Not bad, Duaine. But my immediate response to your website is "this is a homemade website". That may be fine depending on what message you are trying to convey to your potential clients. One of the first things I did when I got my business license in 1994 was to pay a respected graphic artist to design a logo and business card for me. I then had envelopes and letterhead made up with the same logo. I paid for the extra thick card stock on my card, and went with high quality watermarked paper for my letterhead. These things really make a good impression and don't cost that much in the big scheme of things. One of my pet peeves is a cheap business card. It's about as bad as poor quality answering machine messages. Whether you like it or not, these things reflect the type and quality of service you give. Websites are the modern day store front for small businesses. They are also the most economical and effective way to promote yourself. I pay about $70 a year to maintain mine. I traded an all day service on a Young Chang studio piano for the set-up. After the initial site was up, over time I learned to tweak it to keep it fresh and current. Surf around and find websites you really like, and find out who the developers are. You should be able to find someone to set up a nice-looking professional site for $500-1000. Here's another tip: Join your local music teachers association. The dues are not that much and it gets you a free listing in their directory and sometimes on their websites. Show up at their meetings and volunteer to help. Donate tunings for adjudications in exchange for a little publicity. Offer to do a program for one of their meetings. The goal should be for most piano teachers in the area to know who you are. A couple of favorite books: Guerrilla Marketing Marketing without advertising On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 4:17 PM, Duaine Hechler <dahechler at att.net> wrote: > Paul T Williams wrote: > > Hi Ryan, > > > > I like your website. Very nice. Great kudos to you for making your > > business a success! Someday, we'll connect at a conference... > > > > Paul > > A great example of a SIMPLE - but - effective website is my website. - > www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com > > The whole thing is done with Office - but NOT MS-Office - instead is > done with - FREE - OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) > > And > > The - FREE - FTP client Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) to > upload the files to your host. > > Don't know about you - but - I love the word FREE > > Duaine > > -- > Duaine Hechler > Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ > Tuning, Servicing & Rebuilding > Reed Organ Society Member > Florissant, MO 63034 > (314) 838-5587 > dahechler at att.net > www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com > -- > Home & Business user of Linux - 10 years > > -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100610/02246677/attachment.htm>
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