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How to Get Started With a Career in Mobile Massage

Nowadays, our modern lifestyles have meant that do almost anything when it comes to forging a career. There are now more entrepreneurs than ever before and virtually any one can set up their own business as long as they have an idea and the determination to follow it through. However, as long as the ability to go far in business, modern day living has also brought with it more stress than ever before. The stresses and strains of modern life has meant that the value of alternative healing techniques such as massage therapy is higher than ever with more and more people turning to massage as a way of dealing with the stresses of modern day life.

Therefore, it is little wonder that what was once considered largely a physiotherapist’s role is now a popular service on offer in parlors, spas, health farms and even hotels. Many people can now enjoy the relaxation and peacefulness that you can get from a professional massage from the comfort of their own homes courtesy of a mobile massage business. A mobile masseuse can come to you and you can enjoy all the benefits of a really great massage without having to take a step out of the door!

If you are looking to start up your own mobile massage business it can be a really rewarding career. Starting up your own mobile massage service is a really good business prospect as it allows you to start a business from scratch with very little overhead or need for investment. It’s not always possible to rent out large offices for your massage therapy business, therefore many masseuses’ go mobile. You can start your business without an office space or any employees; all you really need is your skill and a van to transport you and your equipment around. With this sort of business you can start small and build up as your business becomes more popular and diverse. Another advantage of setting up a mobile massage business is the flexible work schedule you can set for yourself.

The most important part of starting a career in mobile massage is getting your qualifications and training sorted. You can enroll in either a community college or a specialist school as there are plenty of degree programs on offer. In the majority of states in the US, training and licensing is mandatory if you want to practice massage therapy. The National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork recognizes that the appropriate certification will generally take 500 hours of training and culminates in a final exam.

After you have completed your training, you will then need to apply for and obtain a state license for massage therapy if the state you are in requires this. It is really important to check if your state requires a license, you can do so by checking the website for the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards. If you have an official certification it can really put you ahead of other mobile massage therapists in your area who are not certified.

Now you are all legal and above board you will need to purchase your equipment. Start out with the basics such as a portable massage chair and tables, oils and towels. These are the only overheads you will need to cover at this point. Now all you need to do is to advertise your business and sit back and wait for the business to flow in.

If you advertise your business effectively, a career in mobile massage can be very lucrative due to the low overheads when you first start out. As time goes on you may be in the position where you can take on staff and your business could go on to cover a larger customer base. Why not see where a career in mobile massage could take you!

The Power of Online Business Directories and How to Get Started Fast

More and more small businesses today are using online business directories to their benefit. If you run a small business, you likely spend a great deal of your time thinking about your marketing plan. online business directories can be a great addition to your current small business marketing strategy. Those sites can help your small business expand its website traffic, increase the likelihood that your website will be found by interested visitors and increase your bottom line. If you haven’t taken a look at those directories and considered how your small business could use them to increase its market presence, then now is the time to start!

What Are Online Business Directories?

There are many different types of online business directories available on the Internet. Each of these sites serves a specific purpose and can be used by your small business in specific ways.

An online business directory is a website submission service that allows your small business’ website to be added to a specific category where it can be searched for by interested visitors. Listing your small business on an online business directory increases your website’s visibility on the web and helps to create inbound links to your business’ website. This places make it easy for people to find what they are looking for. These directories can be accessed from just about anywhere that has an internet connection. This means that people could find your business’ website from their home, office or even while traveling.

Every website that is submitted to an online business directory is placed in a specific category. These categories can range in how they are organized. Some are organized by business-related categories, some are organized according to personal preferences and others are organized by subject. Each category consists of several websites relating to a specific topic. Each website listing features the name of the website, a direct link to the website and a short description of the website. Interested Internet visitors will be able to browse through the various categories in the directory and locate websites like yours that they may be interested in visiting. Essentially, those places make it easier for any visitor to find your business’ website.

How Do Online Business Directories Work?

