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I have friends who have started selling Avon and Pampered Chef. Each of them have sent me emails letting me know about their websites, which the company has provided some sort of boiler-plated template system allowing for “easy creation” and then it is hosted on their platform.

I find it great that the companies provide tools such as this to their consultants/ sales teams to be able to promote themselves. The problem though is that the way the sites are set up, it generally doesn’t allow for them to be very user friendly, or for that matter search engine friendly.

Sure it’s great to have a website, but what if nobody comes to it? Or once they get there, it’s not easy to navigate through the page? Without knocking the efforts my friends have made to get their sites up and running – since I am still amazed at the number of companies out there who don’t have a website – these sites really aren’t going to win them any awards. They don’t (nor should they) claim to be online marketing experts, since that’s obviously not their business. So why should they know how to build a great website that is optimized for search and would be talked about by their customers because they were so easy to use. That’s a job for the company in my opinion.

As a home-based business, you struggle enough to keep yourself afloat and promote your wares, let alone the countless hours of administration that you need to do, having to further promote yourself and redo a website to make sure people can find you should not be on your list of to dos.

These individuals are spending their time selling a company’s products and as that company, you’ve taken the time to make your website look nice and friendly for search engines as well as usability so shouldn’t you offer the same type of service to those who are in essence kind of like your brand evanglists? (I’m making a big assumption on the above statement, since in reality not everyone actually knows how to do this, or does it, but that’s theory we should, or aim to, practice).

Maybe they aren’t going to have as extensive a site as your company, but why not make it easier for them to get business? People who have these little ventures on the side often have other committments (whether a job or family) and generally don’t have as much time to devote to understanding how to market their (or your) business online. Sure if they become successful, this may become their full-time job and they can then afford to hire marketing help, but until that day it’s always going to be a stuggle and companies need to step up to the plate and provide more support than they are presently doing.

I have two suggestions for companies like this:

1. Hire someone (unless you have experts in house) to write some 101s on how to make the software/ templates/ tools you have provided more search engine friendly and usable (so that once they have people on the site, they can keep them there) and provide that as a tutorial to your consultants available for download before they build their website.

2. Create some tools and education maaterial for simple online marketing tactics(explain paid search, social media/ networking, affiliate marketing and (legal) email marketing) that are designed to drive traffic so that these individuals can set themselves and their website up for success.

In the long run everyone benefits, given the pyramid structure of most of these businesses, the more sales/ income brought in from your sales consultants, the more revenue you as a company make.

Side Note: As I am generalizing a lot here and making some assumptions, if anyone out there does know of one of these types of companies that offers this type of “training” let me know as I’d like to show someone whose got it right.

And to my friends whom I’ve talked about here – you know you’ve got an open offer on my end for advice any time you want it, I’m definitely not knocking your efforts and in fact am quite impressed you took the time to create a website in the first place.