does your customer service create fans or does it send people into the lost world of online sales, never to be heard from again, minus the back feed back they may leave you via Ebay, Etsy, or some list about a company to not do business with?

What is the real price one pays as an online business owner for customer service? The real price is word of mouth advertising. If your customers likes the way you handle things, he or she will tell maybe 20 other people. However, if he or she feels they were treated poorly or better yet in an unfair way, they will tell thousands of people.

To help you with your online customer service, here are a few tips you might want to consider.

1.      Let’s walk in your customers shoes for a second. Would you want to be treated the way you might be treating your customers? If the things you are doing to your customers is upsetting you and keeping you up at night, that is your instinct shouting at you that what your are doing is not correct.

2. Make it simple to do business with you. We all have seen the never ending TOS (terms of service) pages on websites. Keep yours straight to the point and worded in ways that customers do not need to be a Harvard law professor to read. I have found out that customers just want to take a quick look at a TOS to see the rules on shipping and returns all the other information I have found they bypass (of course I’m not saying to not include all the other mumbo jumbo). Just make the most important regulations stand out and have them right at the start.

3. Make It Easy to Contact You.  Do not make your customers only form of contact with you done via email or contact forms. Many times business emails are captured into a spam filter, thus your customer is going to send you a message and chances are your reply is going to get stuck in their spam filter, leaving your customer wondering “hey they never got back to me”. You are going to want to list your phone numbers, address and any other form of contact you can think of. Customers feel safe when they know they can contact you at any time in re-guards to their orders.

You can try a few of these things listed below.

-         Set up a FAQ page on your website. Include some questions that you think your customers might ask you.

-         Try listing your AIM, Yahoo, or MSN Messenger for a way customers can contact you as well. I have been running across several websites over the past few months that are listing these services. You can even list the hours you may be on these messenger services.

-         List your phone numbers. I know you may not want to list your home phone number or your cell phone number (hey we do like to keep some things private) so either install a second business line via your local phone company or you can use a virtual phone. You can find tons of 800 numbers that offer voicemail and or find me follow me transfers, these are great for customers as when they call you! These services will ring a few phone numbers that you have listed and send you the caller’s information, giving you the option of either speaking with your customers or sending them to voicemail. You can try a few of these businesses that I have used in the past. One Box  or J2 Global.

-         Try Ventrilo. We offer Ventrilo (VoIP) that will allow you to speak with your customer’s right over the computer like a phone. This is an easy to use feature; however it will require a small download (free of charge) for your customers. This service is also great if you would like to conduct business meetings or would just like to chat with friends or family.

4. Ask your customer what they would like done. If you and your customer can not reach a happy resolution to the problem! Then ask them what they think will be a good resolution. Be prepared to hear that they would like a full refund, want you to bend over backwards, etc. Do this and do not forget what I said above!! They will tell many people what great customer service you have, you have just entered word of mouth advertising and that is the best. This will end things on a positive note.

With the above said. We hope this may help you out some with your new business. Of course it is your business and you can choose on your own how you should do customer service! However do not forget you can either have tons of repeat business or you can make just one sale and move onto the next customer.

We know who we are, what we do, and why we do it. We deliver our message on a daily basis knowing full well that people are not going to purchase our service or buy into what I have to say, but the ones that do purchase our service are happy clients. As for as the ones that pass us by, the world offers loads upon loads of business and we know we are not going to get it all. Even though we would like to think our service is something everyone wants.

You have to know who you are and what you do when you venture into the World Wide Web for business. You have to understand that six million people are thinking of the exact same thing that you are (maybe they even are a step further then you). Having a plan of attack is a key solution to having your website or your business a success.

Is Entrepreneurship For You? In business, no one has a guarantee. There is just no way to eliminate risks people take when they are starting out a business, however you can improve your chances with good planning and preparation. One should always start out looking into the strengths and weakness. You need to look into a few things when you consider starting out.

Are you a self starter? Keep this in mind as the start of your business lays all on your shoulders, it is up to you to manage your time, develop projects that will help your business, follow through on details. If you find your self thinking you can take time to hit the golf course when ever you want! Well then starting your own business is something that is just not going to be for you as you will fail if you do things like this.

Do you get along with people? As a new business owner you are going to be dealing with many different personalities in people. Sure you can sit back as the owner of your company and tell a customer to take a hike! However do not forget that this customer you just told to take a hike could have been a returning customer or a customer that would have told 100 people positive things about your business. If you take the back seat approach to business and things! Well then once again you are going to fail. You need to deal with everything that is brought to your attention and you have to do this in a positive way.

Are you good at making decisions? I’m hear to tell you as a small business owner or a large business owner, you are going to be faced with making decisions constantly – often quickly, independently, and under an extreme amount of pressure at times. These decisions that you may be faced with can make or break you and your business. You need to keep a level head at all times. If this is something you can not do, well again a business is not for you. Be like fonzey calm, cool and collective at all times.

