If you are involved in a home business opportunity I assume you want to make money, to do so you need home-based business leads and the most sought-after leads are free leads. Most people wanting to work at home especially work at home mom’s are doing it part-time to earn extra money so they usually don’t have very much money to spend on getting leads to begin with.Of course if you have a big budget, paying for leads for a legitimate home based business such as MLM is the quickest way to get a work at home Internet business established. But, this article is about getting free leads for your Internet business to earn money online so let’s get on with it.These are the five most popular methods that I know of that are used to get free leads for a home-based business opportunity.* Blogs: Using the keyword(s) that you have chosen in your niche, search for other blogs that allow comments. If you leave comments that are beneficial to the blog post you may be allowed to leave a link to your blog.If you leave a comment like “great blog” or some other irrelevant comment you will most likely be deleted so make the comment good.* Article Marketing: This is a great way to get free leads, and there’s a few ways that you can approach this for maximum benefit. The concept is pretty simple and there are some great advantages in using it, one being that you don’t necessarily need a website to get these leads.Another big advantage is that the articles themselves can rank fast in your keyword niche in the search engines if they are published on authority domains resulting in free leads. The key is using what is called the author box or bio box.Here you can put in a link that will take your reader to your blog or squeeze page hopefully capturing their email address.* Forums: Find a forum in your niche and join it. You can easily find forums in a business opportunity by going to Google or any other search engine and typing in your niche keyword(s), the plus sign (+) and the word “forum”.Now the only reason to join a forum is to post a signature file with your web address so if the forum does not allow you to do so, don’t bother joining it. As I stated before when commenting on blogs, give comments or answers that are beneficial to the question being asked in the forum.* Social Media: Examples are Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. If you have a small business using this method can get you a lot of exposure. Getting involved is easy; here are a few pointers to help.You need to find groups in popular categories on your niche topic and join them, and then start sending out friend requests to group. You should start a fan page on any topic of your choice where you can encourage interaction among the fans.As an entrepreneur you would be remiss in not taking advantage of this method to further your Internet home business.* Warm market: Three words “don’t do it”. I have a friend who is in the home-based travel business and after three months of his calling all his friends and relatives he had what we call “NFL”, No Friends Left.If you try to get your friends or relatives involved in your work at home business you will be making a big mistake. Even if you think you have the best home-based business idea, your friends will treat you as a “direct sales snake oil salesman” and will not be picking up the phone when they know it is you.Final word, if you use even one of the above methods (with the exception of your warm market) you will get the home-based business leads that you need and it won’t cost any more than your time.
Home Based Business – Guess What? You Are Not the Owner
For those of you who currently operate, or are considering taking the steps to operate a home based business, this article was written for you. The key is to recognize that some home based businesses put you in charge, but do not make you the owner. Often times people think because they signed up for a business, and received a website stating their name, or that of their company, they own the business. As you will discover throughout this article, many of these individuals are mistaken.Yes, it is true that essentially every single opportunity which promotes the operation of a home based business to its members, portrays the notion that its agents will become business owners by becoming involved with the parent company. The unfortunate thing is that many arrangements give you the title of business owner, but the authority of a distributor. Therefore, you are forced to work within the confines of the business model of the parent company, selling only their products, at prices which they have determined, earning what they have told you that you will earn.As negative as this may read, it is not to say that such home based businesses are necessarily a bad thing. Rather, I am simply pointing out that many people who join these companies fool themselves into believing they are business owners, when they are really distributors. As a distributor, you will not be able to make any changes on the website. Furthermore, you will not be able to sell anything that is not from the main company, and in a majority of these businesses, you will not be allowed to even remotely adjust pricing. Thus, if a competitor is undercutting you, there is no recourse. The only thing you can control, is how much money you spend on marketing this new distribution endeavor.With all of that being said, franchising in a pretty good way to open a business due to the name recognition and trust which it provides. This holds true whether you are operating brick and mortar or strictly online. Both situations present a similar scenario for the franchise business owner. Fees will be charged to take advantage of any national advertising campaigns and you are restricted to using only products bought from them or their authorized distributors. Again, your name will be right up there as owning the franchise for the business, but not the business itself.When deciding on one home based business over the other, you need to keep in mind that some opportunities will enable you to own the business, while others will not. If you want to have the freedom to market and sell products of your desire, then you will have to avoid businesses which make your enterprise subservient to a parent company.
Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation
Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.
If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.
Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.
For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.
No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.
There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.