Archive for Julie Onofrio

How to choose a webhosting company/service

August 12, 2006 Julie Onofrio Build Your Massage Business, Massage Websites

There are so many different hosting options online today that choosing one can be an overwhelming process. What you want is to find one that will really work for you in building your massage practice or other webbusiness.
I started my first website in 1999 -www.thebodyworker.com which is now one of the most popular sites on the internet for massage therapists. Through the years I have tried various hosting companies and different approaches and have worked with the best and the worst.  With that experience, I can hopefully help point you in the right direction for finding a webhosting company that meets your needs.

Some things to look for:

  1. What kind of results are others getting using the same service? Â Most reputable places will give you some examples of users websites so that you can see what others are doing with their product. Email some of them and ask them about their experience and see what they think of all aspects. What business support do they get? What help do you get optimizing your pages and getting found by the search engines? How successful is their business as a result of using this system?
  2. Newsletter capability to build a email list of potential clients/contacts for your business so that you can contact them regularly.
  3. You also need the ability to build as many pages as you want. My theory (that I learned from Sitebuildit! is that it is content that you need to build trust and attract the search engines.) I think every massage website should be 200 pages or more.
  4. Help with writing content since it is so important.
  5. Help in finding other ways to make income and build traffic
  6. Help in choosing the best domain name that will attract clients and traffic.
  7. Tools to track your results such as how many clicks each link gets, traffic results, search engine results (where you are listed in the engines and what can you do to improve your rankings)
  8. Does it automatically submit your pages to the search engines?
  9. Does it have an easy to use template building system that you can control the look and feel easily and understand even though you don’t know any html or are good with a computer?
  10. Does if offer outstanding tech support and forum support (others using the system helping others)

The only one I have found that offers all of this is the Sitebuildit! System. It is more than just hosting. It provides you everything you need to know about creating a website that works – whether it is for your massage practice or for another business idea, Sitebuildit! will help you do it all. They go above and beyond any hosting company and can’t really be compared with regular hosting companies. They are a hosting and total business development system all in one!

You can take a look at the results that their users get and get some more ideas from the case studies.

And to top it off they are guaranteed!  You can get your full purchase price back within a month of purchase and then a pro -rated refund after that up to a full year!

Who else does that????

No comments

Buying a Massage Business

August 12, 2006 Julie Onofrio Start Your Massage Business, The Wealthy Massage Therapist

I just finished reading a book called “Success Beyond Work” by Colleen Halloway and was really disappointed. Her main focus is on how to sell a business not anything that really has to do with the title first of all.

She said she sold her business for over 6 figures. My first thought was that poor soul who paid that much when they could have really started a business for much less or even bought a massage envy franchise or other franchise. I wonder how they are doing. But then I am glad that she got something out of her business.
The thing about a massage business in which you personally work doing all of the massages is that it isn’t sellable.

Hiring subcontractors, employees or finding people to sublease your office space is about managing people and is a big job in itself. I know in my process to sublease my office space, finding good, reliable massage therapists who are self starters are hard to come by. You wouldn’t believe the number of people I get applying for jobs not even knowing if there were any jobs. I get resumes with no cover letters stating their intent. I get calls asking if there are any job openings but not any mention of what they are willing to do – well this is a whole other topic – finding a job.

Deciding if buying a massage business is more about figuring out if it will be worth it. There are so many other options available, I say if you have the kind of money to buy a business, you should be able to start and build a business for half of that or even less.

One comment

Link Scams – My big Pet Peeve

August 7, 2006 Julie Onofrio Massage Websites

I have been running into alot of link farms or what I call link scams…

You probably don’t even know when you are on a site.

They just create a bunch of links on keywords that are highly searched for and create websites about a topic and put Google ads or other ads on them. There isn’t any real content.

Here are a few that I recently found. I am only putting a link when it’s so bad that you just have to see it to believe it. BE SURE YOU DON’T CLICK ON ANYTHING AS IT MAKES THEM MONEY!

http://www.massagetherapistshop.com/

bestmassagetherapists.net

http://www.e-massagetherapy.com/

http://www.e-massages.com/

http://www.massage-therapy-central.com/

http://www.massage-therapy-info.co.uk/

http://www.e-massagechair.com/

mlmsurvivors.com – This is probably the worst I have seen because it looks so professionally done.

http://www.signaturemassage.com/

I am going to continue to add to my list.

The reason they bother me so much is that I put over 7 years in to my websites and they are probably making money off of providing nothing…

2 comments

Planning your massage business

August 5, 2006 Julie Onofrio Start Your Massage Business

One of the most overlooked aspect of starting a massage practice is that many people don’t plan. Most large companies spend most of their time planning.

It is easy to overlook because a massage practice may seem like a different animal. You may think that just because you have good hands that people will be flocking to your door.

A business plan begins with discovering your intention. What exactly is it that you are trying to do? What is it that you want?

We often forget to include the desire for money because it seems like it is something contradictory to providing such a personal service. Massage therapist often turn away from the idea of making money and focus on providing more meaning in their lives.
The fact is that we need money. Money is what brings freedom. Money is what will allow you to have more time to work for your favorite charity or give to causes that make a difference.

Making a plan on how you are going to make money will help you keep on track and achieve the level of income you desire.

Often what we desire doesn’t happen because of all the fears that come up around what we desire. Can you even picture yourself making $100,000 as a massage therapist?

What would it feel like? Is your first reaction that it is impossible? Do you just hope that you will make that (and buy lotto tickets) or do you just know with every cell of your body that you will make $100,000?

What do you need to do to start believing that you can and will make $100,000?

The first thing is to start awakening to what your unconscious beliefs are getting you.

What you have in your life now is a result of what you unconsciously believe. What is it that you must believe that is keeping you from making what you need to make?

Discovering your beliefs is the majority of what I talk about at www.massagepracticebuilder.com and I am even in the process of redoing that site this month to reflect that.

One comment

Creating a Second Income

July 31, 2006 Julie Onofrio Massage Websites, Self Care, Start Your Massage Business

The easiest and best way to create a second income is by creating a website that promotes affiliate programs. These are programs offered by other business that pay you for referring people to buy their products. The most common is amazon.com who really started the whole idea or they were one of the firsts to offer such a program.

The way to really make the most using these programs takes some time and planning, but once you get everything set up, the money just continues to come in with only minor updates or you can continue to increase your income by adding more products etc.

The main thing to think about is choosing programs that you use yourself and know about thoroughly otherwise you will have angry readers if they purchased something that wasn’t reliable or had bad customer service.

The other ‘trick’ to making money using these programs is learning to talk about them in a way that is more personal and don’t try to push them on people. People know when they are being sold to and usually resist.

I try to do this with my website hosting package that I promote – Sitebuildit! I have written a few different sections on it and am testing to see what works the best. My Creating a Website that works has generated a lot of interest.

There is also a free manual that I recommend to people who are thinking about a website and thinking about making money through affiliate programs – it’s the Affiliate Masters Manual from Sitesell.com. In this invaluable resource, you can learn how to set up a website for the main purpose of selling other companies products.

Right now I am making a few thousand a month on affiliate programs, Google ads and selling my own products – not bad for a novice. But the thing is it keeps building so it keeps me working on it and learning. I hope to be able to live on my income from websites in a few years and then retire on it in a few more later …

No comments
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »