Become a Web Services Consultant

IWM is expanding. The development of what is now commonly called “Cloud Computing” has opened up huge potential for self motivated, articulate, marketing orientated individuals to provide much needed web consultancy services for small to medium sized businesses.

These days, every business needs 1] a reliable email platform that allows them to access their mail from anywhere via any device connected to the Internet, and 2] a professional web site that is easy to navigate, contains up to date information and is easily found via search engines.

They also need objective advice and guidance on how to successfully use the Internet. You only have to look around to see how many businesses still have amateurish looking, out of date web sites, or how many are using an AOL, BT or Gmail type address when they should be using their domain email addresses. Yet, nobody buys from or does business with an amateurish looking web site.

Many of these businesses think it’s beyond them to recreate and migrate their site into a more advanced platform, or that it’s going to be expensive. Some don’t appreciate just how badly a poor web site reflects on them, or realize just what a difference having a professional looking web site will make to their business, especially as customers come to rely on it as an up to date statement of what their business has to offer. Even if it does cost some money, it has to be done!

Our new Cloud Hosted Web Services provide a unique opportunity for existing web design consultancies to increase their customer base and for individual agents to build up their own web consultancy business from scratch. Having built up our own customer base, we think we can help you on the road to building yours too. Our services are much needed and will quickly allow you to build your own revenue stream.

What’s involved?
1] Our web sites at www.cloudhostedwebsites.com and www.cloudhostedemail.com give you all the information that you could ever need to impart to potential customers/clients of your own.

2] We can be as involved in any of your projects as you want us to be. If you need help with any technical or design queries before going back to a customer, ask us. If you want us to work with you to design their site or get it optimized for search engines, that’s fine too. In short, you don’t even need to be a designer or a techie, although that’s great if you are. We can handle all the bits you can’t or don’t have time to do.

3] With our Cloud Hosted Web Sites and Email, all the software running the email and web platforms are hosted online. There is nothing for you to be responsible for maintaining or upgrading. That’s our job. You [and your clients] can access it from anywhere via any device connected to the Internet.

4] Our Cloud Hosted Web Sites and Email platforms are incredibly easy to use. You can set up your own FREE 3 page web site at www.cloudhostedwebsites.com and you can see our training videos at www.cloudhostedwebsites.com/training-videos.

This last point is the whole key to our success. Once we have set a web site up and a client is editing their own content, the system is so intuitive to use, and so reliable, that we don’t have to provide much in the way of technical support. Instead, we can respond to queries and be on hand to help them as they develop their web site, if they need it. Our own clients can be as self sufficient as they want to be. Even if clients want us to manage their email and web site for them, our platforms make it easier and faster for us to act for them too, saving hundreds of valuable man hours throughout the year.

Benefits of becoming a Web Consultant
There is a great income to be made – and it starts immediately too! – as you can charge a production fee for creating a site and uploading content (your time is valuable) and a monthly/annual charge for hosting their email/web site on our platform.

The key thing is to understand your clients’ business, their market and to help them achieve their objectives. It is important that they realize that a good web site, reliable hosting and a top of the range content management system are essential, and that they do cost a bit of money. If they aren’t prepared to invest in their web site, they can’t be serious. Their site has to [at the very least] be as good as their competitors.

Web designers love our platform because at long last they have access to a platform that allows them to make fantastic looking web sites which can easily be managed by the client. They simply ftp their design and get as involved as they want to in uploading and adding initial content. Their support time is cut to a minimum because the system is so intuitive to use and incredibly reliable. Everything works just like you think it should.

In the next few weeks we are going to be able to give you and your clients the best of both worlds. In addition to ftp, we are introducing a built in Design Editor that enables you to choose from a number of different templates and then adapt them. There’s also an Advanced Editor that enables you to upload your own css designs.

However, if the design side of things is not your strong suit, or you don’t have time to do it, don’t worry. We can provide you with a quote for creating the design, and are happy to provide advice and ideas. We can handle all the production, content and site marketing for you (or your client) on a white label basis if you’d like us to. These additional services are a great option for many agents as they can concentrate on what they are good at (ie selling/marketing/consulting and even helping clients to manage their sites), and can hand the technical side of things over to us.

Even if a client wants to use one of the standard templates and make some basic amends to it, we’d still recommend that you did this for them, or asked us to do it for you. We’d also recommend that you added some initial pages and content for them as it makes it easier for your clients to carry on from that point than to start from scratch.

If you can generate customers, you can generate revenue.

What next?
For more info, and to set up your own FREE 3 page web site so you can see for yourself how easy our platform is to use, go to www.cloudhostedwebsites.com. More info for agents can be found at www.cloudhostedwebsites.com/agents or you can call us on 01526 352919.

Incidentally, both www.cloudhostedwebsites.com and www.cloudhostedemail.com use our most basic site design, with a bit of extra tweaking and amending.