Your article, “Small Businesses Are Drowning Among Lifeboats,” and the frustration you feel when you can’t “get through” to small business owners, reminds me of a similar situation I was in myself.

I thought maybe I could offer my internet-marketing services to local businesses, but I ran into a wall of resistance. “No, we’ve been in this location for years, and we’re doing very well, thank you, and we don’t need to complicate things by getting on the internet. We all make mistakes, but to really screw things up, you need a computer!”

So I took a different tack.

Instead of approaching businesses who didn’t have a website *yet*, I approached only those who had websites *already* …

… specifically, I approached only those businesses who displayed their website url in their local Yellow Pages ad *and* only those whose websites did *not* have a sign-up form.

And the reason was this:

Although I wasn’t completely sure what I could do for a business by bringing it onto the Internet, I was *positive* I could cut the advertising cost of any local business in half, providing they *already* had a website but hadn’t yet thought of putting a form on it.

The way I figured it, local businesses have walk-in traffic, right? So all I would have to do is show the owner how to get that “offline” traffic to go online and sign up for his newsletter, and he’d be set to slash his local advertising bill in half, because with the push of a button, he could announce a 20% Off Tuesday Night Special!

For a $750 one-time fee, then, I offered to install the sign-up form and show him how to get his “offline” traffic to go “online”.

And for $150 a month, I would write a good, juicy newsletter for him about his business; or, for $250, I would write two newsletters.

It worked extremely well, all things considered. I showed him how to have a legend printed on his cash-register tape and his credit card slips and his “thank-you notes” to the effect that the holder was cordially invited to visit his website online and sign up to get notified of special savings in the future.

All I basically said to him was, “If I could show you a way to cut your monthly advertising cost in half, is that something you feel would be worth your time to find out more about?”

What’s he gonna say?

What would *you* say!?!

Well, the long and the short of it is, it “worked” in the sense that I knew I’d be able to get all the business I could handle that way.

The only problem was, I discovered I wasn’t happy doing it. I experienced a phenomenon called “scope creep,” which happens when clients ask you to just do this little extra thingy and that little extra thingy and before you know it, you’re extrathingied to death.

So I quit.

But for the entrepreneur who’s able to keep the scope of the assignment within bounds, I would say that this is a great way to “open the door” to other work on their clients’ websites, because from what I saw, they certainly needed a capable webmaster.

Just my 2¢.

warmest regards …

Elizabeth

- Charles

We have now entered a technology based economy, everything that we do now a days is related in one way or another to this new world of technology.So to answer your question where do I see my small business in 2010-learning and implementing internet marketing and social media strategies, because I want to see myself in 2011 and beyond with a well established online presence, your business will not be able to survive without it.