Funnel blogs

A funnel blog, or funnel web site, is one whose sole purpose is to redirect traffic to a "point-of-sale" website.

You should have interesting, useful, and entertaining information on your website. You know that and (I hope) you do that. But have you ever considered that you should be putting the interesting, useful, helpful, shocking, entertaining information on other websites as well?

You see, with your primary website -- your online store -- you pretty much have to stick to one subject. Your primary niche. The whole general idea of your website must revolve around a pretty specific theme. Otherwise, your visitors won't have a clue about what your website is about. When that happens, they leave. Boom. Gone. So your site needs to be direct and clear about what your subject is and easy to navigate. But you already knew that too.

Funnel sites solve the theme restriction problem. You can set up a website on any subject you want. Just make sure your funnel site is targeting a particular segment of your desired audience. If you are monetized only with pay-per-click rather than affiliate products, your choice of subjects is even wider.

The point is to get people interested in the information contained on the funnel site, and then, after they are "warmed up" so to speak, you "funnel" them over to your main website. As long as you have a variety of things to sell (or affiliate products you represent) there is practically no limit to the number of funnel websites you can set up to direct specialized traffic to certain pages of your main website.

Developing your blog's theme

After you decide upon a subject you are interested in, go ahead and start researching that subject on the Web and blogging about your findings. At the same time, begin working on your main website. This is the website whose domain name you own and is the place where you will be displaying your product reviews and product pictures.

Is it absolutely necessary to have two websites working in tandem like that?--both a blog and a “regular” website? Of course not. You can do it all with a blog alone if you are careful to keep it simple and straightforward. But if you choose to do it that way, please blog from your own website with your own domain name. You will be taken more seriously than if you “sub-blog” from a free blogging service, such as Google (blogspot) or the free version of Wordpress. Not that you can’t use Wordpress software and templates, for example, just do it from your own official website if you possibly can, instead of one of their free blogs.

Of course, even a free blog from Blogspot or Wordpress is better than doing nothing. Get up and get going! Get started today! But normally you will be using the free blogging services as “funnel sites” for your primary business sites. Nothing against Blogspot or Wordpress, obviously--I use them myself and they offer a great service. It’s just that you have more control over your destiny when you have your own “real” website.

Window Dressing

More about the monetization of your website. That is, more about the actual setup or layout of your store’s floorplan.

One assumes you are using your main websites as more permanent “stores” of some kind, and are using your blogs as “funnel sites” to these stores. Your stores--your regular websites--probably have much more permanent content than your blogs, in that you are not making drastic changes to them frequently. Insead, you are either adding or deleting specific products, or you are freshening the wording in your sales brochures.

These website stores usually consist of either an online mailorder catalog of your products that you want to sell and ship, or they consist of colorful, interesting, and informative “brochure pages” which describe and promote the features of the products of others, one product per page. In the case of the former type, there will also be included a checkout counter.

In any case, you will want to use your blogs as a much more informal meeting place where you can sit down and have coffee with your customers and passersby. Here you can discuss the issues of the day, anything that is dear to your heart, anything at all you want to share with your friends. Obviously, the conversaton often turns to what you do for a living. It is only natural, in the process of this friendly social discourse, that you invite them to visit your store.

But the blog, in my humble opinion, is not the place for the hard sell. People are there to relax and get to know one another. Indeed, you should leave some business cards on the table of your blog, but don’t use your blog to beat people over the head.