Be True, Cut Through: Quarantine Edition

By Nathan Houstman

Is your business or employer struggling while the world is shut down? Was your job eliminated? I hate to say it, but it’s been a long time coming.

The previous recession and now the coronavirus pandemic have revealed weaknesses in our economic system. The good news is, technology lets us take the power back!

I’m Nate Houstman, web designer and blogger. In this book, I lay out a digital marketing strategy for small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. Most businesses are hurting, but the tools are there to thrive during the quarantine and beyond.

The result of months of research, this plan is assembled from experts all around the Web. I bring it together in a holistic strategy that you can implement yourself or with your team.

In This Book:
*Why You Need An Online Business
*Jobs You Can Do From Home
*How To Find Your Target Market
*Why WordPress Is The Best Website Builder
*Blogging, YouTube, And Podcasts Explained
*Value Proposition: Why You Can't Succeed Without It
*The Sales Funnel Plan: The Engine Of Online Sales
*How To Write Winning Marketing Content
*How To Get Your Website Seen

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Houstman
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020

Book preview

Be True, Cut Through:

Quarantine Edition

Online Business And Marketing For The Post-Coronavirus Economy

By

Nate Houstman

Owner of Xiphos Web Marketing

Xiphoswebmarketing.com

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For the 20’s-30’s Meetup Group.

The Martian Party was a turning point.

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Contents

Intro: What’s In This Book

Why You Need An Online Business

How Do We Make Money, Anyway?

Why You Need Digital Marketing

Value- The Edge Of Your Sword

The Sales Funnel Overview

Find Ideas

Don’t Like To Write? Try YouTube & Podcasting

Blogging: The Meat & Potatoes

Spread the Word

Email = Money Maker

Conclusion: You’re Not Alone

Sources

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Intro: What’s In This Book

Welcome to Be True, Cut Through: Quarantine Edition!  This version of my marketing and online business ebook is free to my email subscribers. I have added content for people who are displaced by the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis will pass, but it’s causing society to reevaluate how the economy works. Now is the time for businesses and individuals to embrace technology, and prepare for the future.

I wrote this book for startups, small businesses, freelancers, and anyone who wants to make money online. I’m a professional web designer and marketing consultant who used to make yellow page ads in phone books. There are millions of independent businesses in the United States who realize that a solid marketing plan can make the difference between comfortable revenue and collapse. I browse small business groups on social media and web forums, and they acknowledge that marketing is something they don’t understand, but need.

This book is here to pull back the curtain. I formed my LLC in 2016 and named it Xiphos Web Marketing. Xiphos roughly means penetrating light in Greek and is the word used for swords used by Ancient Greek soldiers. In the Bible, and Western culture in general, swords are a symbol of truth. As an entrepreneur, I always feel like I’m hacking through the jungle, looking for the next project, or the path to success.

In the first three chapters, before I lay out my plan for you, I go over why entrepreneurship is so important in the 21st Century economy. We’ve come out of an awful recession into perhaps the best boom period since World War II, but the guarantees of security are gone. Regular citizens and workers have lost almost all trust in politicians, corporate executives, and the mainstream media. Workers have lost many of their protections, but have gained the tools to succeed on their own terms.

I added several paragraphs to Chapter 2 to list the ways we can make money during the pandemic. The pandemic lockdown brought the economy back to recession levels, but we can expect to recover once we’re set loose again. Some people say we shouldn’t go back to normal because there were many problems before the crisis. I predict we will find new ways to work and run the economy more fairly. Numerous tools are already there for us, but we’re just now becoming aware of them.

I’ve gathered knowledge and experience from a diverse group of experts to assemble this marketing plan. In Chapter 4, I explain the importance of your value proposition and how to match it with the right customers. In Chapter 5, I give you the Sales Funnel Overview, and tell you the benefits of WordPress. In Chapter 6, I reveal how to find subject matter for your marketing content. In Chapters 7 and 8, I tell how to start a YouTube channel, podcast, or blog; you can choose the venue you’re most comfortable with. In Chapter 9, I present an array of ways to get your website found. In Chapter 10, go over email marketing, how to do it, and why it’s your best bet to get sales.

This is a short book, but it’s comprehensive. Big corporations have marketing departments with employees going deep into the weeds. As a small business owner, you probably need to bootstrap your marketing, or trust a small freelancer or agency. I intend for this book to explain what’s necessary so you can pull it off yourself, or better coordinate with your helpers. I don’t take as many clients as I used to, concentrating instead on teaching and writing. You can follow my blog at xiphoswebmarketing.com . I post whenever I come up with something meaningful. My website also has a resources page , where I promote my favorite tools for building websites and funding your projects.

This is the Quarantine Edition of Be True, Cut Through. Online business  never stops evolving, so I hope you join me on the blog as well as future versions of this book!

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1: Why You Need An Online Business

I’m Nate Houstman, a web designer and marketing consultant. This edition of my book is being written while most of us are stuck at home, to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Our economy is at a standstill. Even though this pandemic will pass, it will take many months for employers and businesses to get out of the red. Many industries that were already struggling might not survive. Furthermore, we’re reevaluating how our children are educated, and whether we need to be at an office to do our jobs. In a way, the Great Recession prepared us for this.

In 2014, I was forced to reinvent myself. I was downsized from a corporate job creating yellow page ads for a major phone book publisher. That company has also reinvented itself as a digital marketing business, but it’s competing with all the nimble and