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Business Opportunity Lead Generation on Google, from Bill Brine-Lead Generation Master Looking for ideas to increase your profits for your work at home business? Here are ten ideas that I came up with: 1) Do your market research before creating new products of services. Only create new products or services if there is a strong need for them. You won't have anyone to sell them to if you don't have a market! 2) Be sure to always use a "P.S." at the end of your ad copy. Use this section to repeat a strong benefit or offer a free bonus. 3) Compliment your visitors in your ad copy. This will earn their trust and put them in a positive mood. In return they will be more receptive to your marketing messages. 4) Publish a free ebook and give it away on your web site or in your ezine. This will increase your traffic, your sales and ezine subscribers for your work at home business. 5) Investigate ways to create multiple streams of income with your work at home business web site. You can sell your own products, join affiliate programs, sell advertising space, use Google Adsense - there are many options. 6) Sell your backend products to your customers right after they order. Take them to a "Thank You" web page that includes other products you sell as an upgrade or add-on. 7) Sell only a few products on your work at home business web site instead of selling a large amount of products. Too many choices can overwhelm your visitors and they won't buy anything. 8) Include content and free stuff on your web site that promote the products you are selling. If your visitors don't read your ads, they may read your offerings. 9) Show your visitors that you are human and not just a web site. Publish your contact details, a little information about yourself, and a good picture. 10) Provide a "Contact Us" page on your work at home business web site. Give your visitors as many options to contact you as possible. This will add credibility to your work at home business. Stay tuned for more work at home business tips in future articles. ------------------- Your home business website can be a great part of your lead generation efforts. Here are ten tips on improvements to your website that will increase its lead generation capabilities and lead to increased orders: 1. Create a free ebook directory on a specific topic at your website. People will visit your website to read the free ebooks and may see your product ad. 2. Turn part of your website into a members only website. Instead of charging for access, use it as a free bonus for one of your products. 3. Add a free classified ad section to your website. You could then trade banner ads with other websites that have free classified ad sections. 4. Create two versions of your ezine so people can choose if they want ads included with it or not. This will attract the people who hate ads to subscribe. 5. Publish your ezine only on your website. Have people subscribe to a "new issue" email reminder. This could really increase your traffic and sales. 6. Sell advertising space in your product package. You could sell inserts, flyers, brochures, booklets, and digital ads for electronic products. 7. Offer daily or weekly visitor bonuses. This will increase your repeat traffic and sales because your visitors will visit regularly to get the visitor bonuses. 8. Allow people to download software or ebooks from your website at no cost. Just ask your visitors in return if they'll refer their friends to your website. 9. Build up the number of people that join your free affiliate program quickly by temporally offering your product for free to the people that sign up. 10. Negotiate with ezine publishers to get free or discounted ads by letting them join your affiliate program and earn commissions on the ad you run. Stay tuned for more ideas to increase website visitors and revenue in future articles in this series. ------------------- There are all sorts of ways to generate leads for your business opportunity. In most cases, you will then funnel the email addresses of the leads you capture into an email autoresponder series, also known as an opt-in list. Have you read countless articles, sought expert advice and read many success stories of people creating a small fortune with opt-in lists? Have you followed their advice to the T and you still weren't able to make a profit? So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dove right in. You chose a topic which you thought could be quite popular and would earn you money. This just not the case. Just because you wrote people from the list doesn't mean they are going to buy instantly. Here are some ideas for rejuvenating your opt-in list. For those who are just starting out, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list. 1) Get your customers to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list will not make you an expert and a believable seller. Start a blog and write many articles first before you start an opt-in list. Write about the topic you know and have started and used for your site. Visit forums first to gain knowledge about your customers, about their wants and needs and target those wants and needs. Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advice and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you already, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what your business is all about. The money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust you. They want a product or service that will be good value for their money. People are not going to buy something on your recommendation if they don't know you. 2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about, you can make it successful. While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have an interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your market research well and you will see the profits come in. Provide your subscribers with promotional material that they can actually use and spread around. 3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you on the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust. Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones. Building a profitable opt-in list doesn't just happen overnight. A lot of preparation and effort goes in upfront. Opt-in lists are built from scratch. As your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you. ------------------- Are you a small business owner who runs your own retail store? Once you have put strategies in place to generate leads and turn them into customers, what are you doing to turn those customers into loyal customers? Whether your retail store is a small convenience store or a specialty store, like one that sells collectible figurines or plus size clothing, you will likely have some type of competition. There is a good chance that most of your competition will come from large businesses such as department stores; ones that have more financial resources at their fingertips. Although it may seem like your competition has the advantage, it doesn't have to be that way. There are a number of different ways that you go about "wowing" each and every one of the customers who walk through your door, to the point where they will be a returning shopper. When it comes to "wowing" your customers, the "wowing" process isn't actually as hard as you may believe it to be. For instance, the first step is to make sure that your store is completely clean and free of debris. If you have shopping carts, you will want to make sure that your customers can push a shopping cart down each of your aisles, without running into merchandise or boxes on the floor. You will also want to make sure that your store shelves are organized in a nice, professional matter. The last thing that a consumer wants to do is shop at a retail store that leaves them feeling unclean or dirty. You want your customers to walk into your store and say "wow." Another way that you can go about "wowing" your costumers is by just being nice to them. It really is as simple as it sounds. In today's society, where everyone is in a rush to get things done, we often forget to be kind and polite to others. The best way to "wow" your customers is to treat them with kindness. You will want to make sure that all of your employees greet your customers as soon as they walk into the door, ask them if they need any help finding anything, and thank for them for their business after being checked out. Just being kind and compassionate to your customers is a great way to "wow" them and bring them back for more kindness, especially since that kindness is now missing from many big box retailers. Another simple way that you can go about "wowing" your customers, is by offering them free discounts or savings. You may want to think about making coupons that can be handed out to all of your customers, preferably those who end up spending a certain amount of money, like fifty dollars or more. Moneysaving coupons are actually used by many shoppers, but most have to actually go searching for them, as most retailers don't hand them out free of charge. Giving your customers moneysaving coupons is a great way to give your business a good public perception and it also tends to up your chances of returning customers. These strategies are just a few of the many that you may want to take when looking to "wow" your customers. What you need to do is look at it from the perspective of your customer. If you were to walk into your store, what would you want it to be like and how would you like to be treated? ------------------- Viral marketing is a great lead generation strategy for online businesses. Here are some of my thoughts on this strategy: Creativity is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition for business on the Internet today. With so much competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed. It doesn't matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website: if people don't know that you exist, you are not going to make it big. Worst of all, you business could fail miserably. There are many different methods of getting noticed online. One of these is called Viral Marketing. While the term Viral usually depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business. Viral Marketing Overview Viral Marketing, also known as Viral Advertising, is a marketing technique used to build public awareness of a product or company. Viral marketers use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product, by promoting other forms of addictive media that people love to pass on to their friends and acquaintances. The media will normally contain some subtle form of advertising for the company or product in question. In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product. Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because it is relatively low cost. Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates to help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with. Using Viral Marketing to your advantage The main advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential leads. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence. Most sites and companies these days use some form of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games. Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story - many ideas are still out there. Create a buzz. Hollywood has this down to a science. Ever notice how many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them more popular? Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had much success with it. A classic example is Microsoft's Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them. Now it's your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your business. ------------------- One of the most effective strategies for generating leads for your business is to brand yourself on the internet as a leader or expert in your chosen market. And there is no better way to do that than to write articles consistently and post them to article directories and blogs. But writing about the same thing day after day can get tiresome, and you will often experience writer's block - what on earth am I going to write about today? Here are 5 easy ways to get your creative juices flowing: Ideas can be triggered by anything you may hear, see, or smell. Your senses are your radar in finding great ideas. Write all of them into a journal and keep it with you for future reference. You may also write down anything that you have read or heard. Someone else’s ideas could be used to develop your own ideas and this is not stealing. Remember that ideas and creativity can come from anywhere; it’s the development of the idea that makes it unique. One thing I do is check online news items at Google every day for keywords that are relevant to my chosen niche. A good news item can trigger an article in which you give your view of whatever was reported. A jumbled mind cannot create any space for new ideas. You must have a clear mind if you wish to have your creativity up to full speed. Get rid of all obstacles that can be a hindrance to your creativity. If you are bothered by something, you cannot force your mind to stay focused. Try to relax whenever you can and think about your experiences and interactions with others. Your experiences are what shape your mindset and your opinions, and these will be reflected in your writing. Try to discover yourself, find out what triggers your emotions. Discover what inspires you and what ticks you off. You can use these emotions to help you in expressing yourself and your ideas. Your working place can be quite a hindrance if it doesn't make you feel happy or relaxed. Creativity comes from being in a good state of mind and a messy workplace that causes distraction won't be conducive to firing up your creative flow. Surround your working place with objects that make you happy and relaxed. You may put up pictures, objects that inspire, or anything that can get your creativeness cranking. A clean and well organized workplace also gets rid of distractions and unwanted hindrances. With a good working place, you can work in peace and never notice the time pass by. Setting the mood requires you to just go with the moment or to induce yourself to feeling what makes your mind works best. Finding out what makes you tick could help you find ways to get your creative juices flowing. Set the pace and tempo for your mood and everything else will follow. Letting yourself go and have fun produces adrenaline that can make your imagination go wild. Take an adventure or a solemn hike. Whatever it is that is unusual from your daily routine can take the rut out of your schedule. In no time at all, your creativeness will make use of that experience and get your imagination to go on overdrive. ------------------- You've no doubt seen it said again and again that a website is an indispensable tool for generating and maintaining leads for your business. If you are a brick and mortar business, you may think that you don't need a website. Why would you need one? The 20th century internet boom showed us that even the smallest of businesses needs a website to compete in today's market. As we entered the 21st century, this became even more apparent as everyday people gained internet access and started searching for products on services online. Over 90% of all American families have a home computer, and some form of internet access, whether it be dial up or high speed broadband. Out of those 90%, over 65% will search online first when making a new purchase or hiring someone's service. If those numbers alone do not convince you to build a website for your business, then these reasons should: 1) Sell your products online 2) Provide information that you would not normally be able to 3) Websites are global 4) Website are cheap 5) 24 Hour Product Purchases 6) Minimize customer problems and questions 7) Keep Up With Your Competition Bottom line: your business needs a website! ------------------- Your business opportunity website can be a great source of leads for your business. But you must be careful about how you design and manage your business website these days. The website boom of the early 21st century showed us that the business world was indeed ready to enter into the world of the internet. However, times have changed, and many of the websites have not changed with it. Here are a few mistakes that website owners make in today's internet culture: 1)Infrequent updates 2) JavaScript pop ups 3) Heavy graphics 4) Using heavy, high contrasting colors 5) Cluttered pages 6) Lack of a navigation system 7) Overusing Advertising 8) Audio that plays as soon as the page loads Avoid some of these errors and people will visit your website more often and stay there longer. ------------------- Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful whole, you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful will always include the importance of generating traffic to your website Traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company's internal organization well taken care of, you need to start generating traffic to your website. Timing is essential. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of your competition. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for increasing your site traffic - you should have started yesterday! To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday. 1) Invest in good advertising with search engines Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assure great traffic. Although this way to increase your traffic does cost some money, it is a surefire way to generate traffic quickly. You can see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of sites feature these advertising systems and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo's advertising. But be careful to track your results so you don't spend more money on ads than you take in from product sales. 2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites When you exchange links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts from both business owners to enhance site traffic. The more links you trade, the more traffic can be expected. Be careful here to only trade links with sites that are related to your market and would be of interest to your site visitors. 3) Use Viral Marketing Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product little or no cost. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company's name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, a free ebook, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium and they will pass it on to many people. 4) Do keyword research and make sure you use those keywords on your site. Your site needs to be optimized for the keywords that your potential customers are searching for on Google. Don't guess at what you think they may be searching for. Use a keyword research tool to find out what people are actually searching for, and target the top 1 or 2 keyword phrases with the content on your site. Also remember to set the TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS meta tags in the html code for your site pages. 5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site Submit articles to sites that are of interest to your potential market. For example: if you sell car parts, write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link back to your site. 6) Join forums and form online communities Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you put in place a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will recommend your site to others. