When it comes to making money online, it is amazing how the smallest of changes can make such a big difference. I have been reminded of this over the last week.
For the last year I have had a link at the bottom of my bio widget (top of sidebar) that says “Hire Me”. It linked to a page in which website owners can read more about what I can do and hire me for writing or consultation. The page was also linked in a sub menu in my blog navigation bar.
Despite this blog being the source of most of my writing gigs, I never promoted my services heavily. A week ago I decided to rectify that and change my blog design ever so slightly.
No, I did not change the layout. Nor did I add a big banner to the header. All I did was change “Hire Me” to “Services” and move the menu link to the top level. That is all I done.
Due to this, I have seen a big increase in clients over the last week. In fact, I have taken on an additional four clients over the last four days alone – two of which I had never had contact with in the past. It would ignorant to believe that this was just a coincidence. There is no doubt that increase in writing requests is due (at least in part) to increasing exposure to my services page.
I know that a lot of my readers own their own blog and blog for others. For those who do, I recommend making your services page more prominent on your website. It is sure to get you more clients. You should also do the same for other important pages such as your newsletter page.
Remember – your visitors do not know their way around your website as well as you do, so make it easy for them to find the pages that matter.
Kevin
Yeah I believe it was a combination of both. Either way, it has brought me a lot of business :)
I wonder if it was the fact that you changed the title or that you put it in the top navigation bar. I would be willing to bet it was the latter, but both ideas are good. :)
Nice. Good to know it’s working :)
The sidebar ‘Hire me’ did the trick for me :)
Hi Kevin
Good findings. I believe it also makes always sense to ask you new clients about
– how they found you, and
– what convinced them in the end.
This is in my opinion invaluable information on which you can build to make the site even more appealing for new customers.
Best regards from Greece,
David
Great idea. I hadn’t seen the Services at the top; I saw your Hire Me on the side bar. I’m going to have to steal that idea. Lol Thanks.
Yeah I have “Services” at the top and “Hire Me” on my sidebar. Seems to be doing well :)
This is me, Noble. I forgot to change add my name where phoenixsisters showed up from where Wordpress had it automatically to pop up from an old account that I had. Lol That’s what happens when I try to multi-task sometimes. Lol
That’s great news. I like both: ‘Services’ and ‘Hire Me’. Whereas, ‘Services’ sounds more professional, ‘Hire Me’ presents a call-to-action. You can use both depending on who’s your target market, large businesses or laid-back aspiring bloggers.
Cheers
I’m pleased you found the post via Google+. For some reason, most of the posts are not being updated on there. I am not sure if that is an issue with Google+ or the Jetpack plugin I am using to automate updates. The jetpack plugin was just updated, so perhaps it could have been an issue on the plugin.
Great suggestion about the buy button. I used to have that setup on my old blog for reviews. I had one for a 500, 1,000 and 2,000 word review.
I was discouraged from using it on this blog as I charge for articles on a per word basis. I’ve found this to be a much fairer system for me and clients compared to per hour or per article (e.g. an article that has fifty images in it takes more time to complete than an image with two).
You have given me some food for thought. I could possibly set up buy now buttons for posts which are X amount of words at most e.g. 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000. I could then promise a turnaround time of three days. The only downside is that it may overwhelm me from time to time. For example, say I have structured my workload for the week for my own blogs and for clients. If a new client purchases a 2,000 word article in the middle of the week, I may be putting myself under too much pressure to get the word done. Though it’s not necessarily a terrible thing to be in that position. :)
Just come across your post via a random way in Google+.
Headline grabbed me. Congrats on the increase. I think Service sounds a lot more professional than Hire Me. Anyway its a great example of optimisation. You could also try testing adding a buy button to each service (refundable deposit) see if this secures more revenue. Easy to do https://selz.com/blog/sell-services-online-using-selz/