The concept of online business directories is actually a pretty simple one. These webistes are very similar to the Yellow Pages in the real world, only these listings are only online. (Actually Yellow Pages.com is now one of the largest online directories as well.) A directory is just a listing place for a number of websites. Any type of website could be listed in an online business directory. Some directories are huge and cover every topic that someone could create a website for, while others are very small and specific to a specific niche.

Let’s use an example. Say you are a model airplane enthusiast and you want to find some websites that cater to your specific interest. You could look through a huge online business directory such as Google My Business and find several dozen websites that are related to model airplanes. Or you could look for an online business directory that is niche-specific, which means that the entire online business directory would be based on hobbies such as model airplanes. With a niche-specific directory you may find even more websites that are based on your specific interest than what you could find on the larger directories.

Since online business directories are organized by categories, finding websites that relate to a specific interest such as model airplanes is very easy. You could find information and websites about model airplanes in your local region too, if you use a regional-specific online business directory. So if you live in Phoenix you could find websites that relate to both model airplanes and the Phoenix area. These places will direct you to websites that you want to find. All you have to do is perform a search in the online business directory for a specific topic or browse through the various categories until you find the type of websites you are looking for. When you perform a search you will be given a list of all of the websites that relate to your search term. You will be presented with a number of links to these websites and each link will have a short description of what you are likely to find on the website. You can read the descriptions and choose to click on the website that best suits you.

There are many different types of websites that you could find under a specific topic as well. For example, if you search several of those sites for information relating to model airplanes you may find websites that are about building model airplanes, flying model airplanes, creating historically accurate model planes, tips and instructions about how to fly model planes, websites that sell model airplanes and charters and associations that you could join regarding model airplanes. These are just a few of the examples you could find using an online business directory. There are simply too many topics to list them all here.

You can see how anyone can use an online business directory to find websites relating to things that interest them. As a small business owner you can see how potential customers of yours are using those web sites too. Now that you understand how online business directories work it is time to see how they can work for your business.

How Do Online Business Directories Benefit Small Businesses?

There are many benefits associated with listing your small business in an online business directory. The more directories you can use to list your business the more benefits you will reap. Here are some of the benefits of using online business directories:

Exposure

Exposure is important for all business marketing strategies. After all, the more people who are exposed to your business the more people are likely to utilize your business’ services. If online visitors aren’t able to see your website or even know that it exists, then they probably aren’t going to purchase your products or services. Listing your business’ website in those sites helps your website to gain exposure. Thousands of people use these websites every day to find things they are interested in. These are people who are actively searching for websites that are directly related to your products or services. They are already looking- all you have to do is make it easy for them to find you. These sites will expose your business to more online visitors, which could increase traffic to your website.

Increased Traffic

There are several ways that these directories can help you increase the amount of traffic your website receives. For starters, the more exposure your website has the more people are likely to visit it. But these websites offer more than just exposure from potential viewers. They also offer exposure to the various major search engine crawlers like Google and even YouTube. This increases the chances that your website will appear on major search engine results pages, or SERPs, which will allow more people to see the website when they perform a regular search. Both search engine optimization exposure and exposure to more people who are searching for your website could result in increased traffic to your small business’ website.

Cheap Advertising

As a small business owner you already understand the importance of advertising. You know that it helps customers to find your business and recognize your name and brand. You probably have little room in your budget for more advertising right this moment. That is one of the major benefits of listing your business’ website in an online business directory. Online business directories are inexpensive to join and they offer a lot of exposure for the price. Some of these sites will allow you to list your business for free, while others will charge a minimal fee. Either way, you are getting a lot of exposure for far less money than you would spend on a TV or radio advertisement spot.

Professional Appearance

You want everything about your business to look professional in the eyes of your customers. A professional appearance enhances your status and makes customers more likely to patronize your business. Online directories help you to look like a professional business. When an online consumer sees your business listing in an online business directory, they will consider your business to be an authority on the subject and a professional place to do business. Unlike a search that is performed on a major search engine like Google, where there is little difference between the legitimate websites relating to a topic and the less than useful websites, those places are mostly legitimate websites. Online consumers are more likely to trust what they see on such sites.

