While perusing a few of my favorite blogs this morning, I found a great post on copyblogger.com entitled The Idealist’s Guide to Raking in Tons of Cash. In a nutshell, the point author Sonia Simone–co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger media– makes is this: that businesses should prioritize making the world a better place – not just making the maximum profit. And by making public service a prime goal, business profits will also increase.

The example Sonia Simone uses is Keza–a company that sells jewelry designed by women in Rwanda. Keza states that their goal is “developing businesses for women aspiring to break out of poverty and donor dependency.” To further their goal, Keza pays their jewelry designers substantially more than the “going” rate in that area of the world. And in being fair to its “workers,” Keza is seen by its customers as being an upstanding company–instead of one that takes advantage of dirt-level labor prices to maximize profits.

 

How You Can Increase Profits by Giving Back

If you’re a person who’s got a blog or other online business that you’re trying to develop into a real money-maker, there’s an important lesson to be learned by the Keza example: to succeed in business, it’s vital that you provide value to your customers.

We’ve all seen those fly-by-night websites that seem to inundate the Internet–those that seem like their sole purpose is to make money for their owners–and most of the time, that’s exactly what’s going on. So what do we, as online consumers, do when we come across sites like these? We leave–fast. If there’s nothing of value for us there, why stick around?

Quality content–content that provides value to your website visitors–is what’s going to keep them on your site longer. It’s also what will keep them coming back–because it will show the customer that it is really him, not just his or her money, that you care about. That’s why providing value is what you should focus on, regardless of whether you’re running a blog, website, or any other kind of business.

What provides value for someone online? Give that person what they’re searching for. A few top things people look for online include:

1. the answer to a question.
2. information about a specific product such as pricing, features, and reviews.
3. news.
4. the opportunity to purchase a product online.
5. entertainment–including reading e-books; blog posts; watching online TV shows or movies; playing online games; or downloading music or movies.
6. the opportunity to socialize. Examples of sites that provide this service are Facebook, Twitter, forums, and online dating sites.

By giving the web surfers what they’re looking for, you’re providing them with value–and this will go a long way to helping you to grow your online business. And don’t knock customers over the head left and right with suggestions that they buy one thing or another, because thins tells them that selling is all you really care about–and they’re likely to leave. Similarly, don’t provide flimsy content with little value to the customer just to get them onto your site.

Failing to provide value to customers communicates that the almighty dollar is all that’s important to you–not human beings and not the good of the world.

On the other hand, if you provide valuable content to customers and don’t just try to draw them in for a quick sale, they’ll respect you. And when they see you really, genuinely have their best interests at heart, they’ll be back–and you’ll have another loyal customer worth his or her weight in gold.