Good, original content is the first and most important factor in getting and growing traffic, Peach explains. It not only draws potential customers in, but also keeps them browsing around and clicking on links and ads. For Lennard, creating content has had another plus side. “Sometimes it’s a struggle to find the words,” she says, “but I’ve been quite surprised to find out that I can actually write. I’m very proud of the writing I’ve done.”
Optimizing websites by using keywords is also important. Keywords are the terms — “pole dancing” for example — that visitors enter into a search engine to locate relevant information. When optimized, a site can more easily be found and categorized by search engines, improving its ranking and hence how easy it is to find.
That may seem like a lot of new jargon and esoterica to learn, especially for people who grew up in an era without computers. Fortunately, there’s just as much help to be had. “When I first started,” Peach says,”I knew very little about websites, but the hosting service I use has a self–study course that showed me how to put it all together.”
Now that Peach’s traffic has gone from under 100 unique visitors a day to over 400, she’s moved on to creating “pole dancing for fitness” DVDs. With retail and wholesale services like Kunaki and Amazon, it’s fairly straightforward. Once the video is produced, all she has to do is copy it to her hard drive 
and then upload to Kunaki along with the cover art. Getting on Amazon is a little more complicated and not as financially rewarding, but she says it gets her name out in cyberspace and drives more traffic to her site. “Though I don’t make as much with Amazon, I’ve already got one video up that’s bringing in $300.00 to $600.00 a month. If I could get three more up there, I think I’d be set!”
Like many Canadian women, Peach is branching out, exploring new employment territory, learning new skills, and stretching her comfort zone. Thirty–three percent of entrepreneurs in Canada are women and of those, over 58 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54. The largest growth rate in entrepreneurial endeavours, however, is being seen in women over the age of 55. In a tough economy, they’re finding innovative and creative ways to make a buck and stay sane.
And while not all will succeed, the gamble has more than paid off for Peach. Her directory has grown to contain listings for pole dancing studios in nearly every American state and Canadian province, as well as from countries all over the world, including a huge representation from the U.K. AdSense revenue has also been increasing steadily and her site’s ranking is improving daily. Not bad for a former 9-t0-9er, now turned pole-dancing WebMatron.
Quick Tips for Building a Web-Based Business
1. Find a niche market that is specific. Fitness and Health are broad topics. Narrow it down to something more specific like pole dancing for fitness or eating vegan on a budget.
2. Don’t monetize your site until you have at least 25 pages of content produced. There’s no use putting AdSense on your web pages if no one visits them. Google chooses the quality of ad that’s put on your website. If you don’t get much traffic, you won’t get the good ads.
3. Make sure the content on your site is relevant and well-written. Repeat traffic means increased revenue. If visitors find irrelevant or poorly written information on your site, they won’t come back.
4. Do link exchanges with related websites. Have a recipe for blueberries on your site? Find a site dedicated to blueberries and ask the webmaster if they’d like to put a link to your recipe. In exchange, you’ll link your recipe to their website. Spiders love sites with outgoing and incoming links.
5. Add video and pictures to your website. Make a how–to–video on how to make a blueberry cake. Upload it to YouTube, link it to your site and watch the traffic and AdSense revenue increase.
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