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need. 7) Offer newsletters If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, traffic to your site will increase and it will be loyal traffic. Create a newsletter on a regular basis. Implementing these 7 strategies will increase traffic to your website and will thereby increase the number of leads you bring into your business. ------------------- One of the newest phenomena hitting the business world on the internet is using interactive community sites, such as Myspace, to promote your business and generate good targeted business opportunity leads. Why have business owners chosen to promote their businesses on Myspace? With an average of over half a million visitors a day, Myspace is easily one of the most popular websites on the internet. With this kind of traffic, every business is sure to find a target group that is interested in their products, or services. Perhaps one of the best reasons for using Myspace to promote your business is the fact that it is free. The only investment you will need is some time to build your profile, and time to find and add people to your "friends list," which in this case is actually your targeted group. Setting Up Your Profile Once you sign up, you will be asked to create a profile. Your profile is the single most important thing to consider when you decide to advertise using Myspace. Your potential leads will look at this profile first. It will give them their first impression of you. You will want to set up your profile with as much information as you can without sounding like an advertisement. Describe yourself and your business, and what you are all about. A good balance is key. Do not over use images or other media within your page, so it will load fast for even the slowest of internet connections. Gaining Leads Once you have everything setup on your profile, you will want to begin looking for leads. Look for the type of people that may be interested in your business. Myspace provides a search feature that allows you to search by age, gender, status, and location. Use this feature to search and find people in your area. Click on their profile, and if they fit your criteria, then use the "add to friends" button. A message will be sent to them, and then they will be able to add or deny your profile. Once you see that they have accepted you, then post a "thank you" message on their profile. When using Myspace to promote your business, you will want to practice some etiquette. It is easy to overdo it, which can greatly hurt your image, especially with potential local consumers. After all, the idea is to promote your business, not to hurt its image. Spamming, or sending unsolicited messages to random users and addresses, is strictly prohibited, and will get your account deleted. Never send unsolicited or unwanted messages to anyone. However, if the person contacts you first (whether it be by comment, or message) feel free to communicate with them about your business. Another type of spamming, which is potentially dangerous for your business, is over-posting comments. The comment system on Myspace allows you to post comments on other's profiles, that is usually viewable by everyone that views that person profile. This can be a great way to reach additional contacts, provided that you follow some rules. First, never post a comment solely about your business. Instead, you can post a message thanking that person for accepting your friend request, or thanking them for sending you a friend request, whatever the case may be. The only acceptable way you should post a comment about your business is if the user posted a comment on your profile first. Never post pictures on other users profile. ------------------- The only way that companies can be assured of survival in today's remarkably competitive world is to maintain an ongoing supply of leads for new business. But many companies, especially small businesses, don't have enough personnel or simply don't have the expertise to generate targeted, qualified leads. In most cases, they are happy to outsource lead generation. The results are usually not all that great unless you have the money to purchase large numbers of these types of leads. Don't fall into this trap. You need to learn how to generate your own exclusive leads for your business. If you take the time to learn how to do it, it is not as onerous a task as you may think. In fact, once you learn how to do it for your business, you could then apply the same principles and sell your services to other business who are looking to generate leads. I'm not talking about reselling leads here. I'm thinking more of you creating yourself as a consultant who, for a fee, will set a business up to generate its own exclusive targeted leads. Companies will pay handsomely for such a service. So how can you leverage the power of the Internet to effectively generate targeted, qualified leads? The first step to generate leads from your website is to make sure that you're attracting the right kind of visitors. It's essential that you understand your target market. Being completely knowledgeable about the kind of lead you're looking for will help you focus your message and will make your efforts more cost-effective. You've got to be visible where your target market tends to congregate. This includes spending time in forums and other online communities to get the word out about your site. This will also help you understand the needs and wants of your target market. Next, it's essential for you to tailor your message to your target market. You have to clearly communicate what problems you can solve, the benefits you can provide, and the results prospects can expect. All of this must be shared in a way that's meaningful to them, not necessarily to you. It probably won't be possible to convert a website visit into a lead unless you build faith and trust with your visitor. You can help to do this by providing information that they really care about in the form of articles, research reports and white papers. A professional website design that appeals to your target market also plays a large role in building credibility and trust. Regardless of the importance of the foundational steps listed above, it's impossible to generate leads without the use of an effective web form. Your lead form can't be hidden or buried somewhere on the "contact us" page. It must appear at the appropriate time in a location on your website where interested visitors are likely to be. Testing and tracking the performance of your forms is crucial. Test multiple forms and monitor the conversion rate of each. As soon as you have a winner, create another form and try to beat it. It's often effective to offer additional means of contact. Even though your visitor found you on the Internet, they might be more comfortable providing their information over the telephone. Companies of all types and sizes are hungry for leads. If you could learn how to generate leads quickly and show other how to do the same, companies will beat a path to your door. And they will be ready to pay you handsomely. ------------------- How to Save Money When Advertising Your Work at Home Business Are you looking to market your work at home business to the general public, preferably your targeted market? Your targeted market should be the individuals who are most likely to need what your business has to offer. For instance, if you run a professional resume writing business, you will want to target those who are currently unemployed or those who are looking for jobs. As important as advertising is, it can sometimes be time consuming and costly. The costly part is what often causes many work at home business owners to cringe. The good news is that there are a number of different ways that you can go about advertising your work at home business without having to spend more money than you need to. One of the best advertising methods is word of mouth. In today's society, many consumers like giving a company feedback or ratings, literally or figuratively. That is why many consumers tell their friends when they find a nice new store; one that is worth visiting, or a store that they had a bad experience at. You should never underestimate the power of the customers that you already have. Not only will keeping your current customers happy increase the chances of them coming back again, it also ups the chances of them recommending your business to those that they know. Another easy and relatively cheap way that you can go about advertising your work at home business to your targeted market is by carefully choosing where you choose to advertise your business. In keeping with the above mentioned example of running a professional resume writing business, you may want to think about distributing flyers or business cards to local coffee shops or college campuses. The same can be done for other types of businesses. For instance, if you run a dog grooming salon, you can advertise your business in local pet supply stores, vet offices, and such. Of course, you will need to get permission from other businesses before placing your business cards or flyers on their properties, but you will find that most are willing to assist you. In fact, you may even want to think about doing a flyer or business card swap. In addition to handing out traditional business cards or flyers, you may also want to think about giving away free coupons. There are many consumers who like free stuff, even if it is only a few coupons. When a customer has a money saving coupon, they are more likely to buy what you are selling, whether it is a product or a service. If you are trying to target a specific group of individuals, you may want to carefully choose how you distribute your coupons and how much in savings you give away. If you are just trying to generate as many sales as possible or create a "buzz," you may want to think about contacting one of your local newspapers to put coupons inside their paper. Another idea to attract the bargain hunters: hold a contest or a drawing for your customers. For instance, if you run a pet supply store, you may want to think about creating a pet gift basket, like one that may include food, treats, or grooming supplies. Allow each of your customers, the ones who make a purchase, to enter into your contest. If the prize is nice enough, you will find that some customers will buy something just to get entered into the contest. Hosting a contest is a great way to generate sales and business "buzz." These approaches are just a few of the many low-cost, affordable ways that you can go about advertising your work at home business to the general public or even just to your targeted market. The decision as to whether or not you want to use any of these methods is yours to make, but they are at least worth looking into. ------------------- If you are researching work at home business opportunities, you have no doubt been inundated with all sorts of schemes that promise to make money. Most of them seem too good to be true, and probably are. How do you make sense of all this stuff? In this article I will analyze a recent promotional email that I received, and point out what you need to look out for. The