SEO Benefits

Online business directories offer several search engine optimization benefits as well. Firstly, these directories offer you more inbound links. When an online visitor sees your website link in an online business directory, they will be able to click on it and be instantly re-directed to your website. This is a great way to increase traffic. It is a great way to improve your status in the eyes of search engine crawlers too. The more backlinks that a search engine crawler can find, the more relevant they will rank your website. This is especially true of authoritative sites. Being linked to a major online business directory, such as Google My Business, will give your website more relevancy in the eyes of Google’s search engine crawlers. This will result in a higher page ranking on the SERP. As you know, a higher search engine result page rank you get, the more people are going to click on your website link.

Increased Revenue

When more people are able to find your website it increases the chances that they will visit your website. When people visit your website they are more likely to purchase your goods or services. This means that these sites can help you increase your revenue stream. Online business directories are good for your bottom line.

Increased Brand Recognition and Customer Interaction

When an online viewer locates your website though an online business directory, they are more likely to remember your business’s name and directly interact with it. Online business directories can help your business stand out to customers as well. Overall, listing your small business in an online business directory will help you to create a more comprehensive and effective online presence.

Listing your small business’ website with several online business directories will help more people find your website, whether they are specifically searching for it or if they are just browsing. In addition to gaining exposure, appearing on those sites will provide major SEO benefits, which will help search engines find your site. Increased exposure and higher search engine rankings will result in more traffic to your website, which will result in higher revenue.

There are many different types of online business directories, from large global directories to small, niche and location-specific ones. Some examples of other types of online directories can include reciprocal link directories, free directories, paid directories, Business 2 Business directories, theme-related directories, small business directories and many, many more.

Why You Should Consider Listing Your Small Business in an Online Directory

Apart from the concept that online business directories will increase the amount of exposure your website gets and help with your SEO strategies, they are also a very effective way to directly target potential customers. Places like those make it easy for online users to find something they want. According to a study performed by Burke, 8 out of 10 people will use a print or online business directory to find companies or products they are looking for. The same study also suggested that 8 out of 10 people who use these directories to locate a business do so with the intent to purchase a product or service from them. This is a very effective form of targeted advertising. The customer already needs or wants your product or service and you can directly target them by listing your website in an online business directory.

Another reason why you should consider listing your small business has to do with your return on investment, or ROI. Since the potential benefits of getting increased website traffic are great compared to how much you will have to spend to list your website in an online business directory, you can see a great return on your investment in the form of increased revenue. You also want to keep your brand and your company name in the minds of consumers at all times, which is something else that an online business directory can help with.

What Online Business Directories Should You Use for Your Small Business?

Even though listing your website in many online business directories will improve your website’s exposure and SEO ranking, it is not effective to just SPAM your website into every single online business directory you can find. You will want to take some time to consider which specific site will give you the best ROI. The best option is to find a great combination of directories to join. If you run a small business, the best place to start may be with a local directory. This is because most people will search for businesses in their area they can patronize. Local market and niche-specific online directories can offer extremely targeted advertisements to potential local customers.

After your business is listed in these directories you can take a look at the larger and potentially more expensive general-interest directories. You will probably want to consider listing with the top 10-15 online business directories, as these will be used by a lot of people and will offer higher relevancy and authority in the eyes of search engines. Google My Business and LinkedIn are large general-interest directories that you will want to list your small business in. If your website sells tangible goods you may also want to consider listing it in comparison shopping websites and product listings directories. Studies show that 42% of consumers will look at a comparison shopping website before they decide to purchase a specific product.

The best way to figure out which specific directories your small business should be listed in is to start with your competitors. Take a look at your local and niche-specific options and figure out if your competition is already listed. If they are you need to be listed too. If they are not listed you may want to list your website as a way to beat them to the punch. In some situations it may not make sense for you to have a listing in a specific online business directory, even if your competitors are listed in it. Your goal should be to be listed in every relevant and niche-specific directory you can find as well as many of the major directories, but no so many directories that you appear SPAMMY.

In addition to listing your business in online business directories, you also need to maintain these listings. It is important for your online business directory listings to be up to date and accurate, or else you could just be wasting your time. If your directory information seems out of date your customers will probably look elsewhere.

