Honest News From the Home Business World

This is a simple idea, but bottom-line, every business needs customers to survive. It does not matter if you are a traditional "brick and mortar" business, or an online home business. Without the customers, you have no business.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is "how do you plan to get customers?" Where are the customers coming from? I'll give you a hint... Traditionally, in the Network Marketing/MLM community, Those customers are not coming from the company you are affiliated with. You are going to have to market your business to gain those customers, and you are going to be competing with the 100's or 1000's of other business affiliates that are with the same company.

Now before we go on, I feel the need to define what business marketing is, so that there is no confusion. Business marketing is simply a means of attracting customers and keeping them.

Business marketing is vital to the success of your online business, even more so than if you started your own "brick and mortar" business. For example:

When I was in high school I worked at a Bakery across the street from my school. It was a small bakery, that had been around since the 1920's. But, they did very little advertising. They had their number and address in the phone book, and had a sign out front on the busy street corner, but that was it. They relied solely on the local community, and local traffic. That bakery was a very profitable business. Now, they could do that because they had quality customer service and a good product that left the customer completely satisfied.

However, with an online business, it will be a lot harder to get recognized. The internet is a monster. It is absolutely huge! You cannot just put up a sign, and hope for some traffic. You need to put yourself into a position where your target market can find you because if they cannot find you, then you have no business.

With an online business, the question is not "should I market my business?" This is a given. The question you should ask yourself is "how am I going to market my business?"

You could join a Multi Level Marketing (MLM) company and follow the "steps-to-success" business model that they have laid out for all their business affiliates. Here is a little taste of their marketing methods.

Free marketing methods from your "helpful" MLM company:

• Make a "names-list".
a.k.a: Write down the names of everyone you know, and come into contact with in your life and bother the crap out of them!

• Tap into your warm-circle.
Now this sounds cute, but what this means is bother your family and friends!

• The 3-foot rule.
a.k.a. Accoust every innocent, unsuspecting person that comes within 3 feet of you and bother the crap out of them about an opportunity that they have expressed no interest in. This is the free marketing method that has given everyone a distaste for the MLM/Network Marketing industry.

If you have not noticed, the free marketing methods are very limited. In fact, it is limited to only the people you know and come into contact with on a daily basis. Now, unless you spend all day, everyday outside of your home, which defeats the purpose of a home-based business, you will not do very well using these methods.

But, never fear, if these marketing methods do not help you, then these companies have more "tricks" up there sleeve. You can move out of the realm of free marketing into the realm of paid advertising!

Now, there are some very good, and legitimate suggestions to market your business in this realm. The problem is most people do not want to spend any money with these methods until they have made money using the free methods. But, that could take you a while. Despite my sarcastic writing about those methods above, it really does take a lot of effort to be successful with them.

The biggest "paid-method" of marketing that these companies put a lot of emphasis on is the method of buying leads. This just puts a bad taste in my mouth because this method indirectly promotes SPAM. Basically, you buy generic "leads" (people who have expressed some interest in working from home, like my friend mentioned above) from these lead generation sites and they provide you with a name, email address, possibly a number. It all depends on how much you pay as to how much information you receive for a lead.

But, like I said before, this method encourages business affiliates to SPAM the Inbox's of these people, who have expressed interest in possible earning money from home, but have not expressed any interest in your business opportunity. So, in a sense, you are becoming everything everyone hates about this industry by buying leads, and you may not even know it! If you have ever bought leads, then you may have noticed how a lot of these "leads" are not interested, do not know why you are calling, or can even be very hostile toward you. The hostility stems from these lead generation companies practicing the unethical, and despicable practice of selling the same lead 100's and 100's of times over!

However, some people can gain decent success with this paid method, but it will cost you a lot of time and money to get even one interested person to come into your business opportunity. Other paid methods that these MLM companies endorse are not bad at all, but they will cost you. Among which include things like,

• Radio Ads,


• Newspaper Ads,


• Magazine Ads,


• or even Television Ads.

These methods do work! Big businesses spend millions of dollars a year on these types of marketing methods to be seen and noticed by their target market. However, these methods can be costly.

I want people to realize that the marketing methods I have mentioned above have produced great results for some people, and they might even do well for you. However, there is a better alternative to these methods. It has come to be known as Attraction Marketing, or Social Network Marketing.

All this means is that you market, or attract customers/prospects to, your business opportunity and products on social sites. The best part about this type of marketing is that for the most part, they are FREE to use. They can be broken up into different types of sites, such as,

• content sharing sites, like Squidoo


• blogging sites, like Google's Blogger


• Social Bookmarking sites, like Digg


• Article Writing sites, like IdeaMarketers.com, or ArticleMarketer.com


• Social Networking Sites, like Zenzuu, Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube


• Building a Website with webhosts, like Google Sites, or SBI!

There are so many different ways to market online, but the key is to start carving out your piece of "online real-estate" now! This is how your customers/prospects are going to find you.

For starters, join one social networking site, like Zenzuu, and make it a goal to add 10 new friends a week. Later on, join all the social networking sites, Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube and do the same thing. Make it a goal to get 10 new friends every week from every site.

But, start with Zenzuu first because that is the only social networking site that pays out 80% of their advertising revenue to their FREE members, and allows you to promote your business opportunity. The others do not.

Then, start writing content about your business, or products. You can start out with any type whether it be blogging, articles, content sharing, it makes no difference. Eventually, you will want to expand to all the different types of marketing options that are available to you, but for now start slow, and build your business right. But, try writing one to two articles every week. This might sound like a lot, but your goal would be to work up to writing at least one article a day!

Don't get overwhelmed!

However, this is what you need to be doing to create the success you want for your business. Now do you think selling is easy? That anyone can do this with the "jump-right-in" attitude?

Well, it is true that anyone can do this, but you need to be willing to put in the work required to be successful. If not, then your business will become just another check-mark adding to the pathetic failure rate that plagues this industry!

For more helpful tips and ideas about starting a successful home business, I suggest reading these two lenses below from a fellow squid!

- Legitimate Internet Marketing Strategies
- Writing For Fun And Profit

Are you still interested in working from home, or building wealth online? But, you just don't think you can put in the work required to do it, or you don't want to put in the work? No worries... There is still a solution for you.

Find out how the simple idea of buying customers will help you build wealth online by clicking on the "big arrow" link below. Warning!!! This is not a "get-rich-quick" scheme. It is more of a "get-rich-slow" business model. This business model will show you how you can buy paying customers that over time will build you great wealth.

It will take time to do it, but what do you expect for doing absolutely nothing other than buying customers? Really?