email is shown below, with my comments in italics. RED FLAG: The first problem to note is that this email was sent to an email address that I never use for signing up for anything. So right away we know it comes from a spammer, or someone who purchased a leads list from a spammer. I always recommend that you maintain at least 3 email addresses: one used only for signing up for things, one that is published online (this one will get lots of spam) and one that you only give to people personally and never publish anywhere. I use a different email address for every list I sign up for. This way I know who has resold my information. You would be surprised how many sites violate their published standards which state they do not resell your information. So right away we have our first red flag - this comes from a spammer. STAY AWAY. But it gets better. Read on... Subject: Bill Brine, JOIN NOW & EARN $1,950 A MONTH! NO SPONSORING REQUIRED... Yes you read it right! Everybody Makes Money here and Everybody Gets Paid with this NEW LAUNCHED OPPORTUNITY! Whether you are new to the internet and home based business or an experienced pro, theres so much money to be made with us its not funny! Click Below To Get your FREE ACCESS! All NEW members immediately get the next highest position available at the level of enrollment that is best for you. By JOINING Now You're Immediately Positioned In the Next Highest Spot Of Our Generous Team Powerline that feeds everybody with up to five income streams! Everybody who comes in after you is under you .. forever! Click Below To Get your FREE ACCESS! Lock in the next highest spot in our powerful forced matrixes! Your satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back! We want to help you and will do whatever it takes to help you establish a business you will be proud of for years to come ..... so JOIN now and we'll get you started immediately! See You At The Top! COME TO OUR CONFERENCE CALLS SEE SCHEDULE IN MEMBERS AREA! We look forward to helping you build your business and wish you great success in all your endeavors! Josh Sent by Internet Adverts, Inc. Marina Del Rey, California -- Under Bill HR 1910 passed by the 106th US Congress on May 24, 1999, this message cannot be considered Spam as long as we include a way to be removed. Per Section HR 1910, Please type "REMOVE" in the subject line and reply to this email. All removal requests are handled personally and immediately once received. Folks, you have to learn to stay away from stuff like this! Get it into your head that there is no quick and easy way to make money. It saddens me to see so many people duped by hucksters like this every day. MAKE IT STOP! Building a proper business takes time, effort and capital. Stop throwing your money away on hype and promises. Research legitimate business opportunities which offer proven, stable income opportunities and where you can contact the business owner personally to talk about the business. Do your due diligence before investing your money. I offer such an opportunity. I don't purchase leads, cold call people, or send out spammy emails like the one above. How do I build my business? I buy customers to provide a stable base income. I work with a team of internet marketing professionals to promote my business ethically and responsibly. Our team offers complete training in all aspects of internet marketing and business building to all newcomers. And I don't hide behind a website. My contact details are below. If you're tired of all these schemes and dreams, come to my site at Watch the movie, attend one of our weekly presentations where you will be given facts, not hype. And be sure to contact me if you have any questions. I build real businesses. ------------------- Want to generate more leads for your work at home business opportunity? Create and manage a forum related to your products or services. The best solution here is to create a forum incorporated into your work at home business website. Most web hosts these days provide this software for you. Make sure you link to your forum from every page on your site. Alternatively, you can set up a forum at one of the many free online services set up for this purpose, Just do a Google search for "free forums". Setup is usually quite straightforward. During setup make sure that you enable all protection from unauthorized signup, otherwise your forum will become a target for spam and porn bots. Once you do get the forum set up, though, you will need to be prepared to manage the forum on a regular basis. This is usually not too onerous a task, but it must be done. Why set up a forum in the first place? Well, here are eleven reasons I came up with: 1. You'll be able to communicate with your visitors. They'll begin to trust you and get to know you on a more personal level. People are more willing to purchase products from somebody they already know and trust. 2. People will revisit your web site to participate in your forum. They will meet other people with similar interests and your web site will become a hang out were they can chat. 3. You can learn important information about your visitors by reading the conversations they have. They may chat about your web site or products. With this information you could learn to market your products more effectively. 4. You can answer the questions your visitors ask in your online communities. You'll become known as an expert by giving the answers to their questions. This will give you and your business more credibility. 5. Add an online conference room and you can teach a free online class. This will give you an expert status and increase traffic to your website by offering the free class. You can get a free online conference room at http://brincom.vereconference.com/ 6. When your forum becomes popular, you can sell advertising space on it. This will give you an extra income stream for your web site. 7. You can network with other businesses by having a forum. You could exchange business ideas, leads, advertising, etc. 8. You could allow other web sites who don't have a forum to use yours. You will get free advertising by allowing them to link to your online community. 9. When you have a forum you can get free advertising by listing it in online community directories. You can also join web rings with similar discussion topics. 10. You can make money by advertising your own products and services on your forum. You could also join other people's affiliate programs and make commissions advertising them. 11. Search engine spiders love forums! And since most of the posts in your forum will probably be rich in the use of keywords related to your niche, the spiders will visit more and more often as more people use the forum. And when they visit the forum, they also visit all the pages that are linked to by the forum... Forums are another very important component in your online marketing arsenal. Used correctly, a forum can provide your work at home business with highly targeted leads. ------------------- Viral marketing is another great way to generate leads for your work at home business opportunity. Viral Marketing is a process whereby you allow people to use and give away your free product or service in order to multiply your marketing messages quickly over the internet. The idea behind viral marketing is that you include your ad with the freebie people use or give away. There are many things you can do to start a viral marketing campaign. Here are ten viral marketing strategies to get your creative juices flowing: 1. Allow people to reprint your articles on their web site, in their ezine, newsletter, magazine or ebooks. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article. 2. Allow people to use any of your freebies as free bonuses for products or services they sell. Include your ad on all your freebies. 3. Allow people to use your online forum for their own web site. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board. 4. Allow people to sign up for a free web site on your server. Since you are giving away the space, require them to include your banner ad at the top of the site. 5. Allow people to add their link to your free web site directory. Just require that they return a link back to your web site, advertising your directory. 6. Allow people to provide your free online service to their web site, visitors, or ezine subscribers. They could be free email, email consulting, search engine submissions, etc. 7. Allow people to give away your free software. Just include your business advertisement inside the software program. 8. Allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. 9. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free ebook if, in exchange, they give away the ebook to their web visitors or ezine subscribers. 10. Allow people to give away your free ebook to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the internet. These are just scratching the surface of what you can do with viral marketing. I'm sure you can think of many more. ------------------- One of the strategies you must use when building your work at home business is to create a lead capture page and then drive traffic to that page. In many cases, this page will be incorporated into a website that presents your business and your services to website visitors. So how do you drive traffic to that website? Here are ten ideas I thought of: 1. Are you publishing an ezine for your work at home business? If not, you should be. Give people a free subscription to your ezine. Almost everyone is publishing a ezine nowadays, so be sure to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift or some free advertising to new subscribers.. 2. Provide your visitors with free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it is up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their ezine or web site. 3. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting ebooks, ezines, web sites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over. People love it when someone else does their research for them. Make sure you update the directory on a regular basis, and give visitors the option to subscribe to be notified when there are updates. 