It will probably take some time to see the results of listing your small business’ website in so many online sites, but eventually you will see results. The best way to find the perfect combination of online business directory listings for your business is to use some sort of tracking or analytics system. You will want to be able to see how many people clicked on your website links from within the directory and if your website has shown increased traffic since then. You will want to stop wasting your time with online directories that are not producing results and increase the time and effort you spend on sites that are productive.

Best Practices for Listing Your Small Business in Online Business Directories

Now that you understand why your small business should be listed in online business directories and have started locating the directories that you want to be listed in, you are ready to begin creating your business listings for submissions. Here are some tips and best practices for listing your small business in those directories.

Start by choosing local directories and directories that are niche-specific. So if you own a model airplane hobby shop in Phoenix, make sure you find a local Phoenix business directory and a directory that is related to model airplanes. If you can find a model airplane hobby directory for the Phoenix area, you are all set.

Once you’re in local directories, start searching for larger and more generalized directories. Pick directories that get a lot of traffic and that are listed highly on major search engines like Google. A higher search engine ranking means that the directory will be considered as both authoritative and relevant in the eyes of search engines, making any links you get through these directories more valuable to your SEO strategy.

Include all of the relevant information regarding your small business in your website’s directory description. This should include your business’ name, location, telephone number, contact information and possibly reviews, business hours and anything else that is relevant. Add in photos, maps or other interactive features if the directory lets you.

Try to keep your information consistent across all of your online business directory listings. This will help your website to retain its credibility in the eyes of search engines and will assist with your SERP rankings.

Try to make your business stand out by offering an explanation of your business or any specific message the customer should know in your description.

Keep all of your information up to date. This may mean frequently updating all of your listings several times per month.

Allow customers to leave positive reviews and use them in your listing if the directory allows it.

Always be professional and consistent with your business’ listings and message. This includes any information regarding your brand.

If you sell products or services to a local market, make sure your business is listed in a local business directory. Include geo-specific keywords and information. An example would be: “Dave’s Model Plane Shop” + “Phoenix”.

Optimize your website for SEO purposes and include the relevant keywords in your meta titles and listing descriptions. Keyword research is important.

Get Listed in the Top 10-15 Online Business Directories

Now is a great time to get your small business listed in the Top 10-15 sites. There are few other Internet marketing techniques that will offer so many benefits for such a small investment on your part. Listing your business in an online business directory will increase your website’s online presence and help more people find you, which can help you increase your business’s revenue.

Get Started With Google AdWords

Google AdWords advertising allows you to show your ads to people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, while filtering out those who aren’t.

You can track how many people your ad was shown to, how many of those people clicked your ad and more if you integrate your account with Google Analytics. By measuring your ads, you’ll quickly see where to invest your budget and boost the return on your investment.

AdWords is most commonly based on a cost per click system, where the cost per click is the minimum amount required to outrank a competitor advertiser. Using a very simple example, if a competing advertisers budget per click is $1 and yours is $5, you’ll only pay $1.01 for that click.

When you’re first starting out with AdWords, it can be a little overwhelming. Google AdWords itself is massive, and every slip-up can blow out your budget. I know quite a few people that have been burnt by trying AdWords without really understanding it.

To help you get started, I’ve created some helpful tips that I’ve learned over the years.

Getting Started

Create Your Google AdWords Account

Google has prepared a 7 step starter guide for creating an account which covers the basic such as creating a login, setting up billing information and a daily budget.

Resist the Impulse to Activate Your Ads Just Yet

Google’s goal at this point is to then encourage you to maximise the amount you’re spending on your advertising. This is the first trap for beginners. You’ll enter some keywords, Google will suggest many more keywords which are mostly helpful, but next thing you know you’ve spent $150 in one day with no sales or leads gained.

Research Your Keywords

Thorough keyword research is so important to the success of your AdWords advertising – if you focus on the wrong keywords you can be almost certain that your advertising won’t be profitable. Start with your website to build a list of relevant keywords, look for the main words that describe what you do, your products and your services. Align your AdWords account structure with your website.