Do you have the stamina to run a business? Get ready as the start of your business is going to force you to work six or seven days a week, 12-15 hours a day. This at times is going to cause havoc in your family life, personal life, etc. it is going to effect a lot of people around you. However if you are a success this will all pay off in the end for you. If you are not prepared to do this and only put in a few hours a day! Your new business is either going to fail or it is going to take you years and years to make your business worth anything.

How well do you plan things out? Research has proven that poor planning is a major resource for failed business. Good planning of financial records, inventory, production, etc. can help you prevent major business pitfalls. By not having good planning for your new business you are going to fail.

Are you positive? You have to remain strong, you have dreamed up an idea so you should not allow a few bumps in the road prevent this dream of yours coming true. Remaining strong and motivated will help you get past these bumps, slow times, income loss, etc. You have to push yourself above and beyond. If you can not do this kiss your dream good buy and you need to head back to your old job.

Tahoe Web Service

Welcome to our list of tips helping you promote your site, improve search engine ranking and attract visitors. These are all free, easy to do, and do not require a large time investment.

Optimize your site and get listed: For starters if we have designed your site for you, your website is already ready for this. If you are working on your own website or just dropping in to check out our website then we hope this helps you out some. First and this is very important you must optimize your website for the search engines and then list it with them.

Exchange Links: Getting other websites to link to your site will increase your “Site Popularity” in the search engines eyes. Doing this is one of the most significant factor that will affect your rankings. Tahoe Web Services offers a linking program that we will add to your website. Joining link exchange programs will help in attracting people to exchange links with. If you google search “Link Exchange” you are sure to come up with thousands of places to do this.

Forums & Boards: If you join a forum that is related to things that your website is about is a prime opportunity to list your site URL in your forum signature (this will be crawled by the search engines) It also allows you to refer people back to your website. We are involved in a few forums “When We Have Time” and have spoken with many people about site development and hosting services; this has helped us bring customers that at the time were very unhappy with their host or the way their website was built. We have had the chance to turn things around for them and their website. So it pays to visit online communities as you never know when a customer is posting about something that they need and you can produce. We do not recommend joining every forum on the net! Stick with forums that are related to you and your product.

Newsletters: Publishing newsletter about your product is a great way to spread the word about what you are doing. You will want to try to send out one issue per month (anything more then that will be just like spam! And well every one knows that people hate spam). When you publish your news letter you are going to want to place links to your website or products or direct them to pages on your website that they can find more information on the subject. You can find many free mailing list programs by searching google.

ADD URL’s: By doing a search on the internet using the terms “add url” will help you find pages that you can add your websites link for free. Our you can try the term “niche and your subject”. By doing this, you will be listing your website on thousands of pages. Again you will want to stick to places that are related to your website! For example if your site is about “birds” well you are not going to want to list it on a page that is about “cats”.

Network: Place a link to your website when the opportunity arises. Try adding your link in your email signature, forums, business cards, voicemail, etc. The more your link is out in the publics eye! The better off you are.

Give Away Things: Offer free information, links, samples, what ever might be applicable to your website and business. This will better guarantee that your site may be personally referred to someone else. Doing this will also help by attracting visitors to your site and provide an opportunity for them to explore more of your website.

Business Cards: Hand them out with your website URL on them. Leave them behind in stores, after you dine out leave a card on the table, hand them out when you are in a large group of people, or whenever an opportunity exists. You can either pay to have these cards printed or you can purchase a program at a reasonable price in any office supply store. Of course doing this yourself will suck your ink dry! And we all know how much ink costs these days. Many companies offer deals of getting 100 cards free with the purchase of 100 cards, etc. Google will offer many locations that you can search for business card makers and programs.

Use Your Car: Have a bumper sticker, window decal or magnetic door panels created with your site’s URL. A driving billboard if you will. 

Wear Your Website: Of course this is an age old solution, but it works!! Place your URL on hats, shirts, etc with your logo and site URL. Wear them around town. Give them to friends and family or even send them out with product! Everyone likes a free shirt, Trust me they will wear these items and bring you free advertising. We  have seen and heard of  people using cafe press. I have no clue on the quality of product they offer! but it might just be something for you to check into.

Your Home Town: Do not forget about your home town. Many people when they get on the World Wide Web! They stretch their marketing all over the place and forget about the home town they are in. Many future customers are living in your home town or maybe even right next door. Place some of your logos, URL, flyers, etc. at your local supermarkets, post office, library, neighborhood, churches, schools, your local newspaper, etc. Chances are people will be pretty interested in buying or visiting the site of a local person.

Affiliate Programs: Sign up for one of these programs such as Commission Junction (cj.com) this will allow people to place your product or a banner on their site. Of course this can get pretty costly at times! However the price could be out weighed by some major sales on your end. I would look into any program costs prior to signing up! These programs may or may not work and could suck your budgeting for marketing dry very quickly. Hey but it is worth looking into.

Len Cavanaugh

Owner

www.tahoewebservice.com