Last week we welcomed our 2009 Homepreneur of the Year winner, Marco Barberini (of OvernightPetTags.com), and his wife Heather to our Vancouver office – flying in all the way from Traverse City, Michigan. Marco quit his gas station job in 2007 to build an online business, which now grosses upwards of $8,000 per month!

As part of their prize, Marco and Heather stayed at the Pan Pacific Hotel on Vancouver’s Waterfront, were ferried around town in a limo, spent a day consulting with the CityMax.com team, enjoyed a sunset dinner at The Teahouse in Stanley Park, and checked out some of the ‘Olympic’ sights around town.

They even brought a custom pet tags for our two CityMax.com dogs, Jack and Farley.

Check out some of the pictures from the Barberinis’ trip to Vancouver!

Is the location of your small business important to your customers? If so, your online marketing efforts need to include optimization of your website for local search.

Not sure what local search is? A great example is Google Local. When you do a search for a local business on Google (i.e. “dog walker Seattle”), on the search results page you’ll see a list of local businesses beside a little map. They are businesses that have been submitted to Google Local who are relevant to your search.

Here are some great ways to optimize your site for local search:

1.    Submit to Local Search Engines
We already mentioned Google Local, but there are many more and some may be more popular in your area than others. Consider the following:

• Google Local
• Yahoo! Local
• Yelp
• Yellowpages.com
• Local.com

2.    Include Your Contact Information on Every Page
This is easier than it sounds. Just create a site-wide footer for your pages and include your address.
CityMax.com User Tip: Create your page footer by going to ‘Edit Site’ > ‘Page Footer’.

3.    Use Geo-Descriptive Keywords
When researching your keywords, make sure to see what people are searching locally, then use those keywords on your website. Make sure to include them in your title and description tags.

When you make a website that’s optimized for local search, it’s easier to get your business to the top of the search engines – simply based on your location! As a bonus suggestion, consider getting a localized domain name to compliment your existing one.

To show you how grateful we are for every customer you refer, we’re improving how our referral program works!

With the old program, you got your site for free whether you referred 3 or 300 people. With the new program, the more people you refer, the bigger the reward!

Here’s how it works:

1. You get a link that you can distribute a number of ways (Twitter, email, website footer, etc.)
2. For every person that signs up through your link, you get 5 credits for every month their site is active.
3. Each credit is worth $1 and can be redeemed by phone to pay for your website subscription.

You’ll find the new “Get a Free Website” program under “Free Website” below your profile picture on your Dashboard.

2009 is wrapping up, and what better occasion to take a fresh look at your online business! As we march into the New Year, it’s time to figure out what is and isn’t working. Here are five tips that should help you create a more profitable 2010:

1. Focus on Customer Service
No matter how fantastic your product, it’s not what your customer will be talking about if your service stinks. By building a great relationship with your customers, you keep them happy, loyal, and talking about you with their friends. Evaluate all of your points of contact, from emails, phone messages, web contact, and even how you interact face to face – then make sure you’re going above and beyond.

2. Ask Clients for Referrals
Now that you’ll be offering top notch customer service, encourage your customers to tell their friends about you. People are much more likely to trust a company recommended by friends and it’s as simple as adding a line to your email signature (ie. Happy with our products? Recommend us to a friend!).

Tip: With your CityMax.com small business website, you can add a “Recommend Website” page, which allows your visitors to send an email recommendation to their friends.

3. Learn to Delegate
Have too much on your plate? As a small business owner, it can be hard to let others do work for you, but learning to share your workload will help you accomplish a lot more. Consider what you do in a week and identify the things that don’t NEED to be done by you, then pass them on to others. If you don’t have staff, you may want to try outsourcing some of that extra work. For example, if you need content written for your website, consider using a service like Textbroker.