Use the Google Keyword Tool

Once you’ve got your list of keywords, you can use the Google Keyword Tool to find related words and phrases for a complete list of possible keywords. People may use different words or phrases when looking for your products or services.

The tool will then show you the average search volume per keyword (there’s no point is bidding on keywords that no one searches for) and the average cost per click so that you have a better understanding of the budget required and what you can afford.

From my experience, the lowest cost per click I’ve seen is around $0.80c and the highest was $16. So, choose wisely. Choose general and specific keywords, and group similar keywords into ad groups (aim for 5-20 keywords per ad group).

Choose Keyword Match Types

This is another trap for beginners. Google’s default setting is ‘broad match’, which allows you to reach the largest number of people, but provides the least control over when your ads are shown.

For example, if I was a personal trainer and I bid on ‘personal training’ to attract new clients using broad match, my ad would be shown to people also searching for ‘personal training courses’, ‘personal training certification’ and ‘personal training salary.’ Clearly, none of these people are looking to hire a personal trainer. I would either receive many irrelevant clicks wasting my budget, or no clicks, which is just as bad because Google will punish me with a low-quality score and I’ll have to pay more.

Essentially, the higher your Quality Score (on a scale of 1 to 10), the less you’ll have to pay per click. Relevance is the key. New keywords will be assigned a quality score within a day or so.

Keyword Match Type Options

Broad Match: The widest possible search that includes a number of keywords that may not be relevant to your business at all e.g. ‘Women’s hats’ can match searches for ‘buy ladies hat’.

Phrase Match: A more targeted option that will match to people searching for the keywords you have specified e.g. ‘Women’s hats’ can match searches for ‘buy women’s hats’.

Exact Match: The most targeted option that will match to people that are searching for your keyword, exactly as you have typed it e.g. ‘Women’s hats’ can only match searches for ‘women’s hats’.

Negative Match: Using negative keywords can greatly reduce wasted clicks by excluding keywords that don’t relate to your business e.g. If you sell reading glasses and use ‘glasses’ as your keyword, your ad would be displayed to people also searching for ‘wine glasses’, adding ‘wine’ as a negative keyword would eliminate this problem.

Campaign Types

It’s important to understand the differences because they function very differently.

Search Network Only: Target people that are actively searching for your products or services. This is recommended for beginners.

Display Network Only: Target people who are browsing websites that contain content that is in some way related to your products or services. From my experience, this is effective for short term campaigns for specific promotions e.g. an online pet store’s ad for free shipping for the next 7 days can appear alongside an article on how to manage aggression in puppies.

Search & Display Networks: Is a combination of the two, personally I prefer to keep the campaigns separate for more effective performance monitoring.

Shopping: Is a must if you sell products online and requires the creation of a Google Merchant account and some set-up to create a product feed. This allows your products to be featured visually with the text search results.

Writing Your Ads

Explain why a potential customer should buy your products or use your service instead of a competitor. Include your keyword so that it attracts attention. The character limit is tight, but try your best to differentiate yourself from other ads.

Google has strict advertising guidelines to ensure ads are of good quality, but I have seen dodgy grammar slip through. ‘I will provide you with the best advise’, will deter people who know the difference between advice and advise.

A call to action is also important to for potential customers to understand what action you want them to take and to filter out people that aren’t ready to take the desired action, e.g. buy now, call today, request a quote, learn more, browse now.

The page you link to on your website is also important, create a custom page if necessary to match your ad. If your ad is promoting 20% off toasters, ensure that your ad points to the toasters category with a banner highlighting 20% off. Make it easy for people to take the action you promised in your ad.

Link to Google Analytics for Conversion Tracking

Access to analytics is essential to managing your AdWords efficiently – without it there is no way of knowing if you are achieving your goals, or which campaigns, ad groups and keywords are successful and which are not. When you create a Google Analytics account, you’ll need to add a short piece of tracking code to your website and then you can link the accounts together.

Conversion tracking provides important data relating to what a person does after clicking on your ad. Do they purchase, submit an enquiry, download your app? This information helps you to determine your success.

