Whether it’s out of ignorance, stubbornness or something completely different, there are many heart-centered entrepreneurs making some big mistakes that can exponentially cost huge amounts of revenue loss for their businesses.
WHHAATT?!?!
These aren’t “leaving money on the table” marketing mistakes. These are core foundation “leaving money on the table” mistakes that are made and, in many cases, not even thought about — or worse, guffawed when suggested to change, avoid or just not do.
I have 3 questions I ask potential clients:
A) Do you have your own domain?
B) Are you using an email with your domain for your business?
C) Are you paying for hosting service for your website?
It horrifies me how many people answer “NO” or ask what I’m talking about. These questions have saved me my sanity on many occasions, I hate to admit. But they definitely have helped hone in to my “ideal client.”
I also cannot tell you how many times I’ve come across some pretty amazing entrepreneurs over the past several years who could be doing so much better if they would answer YES to these questions. And what’s even more sad, is that many of them don’t think answering NO to them is holding back their income potential.
These mistakes create a first impression that can potentially cost you clients and money. They create the impression that you don’t take your business seriously, so why should other people take you seriously? And they make it hard to build trust and credibility with visitors who could have been your newest client.
What are these 3 mistakes heart-centered entrepreneurs make that is costing them clients and money?
1)Using a free host like Blogger, WordPress.com, Weebly, and other free services for their website.
- Using a free service means you have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over your content. That free service can use your content at their own leisure for whatever purposes they choose, as per their TOS. They can also shut down your entire site, with no warning, at any given time, for any reason they choose.
- These free services may not allow you to sell anything directly from your site, which means you have to set up your products, services, etc., somewhere else and then link to them. Using Paypal doesn’t always count, either.
- Someone once said to me they have a hard time taking a business seriously that uses a free service like Blogger or WordPress.com because it gives the impression that they are either too cheap or they aren’t ready to step up from hobby mode. That’s some harsh smack talking and some serious tough love, but it’s so true!
- You can get hosting service for less than the cost of 1 Starbucks coffee indulgence. Skip 12 of those coffee shoppe runs and put the monies towards your business to pay for a year’s worth of hosting.
2) Don’t have your own domain OR you have it forwarded to the free service that currently hosts your website.
- You NEED the domain to self-host your website. That’s all there is to it. The nice thing is that many hosting services offer 1 free domain purchase/registration with their service plans. So there’s NO EXCUSE NOT TO DO IT.
- If you did buy your domain, but have it forwarded to the free hosting service like Blogger or WordPress.com, etc., thinking you can cloak it, you are gravely mistaken. The URL browser bar still shows the real web address, totally defeating the purpose to cloak it.
3) Using your personal email address for business purposes.
- Personal email addresses are totally UNPROFESSIONAL — PERIOD
- Is Your Email Address Improving Your Brand or Demolishing Your Image?
- Using your AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Comcast, etc. email address in ANY business correspondence, including on your website, is not only tacky but makes you look like a noob … or worse.
- The ONLY exception to the rule is Gmail. I know it’s counter productive but many businesses (small to ginormous) use Google and all it’s products (including Gmail). *** IF YOU USE GMAIL — use your full name or your business name before the @ symbol.
- Best practices is using an email with your domain name for your business.
These mistakes create a first impression that can potentially cost you clients and money. They create the impression that you don’t take your business seriously, so why should other people take you seriously?
Having been designing websites for 14+ years and using the Internet for my own business since 2005, I’m pretty confident that I can put myself up there in that spectrum. I don’t pull that card very often, but I am just horrified that there really are entrepreneurs out there doing business online that think it’s okay to use their personal email address for their business, are using a free hosting platform for their “website”, or don’t even have their own domain.