Monday, August 01, 2005

New Article I Wrote Today

Ideas on Promoting Your Home Business Opportunity
By Stefani Partin

Have you got yourself into a home business opportunity but don’tknow where to begin to generate yourself some leads? That happensamong many of us that join a home business opportunity, you arenot alone. Many will join and give up before really putting any effortinto the business. Those who are determined will put forth effort and succeed with effort.

When you become a home based business owner, you will want to getthe word out. First off,tell the people in your warm market, your friendsand family and maybe even co-workers. Don’t stop there. Create yourself some business cards on your computer or even order some online. Vistaprinto ffers 250 professional cards FREE of charge, you just pay the small shipping and handling fee. I have found these FREE cards very useful. What I would do is order some professional cards to hand out to those you
come in contact with. Then if you can, create a bunch on your computer that you will use as drop cards. Drop cards are business cards that you leave everywhere you go. Remember, nobody will visit your site if they can’t find you. The more cards you get out to the public, the better chance of getting someone interested in what you have to offer.

You might be thinking that you don’t know anyone to give business cards too, well if you think that you are wrong. Include a card in everything you send out in the mail. If you dine out, leave one with your tip. Always keep a stack in your car as you just never know when you will need one. There are many places you can leave cards, the sky is the limit.

Drive your car a lot? Why not use your vehicle as a method of advertising. I did this last year by buying two magnets for each side of my vehicle’s door. The magnets have a few bright colors on them, therefore catching attention. Be sure you magnet says something catchy and make sure you have ways of contact on your magnet. Be sure to include a phone number and your website link if you have one. I got mine online and very affordable at www.jalapenodesigns.com.

Another great method in generating leads is by online advertising. You got to do your research first before jumping into this one. You will find you can place ads on all sorts of websites and online newsletters. My preference would be placing ads in newsletters. Be sure that the ad is placed in your “niche” market. Don’t place an ad on a site or newsletter that is not similar to your companies market. Also, when placing ads on websites, be sure to ask the webmaster what their unique daily or monthly visitors is, not the hits. Most people, not familiar to webstats will look for the hits which is not an accurate number of the visitors to a website. Remember to do your research first, there is LOTS of places online that you can WASTE your hard earned money.

One of my favorite ways on generating visitors to my sites is through online message forums and discussion groups. There are millions of forums online. The forums range from every kind of topic you can think of. Find a message forum on a topic you can relate to and become an expert in that topic. Most forums will let you put a signature line at the end of your post. You will be surprised the amount of visitors that will come to your site coming from a signature line in a post. I have been very successful with this method and have tracked my website stats to verify it. It won’t bring in millions of visitors, but it’s better then nothing.

And lastly, don’t forget your signature line of your emails. If you send emails all the time and don’t have a signature file that goes out with each email, you are losing out on lots of free advertising opportunities. If you are the type of person that receives lots of say joke emails and forwards them, you are missing out on even more advertising. You just never know who is going to see an email, see your link and click it. Don’t miss out on any free advertising you can get. Every bit of effort counts.

Don’t give up in the beginning like most do. If you believe in your company, stick it out. There are always ups and downs and any real business takes work and effort to build it. Find something you have a passion for and you will fly upwards.

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Stefani owns MommyEnterprises.com as well as a few other
websites that focus on helping moms work from home. Subscribe
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