Intro: How the farm website helps micro eco-farming and small farming

A farm website can generate enormous numbers of eager, targeted new farm customers, retain current farm customers. It can do a better job than traditional print ads for far less money, and even do better than time-honored word-of-mouth. It can take CSA sign-ups and farmers' market orders (see Review #1), and do this while the farmer sleeps or works the farm. For the micro and small farming community that sells direct to local markets -- whether you have a U-pick, a CSA, an on-farm store, operate an agritourism farm or simply set out extra veggies at your roadside stand from your farm garden, a correctly created farm website can literally cherry-pick perfect local customers and draw more new customers from miles away once your farm website is set up properly (see Review #2 below). If you produce non-perishable value-added products from your farm, you can free your time to do your farming and crafting and wake up the next day to find new orders waiting to be filled. The farm website can even level the playing field so value-added micro eco-farming and small farming can compete with large food corporations to generate product sales across the country (see Review #2 below).

And, besides being used for the single micro or small farm directly, farm websites can also be used by a cooperative of farmers' spouses selling food goods and crafts, a farmers' market coop, and cooperative regional agritourism ventures. The second farm website system reviewed below can also help the farmer create a second stream of income with the farm website beyond the farm's products.

Here are the two we recommend at this writing, plus a third method that has worked for some who are involved in small farming. (This article is © and written for www.microecofarming.com)

Farm Website System Review #1: Small Farm Central

Small Farm Central offers beautiful farm website templates and other resources for using your farm website to take orders for your farm's products. It was created specifically for the small farming community by a small farmer who is also (in our opinion) a computer genius. The owner knows small farming is a home business, and that farmers need attractive farm websites they can be in control of and make regular changes to crop ripening dates or announce an agritourism event without having to learn codes or spend too much time at the computer. The attractive farm website templates are relatively low-cost and are a low-tech way for the micro farming and small farming community to own their own farm websites and also, if they choose, be involved in online forums with other farmers to share marketing and farming tips. Small Farm Central also offers farm website options especially for CSA farms and puts up articles helpful to micro eco-farming and small farming. At Small Farm Central, the micro eco-farming and small farming community can share tips on getting farm customer testimonials, how to reach customers through farm blogs, and so on. (This article is © and written for www.microecofarming.com)

Get a $30 discount from Small Farm Central: Readers from our site can use this code: micro417eco, when they sign up with Small Farm Central to get a $30 discount. The main website is here. Or, you can also get your discount after looking through Small Farm Central by returning to this site and clicking here to go straight to their order page.

Farm Website System Review #2: SBI (Site Build-It)

This is the system we've found that allows your farm website to also do marketing for you - finding and drawing in eager, targeted (cherry-picked) customers. And, it gives you the tools for your farm website to become an additional stream of income beyond the farm (but only if you want it to). In essence, while it hosts home business and farm websites and offers great no-tech templates, it also makes home based web businesses possible without the website owner having to be a 24/7 web geek. They spend the hours and hours it takes to make the tools easy for the non-techy, and you farm and do what you love to do to earn income. SBI allows you to choose from attractive templates that have a track record of making home businesses successful, or, you can customize your own farm website instead of using their templates, and still use their many marketing tools and resources.

First, it simplifies and automates "SEO" writing for you to generate huge numbers of customers, either for online sales or local and regional direct farm sales. And, it simplifies and automates ways for you to generate additional income through your website beyond just the customers it generates for the farm. Here's what we mean:

SEO -- Search Engine Optimized writing -- is a relatively simple way to draw customers to your farm website once you know how to do it. For example, if you sell artisan goat cheese in Washington State's Skagit County, SBI offers the tools to track down the specific words that the highest number of people use to search online for your farm's products. For example, you might discover that many people use the phrase "Skagit County artisan goat cheese" but rarely use the phrase, "Artisan goat cheeses in Skagit County." Then it helps you to use those words or phrases within the writing you put up on your website, which allows search engines to lead potential customers to your farm website. Anyone can learn to decipher SEO on their own, but the rules change constantly and it's nearly another college course and full time job on its own to understand it as well as the geeks do. SBI has automated and simplified this for the website owner.

It can also help you, if you want, to generate more income beyond the farm's income. For example, if you have an interest in the B&Bs in Skagit County along with your passion for your goat dairy, it can help you learn to get referral fees or commissions when your website leads customers to the B&Bs in your area. SBI can teach you multiple ways to generate automated extra income from your farm website.

As mentioned, SBI also offers attractive, easy to navigate templates so you don't have to learn codes or fancy graphic mechanisms. If you do know these, though, or eventually learn them, you're also allowed to customize your farm website.

SBI is for all home businesses, not just for the micro eco-farming and small farming community. For example, one woman with a garden hobby who used to be a magazine editor now has an SBI home business of writing about flower gardening, and earns more than she ever did as a magazine editor.