4. Give your visitors a free ebook. You could also include your own ad in the ebook and allow other people to give it away. If you don't want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles, or you can hire ghost writers at websites like elance.com. 5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic. 6. Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. 7. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away. 8. Offer free online services or utilities from your web site. They could be search engine submission, copywriting, proofreading, a niche-specific forum, etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience. 9. Give free consulting to people who visit your web site. You could offer your knowledge via email or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive. 10. Give your visitors a free membership to your online club. People want to belong to something, why not your online club? You could also give away a free ezine for club members only. There you are, ten ideas to drive traffic to your work from home business website. There are many other ways to drive traffic - put your mind to it and you can find all sorts of creative ways to increase traffic. ------------------- Ezine Articles are a great way to generate leads for your business. Writing is not easy at first, but it does become easier after a while. Why would you want to put all this effort into writing articles? Well, here are ten benefits of submitting articles to ezines: 1. You will brand your website, your business and yourself by submitting articles to ezines. You can include your name, your business name, your credentials, your website address and your email address in your resource box. 2. You will become known as an expert on the topics you write about. This will give you and your business extra credibility which will help you compete against your competition. 3. Your article might also be placed on the publisher's home page. This will give you some extra exposure as well as powerful backlinks to your website. 4. You will get extra exposure if the ezine publisher archives their ezine on their site. People might want to read the back issues before they make the decision to subscribe. And this generates more backlinks to your website. 5. You will get free advertising. This will allow you to spend your profits on other forms of advertising. You could buy advertisements in other ezines that don't publish your articles. 6. You might get extra income from people wanting to hire you to write other articles, books, or even ask to speak at seminars. This is a great way to multiply your income. 7. You could allow ezine publishers to publish your articles in their free ebooks. Since people give them away, your advertising could multiply all over the internet. 8. You will get your article published all over the web when you submit it to an ezine publisher that has a free content directory on their website. They will allow their visitors to republish your article. More backlinks.... 9. You will gain people's trust. If they read your article and like it, they won't be as hesitant to buy your product or service or to contact you for information. 10. You could get your article guaranteed to run in an ezine. You could agree to run one of their articles in your ezine if, in exchange, they run yours in their ezine. It's a win/win situation. Good, relevant, keyword-rich content is the key to getting yourself known on the internet today. Submitting articles to ezines is one way of achieving this goal. Now get writing! ------------------- In any work at home business, you need leads. We all know that. If you have a business website that captures the email addresses of interested prospects, you need to get a lot of traffic to that website. Here are ten high powered ways to increase traffic to your website. These are not presented in any particular order. Perhaps these will trigger some ideas in your own marketing strategy for your work at home business: 1. Trade links with other web sites. They should be related to the subject of your web site. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc. 2. Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they'll be reminded to revisit your web site. They'll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders. 3. Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others. 4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, web sites and magazines that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article. 5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This is known as viral marketing and will increase your ad exposure and attract people to your web site at the same time. 6. Combine your products or services into one big package deal with other businesses offerings. You could share a web site and advertise the package deal; which means double the traffic. 7. Submit your freebie to the online directories that list your particular item or service for free. If you're offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the internet. 8. Participate on forums. Post answers to other people's questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file at the end of all your postings. 9. Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber difference between e-zines, one can run more ads to make up for it. 10. Post your ad on free advertising areas on the internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites, free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads, free yellow page directories, etc. While very few people actually see these ads, they are great food for the search engine spiders and will build up backlinks for your website. There you are, 10 ideas for increasing traffic to your website. Happy prospecting! ------------------- If you are building a work from home business on the internet, you most likely are aware that an important part of generating traffic to your website or blog is to rank highly in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Good, relevant content on your site, and lots of it, is important, but you also need high quality backlinks to your site. A backlink is a hyperlink on another website which links to your site. The most powerful backlinks are one-way backlinks. This means that another website has links pointing to your site, but you don't have reciprocal links pointing back to theirs. One good way to generate high quality backlinks is to use forums. Forums have the added advantage that they can create traffic to your site as well. If other forum members like your posts, they are more likely to click on your links to find out more about you and your business. Be very careful when using forums for marketing. Do it wrong and you will be branded a spammer and most likely get your forum account closed. If used correctly, forums can be a very powerful tool in your business opportunity lead generation arsenal. Here's how to do it correctly: Step 1: Find forums that are relevant to your market This part is easy: just search in Google for your niche keyword followed by the word 'forum'. For example, suppose you have a blog about Jazz music. Go to Google and search for jazz music forum Why would you want to find forums related to your niche? Well, there are two reasons. First, the search engines will give more weight to links pointing to your site if they come from sites centered around the same niche as your site. Second, you'll get much more direct traffic from a forum where the members are interested in your niche and in what you have to say. Step 2: Pick the best forums and join them The forum should have a good number of members, and should be fairly active. Poke around to see when some of the last postings were made; if there were a lot in the last day or so, this is a fairly active forum and you should consider joining. Search Engines love sites where content changes quite often. Before joining, make sure the forum allows you to set up a signature. Look at some of the posts: are there signatures at the bottom of other people's posts? If not, move on to another forum. Without the ability to create a signature, you will have no place to put your links. When you find a forum that meets the criteria, follow the steps to register and confirm your membership. If you find just three or four forums that's plenty to start with. Step 3: Set up your signature Forums use a special kind of code to allow members to format their posts. It's called BBCode and it's quite simple to use once you get the hang of it. Copy the example below and change the URL to your URL and the text to some catchy keyword-rich text. Paste the code into your signature box and save it. Link to your website or blog with code similar to this: Learn all about [URL=http://www.jazzmuscicblog.com/]Jazz Music[/URL] at my blog. There are many other things you can do with BBcode such as changing the fonts, bolding the text, changing the text color and so on. I won't go into them here. Most forums will usually have a link to a BBCode help page to assist you if you wish to be more creative. Personally, I like to keep my signature as simple as possible. Less is more. If you make your signature look like you are marketing something, people will treat you like a spammer. You don't have to use up all available lines in your signature. Make it short, sweet and to the point. If you post great content and people are interested, they will click on your link. Step 4: Participate Be sure to have good content in your posts. A post should say something more than "Great post, I agree". You need good relevant keyword-rich content. Every post you make will give you a backlink to your site. The higher the quality of your post, the more powerful your backlink will be. If you simply participate in the forum and try to be friendly and helpful, chances are your content will take care of itself. That's it. Have fun. And remember, you can change your signature any time you want. Try changing the text a bit from time to time to find out what generates the most clicks through to your site. ------------------- Business Opportunity Leads Tips - Using Safelists Continuing with my ongoing series about free online lead generation techniques, today we will discuss safelists. A safelist is somewhat like a traffic exchange. You sign up and agree to read the emails sent by other members of the safelist. By doing so, you build up credits to send your