Marketing your website

Put up fliers, hand out cards, etc… act locally.

Custom woodworking is very tricky to market in a non-local
context. Your website can save you a lot of money you might
otherwise spend on brochures.

If you are good at woodworking and want to work I suggest
using direct mail to generate interest from design professionals
and contractors. The website can be referenced in the
direct mailing.

You are almost sure to be disappointed if you expect anybody
to ever buy any woodworking from you based on stumbling
across your blog.

To start with, you can put your web address in your signature line here at LumberJocks. Links to your site from others helps with your ranking in the search engines.(or at least it used to). Also, you need to go ahead an pay for one of the search engine submitting services. Check around. Most are fairly reasonable.

-- Tim-- http://www.tmuli.com

I wouldn’t recommend doing anything other than hand-submitting
your site to Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/ it’s free.

You’ll get indexed in a matter of hours and the other engines
will crawl your site because they all borrow from Google.

Don’t expect a lick of traffic from getting indexed though. To
get traffic you will either have to pay for it or learn how
to get it in other ways.

I hand-submitted my site AmherstCabinets.com to Google, commented
on a few blogs and put the URL in my signature here. I rank
number 1 on Google for “amherst cabinets” – but it means
nothing in terms of sales – I’m still pleased at how easy it was
to get to #1 – but it really just tells me that my competition in
the local market knows nothing about how to market a website.

Gary,

I’m a deck builder/cabinet maker (built-ins) in Brooklyn, NY. I specialize in building Ipe decks. To make sure that I rank high on a Google search, I use the keywords [Brooklyn, deck, Ipe built-in bookcase] as much as I can without pissing off Google. I get a very good ranking. That said, I’d go hungry just waiting for potential clients to google me.
My client base consists of upper middle class homeowners in a 5 mile radius of my home…an area known as Brownstone Brooklyn. There are a few localized forums/blogs in the area, and it seems as if everyone reads one or more of them, or monitors them for recommendations for everything. I know because I ask my clients how they heard about me, and at least 2/3rds tell me it was the forums. When I complete each project, I always ask for a good reference on that forum. It’s amazing how much response is generated from one good referral. I know, because I monitor those forums, and I also get a daily breakdown of my website traffic, including referring domains. Even in this crumbling economy, I am concluding my best deck season ever.
I don’t know where you live, and if this even applies to you, but it’s something to think about.
I also put some videos up on youtube, and link to them on my website. They aren’t great quality, but then people are hiring me as a videographer. At initial client meetings, I always hand out a DVD (better quality) that I made of about 10 recent projects, and occasionally a brochure.

Good luck with your business. If you love making sawdust, then you’ll really love getting paid to do it. Some days, I can’t wait to go to work.

-- Steve-- http://www.urbanexteriors.biz