Below are links that will lead you to SBI home business examples that may pertain to your needs for a farm website. For example, one link emphasizes selling hard goods directly -- as many micro eco-farming and small farming people do (such as selling fresh produce, firewood or free range eggs). Another emphasizes at-home moms using SBI to generate income that sometimes surpasses their husband's over time. But realize you can go to any of the links below just to learn about SBI in a manner that has the most meaning to you. Once you choose to build a farm website with the SBI system, you can combine all of their options in one farm website (selling locally, nationally, getting a second stream of income), or just stick to one or two (just selling local farm produce).

SBI allows the owner of the farm website to start small, such as attracting customers to the roadside farmstand, and then if they choose, grow from there adding other streams of income both directly and indirectly related to the farm: Such as teaching on-farm workshops, selling hand-made or second-hand "found" items, and earning passive income from the farm owner's creative writing.

Any of the links below also allow you to sign up if you choose. You can sign up for free for 30 days just to try it out.

• If you want your farm website to attract in-person local customers to the farm, such as to your roadside farmstand, on-farm gift store, CSA, on-farm agritourism activities, u-picks, pony rides, raw goat milk pick-up, and so on, click here.
• If you're a farm spouse who works off the farm to make ends meet and you want to create extra income at home (or are afraid you'll have to some day),
  Or
  If you're an individual or couple seeking how to start a small farm and looking for ways to free yourself from your city day job with a home business you can eventually take from your city apartment to your place in the country, and want to create a farm website business that allows you to earn at home with a home business (part or full time, your choice), this page shows many short videos of people who have used SBI to quit their day jobs, including a needlepoint instructor and a mother who had a day job and a baby, and was able to quit to work from home with a website she named, "do-it-yourself-weddings . com," - be sure to scroll down to her story on this page. Click here.
• If you are already an at-home farm mom looking for added income based on your hobbies, expertise or passions (which could be related to the farm or not) such as writing how-to e-books on gardening, selling hand-sewn products or providing ideas on raising kids in the country, click here.
• If you plan a farm website to partially or completely sell hard goods online (such as dried flowers, baked goods through overnight delivery, or non-perishable salsas and sauces.) Click here.
  Or
  If you want to, or have been selling hard goods via eBay, but no longer want to be dependent on (some call it being a slave to) eBay, click here.
• If you want your farm website to earn income through blogging, this page specifically describes the differences between the current fad of blogging for income which earns very little, and a friendly form of writing anyone can do that has earned substantial income for website owners, click here.
• If you want a typical farm website to sell the farm's products, but would also like to earn finder's fees or referral fees (such as from B&Bs or other businesses in your area), click here.
• If you want to try out SBI after checking it out, but want a live instructor and a structured group learning situation from home rather than just the DIY online self-learning method, come back to the MEF site to this page and click here, or just find "eLearning" via one of the pages above.
• If you already own a farm website and want to see how it ranks among the other 100+ million sites as far as ability to be found by your potential farm customers, click here. The closer your farm website is to the top 1, 2 or 3% (less than 3,000,000, preferably less than 1,000,000) the more attention the search engines will give it when your potential customers type in "local honey, Benton County." Some current website owners start over with SBI to get their website ranked higher, but others just add a new SBI website that links to their old established one to generate more traffic.
• Are you at this page because you want to design and host other farm websites or other home business websites? Click here.

Farm Website System Review #3

You can also contact your cooperative extension agent to see if any courses on creating and maintaining farm websites are coming up. For example, the North Carolina cooperative extension sometimes offers a free website design course for beginners. Small farming, which is basically a home business needing its own marketing tools, is being taken more seriously now by the cooperative extensions, which used to focus more on big-ag in years past.

If a farm website course is available in your area, ask up front if the class is going to focus on the design and publishing of the farm website, or if there will also be education on helping the farm website be found by potential customers surfing the web. Remember that web surfers don't "pass by" all 100+ million active websites and then decide to stay with the prettiest website. Instead, they find what they're looking for through specific words typed into search engines without ever even seeing any farm websites at first, and the content of the farm website needs to be written so the search engines will first find, then attract potential farm customers to the farm website. This is the SEO writing described above. Some courses might introduce SEO to you.

Or, some workshops for building farm websites might teach other methods of getting the farm website known, such as getting your website on free online farm listings, exchanging links with other websites that attract your potential customers, and offline methods such as putting your website url on a bumper sticker for your family's vehicles (see our detailed article on this topic in the MEF mini-Emagazine). (This article is © and written for www.microecofarming.com)

An in person beginner's farm workshop could be complete in its own, or a start to eventually creating a farm website using one of the two systems above, leading to a new level of income for your micro eco-farming enterprise.