own promotional emails to the members of the list. This is another way to get your message out. Marketing with safelists can be a total waste of time if you do not do it correctly. And you must be prepared to set aside some time each day to wade through the hundreds of emails you will receive. Before you start using safelist marketing, here are 3 tips to help you get started correctly: 1. Set up a separate email account with Gmail only for your safelists. Use that email account to receive messages from other marketers. Gmail is the best option here, as it does not do anything with spam other than send it to your spam folder. Most of the messages coming from the safelists will most likely get flagged as spam. Other services such as Hotmail and Yahoo filter spam and do not deliver it all. 2. Spend time reading emails. Join credit-based safelists that reward you for opening your mail. Read the messages to earn credits and in turn create opportunities for your email to be read. The more credits you collect, the more messages you can send. Much like traffic exchanges, and other forms of internet marketing, marketing with safelists is a numbers game. With credit based safelists, even an average ad with an average title will get seen because your audience is trying to create credits. This is good for you as long as you have plenty of credits built up. With most safelists, you can buy credits, or you can spend your time and earn them reading emails if you are working with a credit based stateliest. Pay attention to the emails that you read, and make note of any ideas they generate for good titles and content. Using this approach will enable you to get the most out of your safelist marketing efforts. Read More... Traffic Generation Techniques: Using Traffic Exchanges You have probably heard of, or have used, one or more traffic exchanges. Properly used, Traffic Exchanges can be another source of free traffic to your website, but you have to use them correctly. Here are a few tips. The concept is simple. In exchange for you spending some time (usually 15 to 20 seconds) viewing someone else's promotional page, your page gets displayed to someone else who is using the traffic exchange. Your Promotional Page Keep in mind that people are seeing your page for only 20 seconds or less. That is barely enough time to read what's on the page. This time will be shortened if your page contains a lot of graphics or other things that make it slow to load. Also, if the page needs to be scrolled, your viewers will probably never do that. For these reasons, you should never just insert an affiliate page or a long sales letter. Your page should be short and to the point, load quickly, and should be designed to fit within an 800 by 600 pixel screen, as this is the smallest screen that people can use. Use a Traffic Exchange page as a lead capture page. Your page should contain a form to collect at least an email address for your autoresponder system. When I design my pages, I always add 2 links to the page: Open This Page In A New Window, and Add To Favorites. Many times when surfing I have come across something that piqued my interest, and I often want to save that page in my favorites or open it in a new browser window so I can view it later. Many traffic exchanges do not provide these capabilities, so I provide them for the people who view my pages. The code to open the page in a new window is very straightforward: <A HREF="YOURURL" TARGET="_blank">Open In New Window</A> where YOURURL is the full URL to your traffic exchange page. The Add to Favorites code is a bit more complex and usually involves adding some Javascript to the page. Do a Google Search for "Add to Favorites" and you will find some solutions. Always make sure to consult your traffic exchange terms of service for what kinds of pages you can promote. Some do not allow pages with audio. Some do not allow page rotators. Many allow you to promote more than one page. Using the Traffic Exchange Now that you have set up your promotional page, it's time to start using your traffic exchanges. It is a good idea to join more than one traffic exchange. To save time and effort, when surfing, use a tabbed browser like Crazy Browser or FireFox. You can set it up to load multiple traffic exchanges, one on each tab, and then rotate through the tabs to surf multiple exchanges. Before you start using a traffic exchange, make sure your computer is well protected from viruses and malware. Unfortunately there are many unscrupulous people who use traffic exchanges to spread viruses and other nasty things through traffic exchanges. Most of the traffic exchanges have protection in place to catch this, but there is always someone who managed to slip through the protection. It is best to be safe. If you really want to be safe when using traffic exchanges, use a Sandbox. Sandboxing is a way of protecting your PC by corralling off potentially dangerous applications such as your browser from the rest of your PC. Sandboxing your browser means that your browser effectively runs in a virtual PC within your PC. Anything nasty that happens in this sandbox cannot affect your real PC. And when you close the Sandbox, anything that was placed on your virtual PC is gone. You can find more information and suggested free Sandbox software here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/safe-surfing.php Discipline Discipline is very important when using traffic exchanges. Set yourself a daily goal of surfing a certain number of total pages across all the traffic exchanges, or set aside a certain amount of time to surf. Resist the temptation to respond to the promotional pages that come across the screen. Your focus is to generate hits, nothing more. Most traffic exchanges will allow you to purchase hits so you don't have to spend time surfing. If you have the budget, I recommend this. Surfing can get very boring after a while, and you really have to discipline yourself to do it every day. If you are not using a sandbox, then when you are done surfing for the day, clean out your internet cache and reboot your computer. This will help to clean out a lot of the clutter that is left on your computer from using traffic exchanges. Keeping Track It is very important to track whether or not your promotional pages are actually being displayed, especially if you are paying for hits. So I recommend adding a tracking code to each page. You can set up free tracking accounts at Veretracking ( http://brincom.veretracking.com/ ), or at Google Analytics ( http://www.google.com/analytics/ ) Once you start joining more than one traffic exchange, it is a good idea to set up a text file where you track all the details of each exchange: Your login URL, your surfing URL, a short note of what kinds of pages are allowed, and the URLs of the page or pages you are promoting in that exchange. Whenever you design a new page and want to test it, this information will be invaluable. In my experience, you will get the best results if you surf 5 or less exchanges at the same time. Any more than this and sometimes your web browser may become bogged down or even crash. I have joined 30 traffic exchanges, and I then assigned 5 of those to each day of the week and Saturday. Then I surf those 5. Occasionally, if one of the exchanges of the day is not working, I'll add one from another day. Over time I build up a lot of hits across all the exchanges. You will find over time that many traffic exchanges will go out of business or just not deliver the hits you are looking for. That's fine - just drop that one and go looking for a new one. There are plenty out there! Properly used, traffic exchanges can be a good source of leads. Use them wisely, and you will be rewarded. ------------------- Your work from home business will only be successful if you have traffic coming to your business website. Traffic generation is the most important part of your online business promotion efforts. Without traffic, your business is dead in the water. Here are two free and easy ways to get traffic to your website: Blogging You probably already have a blog or have at least have heard of blogging. If not, I urge you to learn about blogging and set one up. Do you know how important it is to develop an informative blog that people are going to follow? A successful blog should be updated daily and should present only quality information. No pitching of deals here. You want to present solutions to problems, and talk about the benefits of your services and how you can solve those problems. To keep people coming back to your blog, offer free stuff that is related to your business. It could be a free e-book or report that you have written, or a free template that will be beneficial to the people that are reading your blog. Search engines love blogs and will crawl them more and more often as more content is added. Research has shown that search engines will start to pay more attention to blogs once there are more than 100 posts, so it is important to add new content. Daily is best. Two of the more popular blogging sites are Blogger.com, which is very user friendly, and Wordpress.com, which is a little more advanced. Both of these are free to use. Forums are another free way to get traffic. Here your approach has to be a little more subtle. Do a quick search in Google and find a few active forums that are related to your business topic. Sign up for the forum and then read through a few of the posts to get a feel for the way that things are done. Find out what people are talking about. Find out what questions they're asking. Once you get familiar with how the forum operates then simply start posting. One important point here: do not spam the forum. Do not just start posting all about your business and products with a bunch of links to your website. This will get you promptly removed from the forum. Just post relevant information that will help solve some of the problems that the people on the forum are talking about. Just make sure that each time you post it has value to it and you'll never be accused of spam. What you are really doing with these methods is branding yourself on the internet. You are building up your reputation. As you produce more quality content and become known as an expert in your chosen niche who is willing to help others, people will actively seek out your posts and comments to see what you have to say next. They will click on the links in your signature or About Me page to see what else you are offering. Both of these methods of traffic generation are free and easy, and have the added advantage of generating targeted traffic. So there you have it, two free ways that you can drive traffic to your Website. There are many other methods of traffic generation, but these two are simple and you can start using them right away. ------------------- Lead generation is absolutely necessary to run a profitable business. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small work from home business operation, you need people who are interested in what you have to offer if your business is to be viable and profitable. Word of mouth is fine, but getting started in a small business, or growing an already existing operation, requires more proactive steps. One common approach is to purchase leads. On the surface, this seems like a good approach. In the vast majority of cases, you will simply lose your money doing this, especially if you buy generic leads or those who've shown only a marginal interest in your business. One of the worst strategies is to purchase a list of email addresses for generic leads. These have usually been sold to multiple users. If you do this, don't just start sending the marketing messages. You must send am introductory email that asks them to opt in to your autoresponder series only. After all, these people don't know you. If they start receiving marketing messages out of the blue, you will end up with a lot of abusive replies and maybe even some spam complaints. A safer, and more profitable approach, is to develop an automatic lead generation system that is either free or else costs very little to set up and maintain. In particular, you require the exact steps that will put your lead generation on auto-pilot - techniques that come with step-by-step instructions. If your business requires phone numbers, this can be taken into account when you set up your free lead generation system. Design it so that your leads are not only pre-qualified but you are able to obtain telephone numbers at this time. Postal leads (snail mail) are another solution, but these are also risky, as well as being expensive. As with generic email leads, don't just send a full package and hope for the best. First, send a post card with a reply coupon to find out who is interested. This way you won't incur costs on people who simply aren't interested or who may have already joined your program. It isn't easy to even recover costs with postcards. It isn't all just doom and gloom, though. You still need leads and there are methods which enable you to set up an automatic lead generation system, put them into an autoresponder for a series of emails, and send them a postcard later. One of the best systems I have come across for doing this is the Veretekk Lead Generation system. More details are available at this site: The secret is to pre-qualify. The essential ingredient in building a lead generation system is to be sure you pre-qualify them for your offer. Fortunately, there are free and low-cost methods for doing this. Some of them will be mentioned briefly here. You should follow-up with a fuller, in-depth study of each. Method 1. Viral List Builders: Techniques that encourage users to pass the product onto others, such as ebooks, jokes, cartoons, pictures, and important information. Method 2. Ad Co-Op Publishing: Co-operative ventures with others who agree to place your advertising on their web pages in exchange for you doing the same with their ads. Method 3: Forum Marketing. There are thousands of forums covering just about every topic. These provide opportunities to become known and to introduce readers to your informal advertising through your forum signature. Method 4. Article Marketing: Articles are valuable as sources of content and information, as well as providing back links to your web site and pages. Method 5. Special Bonuses: There are many ways incentives can be used to persuade prospects to join your email list and to convert visitors to buyers. Method 6. Reverse Marketing: Join every offer you can find that is related to your market and contact the person making that offer. They have already demonstrated an interest in your particular niche and are likely to require more quality information. Method 7. Joint Ventures: Contact others who have shown a similar interest and invite them to joint venture with you. They provide leads and you just close the sales, offering a discount to their list. Method 8. Buy Customers: Instead of buying or generating leads, there are certain businesses for which you can buy customers. This shortcuts a lot of the work necessary to create a viable and profitable work from home business. Business Opportunity Lead Generation can be a costly and time-consuming process unless you have the right tools and the right training. But it is possible to put in place a low-cost automated system that generates pre-qualified leads with whom you can develop a relationship. Do further research in any of the areas I have touched on in this article and you will no doubt find something that fits your business. ------------------- Business Opportunity Lead Generation Techniques - an Overview What is Lead Generation? According to Wikipedia, lead generation (commonly abbreviated as lead-gen) is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business' products or services. Often lead generation is associated with marketing activity targeted at generating sales opportunities for a company's sales force. Therefore a lead is correctly described as information regarding or provided by a consumer who may be interested in making a purchase. Generation is one of a myriad of activities that may produce that information and perceived interest. Every conceivable business participates in some form of lead generation. After all, businesses must make sales to stay in business, so they are always looking for leads that they can turn into customers. Lead generation is a very broad subject. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the various forms of business opportunity lead generation that are available on the internet: 1. Email marketing, e-zines, newsletters (1) Advertising in e-zines or newsletters can be a good method for acquiring targeted leads. You should subscribe to various e-zines to verify that the readers would be interested in your offer. Then select those e-zines you feel are targeted to your niche and place a solo ad, a sponsored ad or a classified ad. Usually the solo ad is more expensive, since this type of ad gets a full page or a separate mailing, whereas the sponsored ad is about a quarter page and the classified ad is only a few lines. Your best bet is with the solo ad. Costs can vary widely among e-zines. The total circulation of the e-zine guides the price of these e-zine ads. The larger the e-zine circulation, the higher the price per ad. (2) Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. SEO is an art as much as a science, and much work and testing has to go into improving website results. The key here is consistency - producing lots of relevant content, on a regular basis, which subtly promotes the main website. (3) The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes as distinct terms. When used as distinct terms, PPC shows payment based on click-through, while CPC shows measurement of cost on a per-click basis for contracts not based on click-through. In a PPC agreement, the advertiser only pays for qualifying clicks to the destination website based on a pre-arranged per-click rate. Popular PPC advertising options include per-click advertising networks, Google's AdWords or Yahoo's Search Marketing, and affiliate programs. To utilize PPC. you write a short, three or four-line ads to be displayed by the search engine, that contain the keywords on which you have bid money. Each time one of the ads is "clicked on" by a viewer; you must pay your bid amount to the search engine. If you manage to convert enough of your visitors into sales, your PPC campaign will be profitable. It is very important to track your income and expenses and the ROI for your ads when utilizing PPC. You can lose a lot of money very quickly if you are not very careful. Pay-per-action is the action defined in a cost-per-action agreement that relates directly to some type of conversion. A sale being made or a registration of some sort is the most common type of action. In a pay-per-lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads generated at their destination website. No payment is made for visitors who do not sign up. Pay-per-impression is a typical referral link/banner ad arrangement where the website wanting to purchase advertising space pays the host's website for each time it displays the ad. Typically, prices are set per 1000 exposures and software is added to the hosting web server to track the number of impressions displayed. (4) Free Classified and Free For All advertising is not really recommended. No-one really looks at these sites any more. The main use of such services now is to provide backlinks to the site you are promoting. (5) Buying leads from any of the various lead generation companies out there can be very costly, both in terms of time and money. You will normally find that when you call such leads, they have already heard from many other entrepreneurs pitching them all sorts of deals, and they will insult you and hang up. You'll be fortunate to get 1 or 2 out of every 100 leads who may be interested. Unless you're a crack telemarketer who enjoys this sort of thing, you will soon give up in disgust. (6) There is one type of lead purchase that has recently seen some success: Co-Registration leads. Co-Registration occurs when someone registers for one thing (for instance, a membership or a magazine subscription) and then is offered more information on a related topic (such as making money from home). In another case, they might be visiting a website targeted to entrepreneurs and a pop-up asks if they would like related free information by email. Those who sign on are very good targeted leads as they have opted in to receive