4. Ditch Broken Systems
Sometimes in business we set up processes that end up not being so successful… yet we keep on using them for years. Now is the time to make a move. Is your sales method not effective for closing deals? Is one of your products just not selling no matter what you do? Is your software constantly crashing? Out with the old and in with the new. Find something that works better – you’ll end up saving a lot of time and frustration.

5. Set Realistic Goals
If you’re not already setting goals, now is a great time to start. By setting goals, you not only have something to strive for, but you also have something to celebrate once it is accomplished. Make sure that any goal you set is realistic or you may end up just frustrating yourself.

These five resolutions should make a positive impact on your business, but don’t forget to take care of yourself! Work-life balance is just as important to your business’ health, so as a bonus resolution, make sure to also set personal time as a priority.

Whether you’re running a physical or online business, you probably spend a lot of time on the computer. A great way to cut business costs and manage your time effectively is by using free applications or software. We’ve compiled a few of our favorites – some will even help you make your own website design a bit fancier!

Mozy
Are you backing up your computer? You never know when something might happen – don’t let a hardware failure cost you your business! With Mozy, you can back up 2GB of data for free, and it works automatically. If you need more storage, you can upgrade to an unlimited account.

Skype
If you’re still using a landline and long distance phone calls are a regular thing for you, check out Skype. If both you and the person you’re calling use Skype, your calls are free.

Gimp
Want to edit images, without spending a fortune on image editing software? Gimp is very much like Adobe Photoshop, so you can use it for adding just a bit of text to an image or making something a little more advanced.

OpenOffice
Need to create documents and spreadsheets, but don’t want to spend on Microsoft Word? OpenOffice is a solid replacement and is compatible with Word – so those receiving your files will still be able to open them.

Evernote
If you like to keep track of ideas or things that you like, Evernote is a great tool. You can capture photos, web pages, voice memos, text notes, screenshots – pretty much whatever you think of – and then organize and keep track of it. Plus, there are smartphone apps that will sync with your online notes.

Dropbox
Working between multiple computers? Or, need to share files with different people? With Dropbox, you can sync files between different computers, so wherever you are you can access the file you need.

TweetDeck
If you’re still managing your account through Twitter, you might want to take a look at TweetDeck. By using multiple columns to display your twitter feed, mentions, and messages, TweetDeck makes it easy to see what’s new. You can also create “search” columns to watch for mentions of your product or company name.

Jing
Jing is a great tool for taking pictures or video of what’s on your computer screen. You can use it for demos, instructional videos, photo narration or whatever you like – then you can upload it to their video hosting service, Screencast.com, or use it elsewhere.

TranslateThis
If your customers are from many different countries, you can add the TranslateThis button to your web page. Your customer can simply click the button and your page content will automatically be translated to their language choice.

WebRSS
With WebRSS, you can use an RSS feed to display content from a blog or website on your own site.

Although we limited our list to ten, there are a lot of free applications out there. From money management to design, you can often get away without paying for expensive software, especially while your business is small and you don’t need to pay for a ton of users.

Want to fill out your catalog with a few more products?

With Doba drop shipping, you can sell more products without worrying about shipping, inventory, or returns. And, get your FREE Doba account when you sign up through the CityMax.com website builder!

Once you set up Doba with your site, Doba products are managed right through the new inventory feature (‘Edit Store’ -> ‘Products’ -> ‘Inventory’) along with the rest of your inventory.

To get started, go to ‘Edit Store’ -> ‘Products’ -> ‘Doba’ and sign up for your free account, or if you already have a Doba account, you can attach it to your website as well!

Are you feeding the search engines the right info to help your ranking?

Meta tags are one of the hidden elements in the code of your web pages that search engines look for your keywords. By including your keywords in your Title, Description, and Keyword tags, you tell the search engines that those words are hot topics on your website. The best part is, with the CityMax website builder you don’t have to mess with any code to make it happen!

To change the tags on your small business website, just click ‘Internet Marketing’ when you’re editing a page. You can then customize the Title, Description, and Keywords tags for that specific page.