Home Based Web Business – A Network Marketing Affair


If you have been in the eCommerce market for at least 6 months, you are already receiving offers from many companies promoting their products/services to you, and this will continue as businesses offer you the opportunity to become a distributor of those products and/or services. While many of these businesses offer the opportunity free of charge, others may require you to pay a fee similar to that of a franchise, based on their willingness to set up a website with your name on it and provide instructions on how to make it a success.

Regardless of the motives behind their willingness to share knowledge, techniques and strategies, you’re still able to share in the wealth of their business operations. Where many people make the mistake, is in getting involved with a home-based Web business and then believing – mistakenly – that just by filling out the online forms and paying the required fees, they will immediately start on a money-making journey to riches, wealth and the realization of their dreams.

This could not be farther from the reality of what actually happens after getting involved with a home-based web business. Failure to think long enough about how you came to be involved in this type of business, and the fact that someone was marketing this plan to you, can often lead to failure to grow your new business by marketing it to others; as many “others” as you possibly can during the early years of the new venture.

So the time to relax is not in the beginning of your new business but after you put in the required time (10 to 18 hour days and 7 day weeks, for as long as it takes) to make your business a success. The major portion of your time, work and and money will be spent – or should be spent – promoting and advertising your new business.

There are numerous ways to promote your home-based Web business, such as old-fashion advertising, handing out business cards or even putting you web address on the side of your vehicle to be seen while you drive to the grocery store or around town. All that may be good to draw a half dozen people or so to your new business venture, but to help it really grow and ultimately succeed, it may be necessary to rely more on the network marketing strategy.

NAVAN Global, the REAL SEAL!

Oil millionaire J. Paul Getty is often quoted as saying, he would rather have one percent of the efforts of 100 people, than 100 percent of his own efforts; and that is the basis of network marketing. The Kirby vacuum cleaner company devised its own form of network marketing as far back as 1935 before the phrase was coined and the concept totally understood.

The KVC company knew that in order to sell their sweepers, a sit-down presentation was needed. They had a few dealers with whom they shared the profits of their sales and using their proven methods they taught others to sell the sweepers and each person who was brought in as a sales representative could also share in the profits off the efforts of others once s/he followed the proven success plan.

While a few people may make a lot of money in a short period of time with network marketing, most must grow their business slowly, because of the learning curve, as well as the marketing tests (or test marketing as the case may be) that must take place if your home-based Web business is to be a success. Test marketing is a time-consuming activity which cannot be rushed.

You owe it to your business and yourself (and family, if applicable) to devote the number of hours every day, week and month to learn all you need to know from and about the sponsoring company (if your business is network marketing or milti-level marketing in nature), and anything else you need to know about how to market the product or service you are selling.

Once you educate yourself, you can train others to be successful by teaching them to market the product or service and make money from their sales as well. The more people they have working under them, the more money they can make; And since you devoted valuable time, money and resources to train them, you will also make more money which you would deserve.

Driving Traffic To Your Website With Articles


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A Web marketplace made to order

Many people begin their road to their dream of Web wealth by putting up a website and trying to sell a product they created themselves. They may have written an e-book, recorded a CD of original songs, or published some great recipes accompanied by beautiful pictures of appetizing dishes.

Enormous volumes of hype have been published with the claim that the Web is an easy, if not mindless, way to create wealth. The Web is now a global advertising grid, and millions of people surf each day for things they would like to buy, learn about, or discover. They search for the proverbial needle in an electronic haystack that suits their fancy for the moment. And adding to this convenience is the reality that shopping online has become reasonably safe.

The first problem is, how will shoppers with their credit cards in hand and the urge to buy find your website? According to a Google blog post published July 25, 2008, there one trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the Web at one time! That was just over 3.5 years ago at the time of this writing, so that number is likely to be much higher today. So getting exposure for your little website that promotes recipes to prospective customers may take a little work.

Simple + informative = attractiveness

Search engines use complex algorithms (mathematical formulas) to determine if the content of a website matches its owner’s claims. Self-proclaimed experts who follow this route for exposure must research every day to ensure their success. The search engine companies themselves keep their algorithms secret to avoid unscrupulous marketers taking unfair advantage of the whole internet shopping and surfing experience.

So what is a recipe seller to do? Search engine experts can charge upwards of $25,000 to guarantee that your site might be the first to be found when someone enters a search. That’s a whole lot of appetizing recipes. Some very easy and free methods are available to drive traffic to your website. One of them is writing simple articles. You’re reading one such article right now, aren’t you?

 

Hundreds of “article directories” exist on the Web just for this purpose. The main and simplest thing people search for on the Web is information, because they want to know about something, and often a good place to find a snippet of information is in an article directory. Thousands of 500-1500 word articles have been written and published online, and people love to read them. If they are short and informative, they will become popular to read, and not too time consuming.

Start writing to attract visitors

Then once your website is up on the Web, write a brief, helpful article about your product. Target the style and content of your writing to suit your friends and customers, as well as yourself. The average newspaper is written for a grade 9 level reader, and tabloids are written for a grade 6 level or lower. Writing on the internet runs the whole gamut of education. Explain a problem that needs to be solved, and at the end provide a solution. Sales copy is more involved than this, but an article should be entertaining, or fit the parameters of a possible search.

The most important part of the article besides the content and the attention grabbing headline, is a live link to your website in the author’s box at the bottom. More often than not, the reader will click that link – if it is live – to see what other information might be available on the particular subject. This link must lead straight to your recipe website. A reader is less likely to copy and paste your website address into their browser if another similar article is listed in the directory.

Write a short paragraph stating your expertise with cooking and recipes, and invite the reader to visit your website. This will be your “author’s bio”. If someone does read the whole article, they are often curious about who wrote it, if it covers the subject they are interested in. Most article directories will accept html code in the author’s bio box.

Submit articles and traffic will come!

Search for the words “article directory”, and make a list of as many as you can. Most directories are free to read and submit your articles to. Registration is usually necessary, with your email as the username. Get another free email address to use specifically for article submissions to avoid any trouble with spam.

After you have submitted your article, it may take a few days for publication. Check back to the directory to see if your article is published and your link is working. Then do it all again. The articles will stay published forever, or as long as the directory exists. Over time, people will continue to read your article, and click back to your website. If you submit your article to 20 directories, and 40 people interested in recipes read it, that’s 800 more potential customers from one article. If you have the time to write 20 little articles and submit them to 40 directories, and 40 people read each one over time, well you can do the math.

Article submission is one of the easiest ways to direct some website traffic your way. Although not necessarily the quickest, it is guaranteed to get results at almost no cost. Give it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

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