AdWords is not a “set and forget” platform, and it needs to be carefully monitored and managed, particularly when you first begin.

Typically, I recommend running AdWords for at least 2 months and commit to weekly monitoring to determine if it’s right for your business. You need time to give it the best chance for success.

Where to Learn More

It’s not possible for me to cover everything about AdWords. I spent 3 weeks studying around my full-time job for the Google AdWords Fundamentals, Google Search and Google Display certification exams to ensure my knowledge is the most up to date.

I highly recommend that you at least read the Google AdWords Fundamentals study guide to understand more about structuring your account, bidding strategies, quality score, location targeting.

Once you’ve activated your ads I recommend checking on the progress every day for the first week to get an understanding of how fast your budget is being spent and what the bounce rate is for your keywords. A high bounce rate generally indicates that your web page is not relevant to the search, try adjusting the keyword, match type or simply pause it.

Getting Started With Your Online Store

How to Get Online?

The first thing you must ask your self when deciding to sell online is how do I get my store online?

This may seem like an obvious question with a potentially simple answer “I will get a website” but with so many options available with varying degrees of difficulty and cost in setting up and maintaining your store you have to decide what is right for your business. You can choose between popular out of the box platforms such as ‘Shopify’ and ‘Squarespace’ which offers a seemingly easier setup at a price or open source platforms such as ‘Magento’ that can deliver excellent platforms with the freedom of choosing your own hosting services but may require the services of a developer to get you up and running.

Whichever system you choose you need to know which one is right for your business.

Receiving Payments

Once your store is designed, built and ready for customers you need to decide on ways of receiving payments from customers. One of the greatest hurdles online retailer face is trying to reduce the amount of abandoned carts. There are many reasons why this could occur but it is worth spending time and effort to give your customers comfort and choice when using your store. The obvious initial payment method for most stores is ‘PayPal’ as it is has a global reach and is a household name for being a secure method of making and receiving payments, However a second option might reduce an abandoned checkout due to offering choice. There are many payment processing plugins available that are compatible with most shopping engines such as ‘Shopify’ and ‘Magento’ and these can run in tandem with ‘PayPal’ to increase your range of accepting payments.

Getting Started

Even if you are fortunate enough to have an established customer base you still need to let your customers and prospective customers know that you have set up shop online. It is foolish to think that simply by setting up an online store customers will simply find you and start purchasing without any effort. If you already have a customer base from a bricks and mortar store then you will want to promote it via an email promotion and / or via your stores social media pages. Consider offering an online only promotion to start accepting traffic and growing momentum to transfer occasional customers to becoming regular customers online.

If your business doesn’t have the luxury of an existing customer base then the work is harder but will be extremely rewarding once the sales start trickling through. To generate customers create a buzz, ensure that you are active on all forms of social media and consider publishing an online PR blast to send to all the relevant news agencies to tell the world or at least your community that you have opened up shop and ready for business.

Keeping up the Momentum

Hopefully the initial hard work is now complete and your store is live and you are generating sales. To keep buyers coming back time and time again keep your range fresh and up to date. Keep engaging with your existing customers with regular email blasts informing them of new items and great deals and generate new customers by building subscriber lists with the lure of a first time purchase discount or gift with purchase.

Spreading the Word

Once satisfied that the store is starting to gain momentum and loyal customers then it would be natural to think about expansion as it is probably one of the reasons you went online in the first place to potentially grab a larger slice of the pie. Before deciding on marketing options it is essential that a proper budget is put in place that ensures that profitability is still maintained within the business. For online retailers the key mediums to advertise which are able to accurately measure success include social media ads such as Facebook and PPC search campaigns such as Google and Bing. These sources of traffic can be an excellent source of customers but it comes at a cost so monitor your campaigns carefully to make sure you are targeting the right people and not wasting your budget on irrelevant clicks.

Grow Grow Grow

Now that your business is selling and expanding it is important to not lose sight of the core business values and to keep your ideas fresh and simple. Spend more time working on the business rather than in the business which means delegating day-to-day areas to free up time on more important decisions. Surround yourself with positive people who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and get dirty with growing your business.