more information. Once you have your leads opt-in to your own list, now you can pamper them, shower them with gifts and take extra good care of them because they are now your future. You must gain their trust and once you have that, you have to live up to that trust by being honest and above board with them at all time. They will then buy from you again and again. (7) The best way to generate leads is to learn how to generate your own targeted leads. The best way to do that is to grab yourself a Gold Veretekk system, which will provide you with all the tools and training you will ever need to dominate the search engines for your chosen keyword categories, and also to generate leads who are already familiar with your name, are expecting your call, and are interested in what you have to offer. I hope this overview of Business Opportunity Lead Generation Techniques has been useful. For more information on any of these strategies, you can contact me. I have tried them all. My contact information is at the end of this article. And if Business Opportunity Lead Generation seems like a lot of work, you're right! But there is a way to shortcut the process. Drop by my website at for more details. ------------------- In this series of articles, I am reviewing 2 similar free business opportunity lead generation tools which I have used: the First Family Classifieds portal (a component of the Veretekk business opportunity lead generation System) and the Isell Classifieds Script from Becanada. In my last article, I reviewed the facilities within each tool that are available to help you promote these business opportunity lead generation tools on the internet. In this article, let's talk about results. How do these tools compare in terms of delivering leads? How good are the leads that are delivered? What opportunities are there to develop these leads into business partners or paying customers? First, leads quantity: As far as I can determine, both of these business opportunity lead generation tools have delivered about the same number of leads in the time I have been testing them. I say "as far as I can determine", because it is difficult to measure how many leads are generated by the Isell script - the contact details are stored on a category basis and disappear once the ad has expired. They are not stored in a central location. With First Family Classifieds, on the other hand, the ads never expire, and the contact information for the people who post ads are stored in my Veretekk leads database and are always available, Very simple to track the number of leads that are generated. What about leads quality? Here again, First Family Classifieds is much better. The nature of the Isell script is such that the vast majority of the postings come from automated ad blasting services. Yes, the ads have to be confirmed, but I have found that these types of leads are generally not responsive to any reply emails that they get, since they are probably getting thousands of emails and are just deleting them. First Family is all about a person actually submitting an ad themselves. In that situation they are much more likely to respond to email marketing. I have never gotten any responses or any clicks on the 'email ads' that are included in the emails sent from the Isell script. As there is no way to easily incorporate an autoresponder with Isell, this is the only contact I ever have with them. I have never been contacted by anyone using my Isell sites. First Family Classifieds is very different: the confirmation email from the ad posting allows the people posting the ads to opt in to my Veretekk email list, and the autoresponder takes over from there. I also have the ability to send a newsletter once week to all the leads generated by all my Veretekk portals. Sometimes people have questions - they can email me right from the First Family Classifieds interface and I will respond. This allows me to start developing a relationship with these leads (relationship marketing), which often turns into something profitable for both of us. As for developing a relationship with these leads, again First Family Classifieds is the clear winner. If someone is interested in using First Family Classifieds as a business opportunity lead generation portal, they sign up for a Veretekk system from the portal. Now I have a legitimate reason to contact them and develop a deeper relationship as I help them get going, learn a bit about their business and see if my business can be of any assistance to them. And, if they decide to upgrade to the full Veretekk system, I will get paid an affiliate commission on the monthly membership fee. With Isell, there is an affiliate link at the bottom of the page through which a lead can download the script. That's it. If they decide to upgrade to one of the paid versions, I will get a one-time commission. All help with setting up the script is done through Becanada, so I don't have the chance to develop a relationship with these leads. So there you have it, my review of 2 business opportunity lead generation tools. As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of the First Family Classifieds portal as a business opportunity lead generation tool. In fact, I am an even bigger fan of the Veretekk business opportunity lead generation system, which provides me with 23 different business opportunity lead generation tools like this, and an email system which ties it all together. I hope this series has been useful for you when deciding on business opportunity lead generation tools for your business. ------------------- In this series of articles, I am comparing two similar business opportunity lead generation tools which I have used: the First Family Classifieds portal from the Veretekk Lead Generation system, and the Isell Classifieds Lead Generation script from Becanada. In my previous article, I gave a general overview of each business opportunity lead generation tool. In this article we will discuss the built-in capabilities that are provided within each system to help you to promote the system on the internet to start generating leads for your business. First Family Classifieds Business Opportunity Lead Generation Portal In order to use First Family Classifieds as a business opportunity lead generation portal, you must first sign up for a free Veretekk Lead Generation system. After 7 days, you upgrade to the Gold system and then you have the capability to configure the portal to your liking. Once inside the Veretekk Gold back office, you have the following tools to help you to promote your First Family Classifieds Lead Generation Portal: 1) You can set the Title, Description and Meta Tags to whatever you wish, allowing you to target selected keyword categories in the search engines. 2) You have the capability to add a 'displayed text' section. This is used to provide keyword-rich text on the page, allowing you to further enhance your portal for the search engines. 3) You have the capability of adding any RSS feed to the portal, so that the contents will change over time. Again very important for the search engine robots. 4) The portal has 5 slots into which you can put links to other websites. 5) A flash ad is provided which you can use as part of any promotional page, such as a traffic exchange page or a squeeze page. 6) The portal has an 'action URL' so that you can register your classified ads system with any network that accepts new classified ad sites. This will get your portal into lists that get lots of automated entries from ad blasters. 7) You are provided with a form code which you can place on any promotional page such as a squeeze page, so that people can submit ads right from the page that you have created. 8) You can select any of a number of pre-written autoresponder messages which will go out to people who post ads. You can also create your own autoresponder messages. 9) You have access to The Hammer - Veretekk's proprietary ad blasting service which you can use to blast information about your portal out to over 2 Billion places on the internet. This is the same technology which drives the Veretekk Leadsomatic Ad Blaster service, but it costs you nothing to use it to promote your First Family Classifieds portal. 10) You are provided with a full-featured tracking service, called Veretracking, which allows you to see how well your various promotional efforts for the portal are doing. As you can see, the possibilities for promotion here are almost endless. And don't forget that free training is available from Veretekk on how to do any of these! I especially like the ability to target specific keyword categories in the search engines. That way, if you are searching for specific kinds of leads, you can get them. Isell Classifieds Lead Generation Portal The possibilities for promoting the free Isell Classifieds Lead Generation Portal a quite limited, or will require much more effort and some programming expertise: 1) Unless you know something about CGI programming, you do not have the capability to set Title, Description or Meta Tags. 2) There is limited capability to add extra text to the page, and the admin interface is quite basic. 3) There is no way to add an RSS feed to the page, unless you know something about CGI programming. 4) There is the capability to add 2 links to the page. 5) If you want to use a Flash Ad, you will need to create one yourself. 6) There is no action URL provided. You have the capability to register your classifieds site with the global network of existing Isell classified sites so that you will get automatic postings from that network. 7) There is no form code which you could place on another site to enable people to post ads. The best you can do is to provide a link to the classifieds page. 8) There is no way to associate an autoresponder with ad postings. You are provided with 3 types of emails that go out that you can customize: an email that confirms placement of the ad, an email that goes out when the ad expires, and an email that goes out if someone chooses to use the "Send This Ad to a Friend" function. Each of these can be customized with an 'ad' at the top and the bottom of the email. If you want to do anything else, you would need to download the emails from the classifieds database that is kept by the Isell script and |