Paid Or Free Advertising? Which Is Best To Build An Email List?

Paid or Free Advertising? Which is best to build an email list? – It’s up to you really and depends on whether you have a budget available to advertise.

Of course there are free forms of advertising everywhere you look online, but is it really effective? The first thing you need to do is to test every source you find. If you get some success you can keep on advertising at the same source, but be sure to track your clicks so that you can "weed out" the best ads and get rid of the ones that don't work so well.

It doesn't matter whether you pay for ads or use free ads, ultimately, to know what does or doesn't work, you need to track the ad source and which ad is working best for you. The most important thing is to make use of the best ads all of the time and then tweak the not so good ads and test again and again until they are working better.

When looking for free ads don't forget to look for ezines and newsletters. The main pitfall with all of these sources are that the free ads are found at the end of the page, whereas the paid sponsor ads (the cheaper option) and the top sponsor ads (the more expensive option) are found towards the top of the page giving more exposure to your ad. Before you go into the ezine ads, as with everything else, do your research and even sign up to a few to see the quality of the content. See if you can find reviews of the ezine or whether you can contact the author and get some questions to them about the readership typical "open" rates. This is useful because if you get a reply to your query, it's likely that it could be a good place to advertise because the owner has taken time to reply. If you don't get a reply then it's possible that the ezine or newsletter is not so good. This is more relevant when you are in a position to go for the paid ads. After all, you want to know you are spending your money wisely don't you?

By far the best type of paid ad is a solo ad. Why? Because YOU have control of the subject and the content directly. There are some great places to advertise, but again you need to do research and test and track your ads to find out the most effective.

The best advice I can give you if you can't afford the paid advertising is to do your research, test the free ad sites (but don't use FFA sites if you can help it), and whatever you earn from those sources keep a budget, no matter how small to get some paid advertising to help to build your list.

The advertising is one part and the testing is vital, but also your capture page will also require testing. Send ads to different capture pages to see which is the most effective for you, then the tests you have done while using the free ads will help when you use the paid ads.

Paid advertising is, in my experience, the best to get subscribers to your list quickly, but the free method does work even though it takes longer. You can make your own conclusions when you test and try each method.

To the future and the top

Barrie Evans

Useful Blog Marketing Tips For Your Home Business

Why use Blog Marketing for your home business?

These days blogs are a truly great tool to help to market your business. I will share some blog marketing tips with you that will help you to effectively promote your business and get leads by using this valuable resource.

Blog Marketing Tip 1 – Do Keyword Research…

One of the most vital areas needed to have a successful blog is to research the keywords relevant to your niche. Whether it’s a Network Marketing / MLM business or an affiliate product, you need to find a keyword or phrase that doesn’t have too much competition and yet has a good number of daily searches. Using a phrase of 3 or more words reduces the competition in many cases and therefore making it easier to rank in search engines. You can do this by using Google keyword tool or by means of software. One very good one that will enable you to do this effectively is Market Samurai. They offer a free version that will get you going and excellent training on how to use the product effectively. You can also go to a resource called Wordtracker to research this.

Once you have researched your keywords / phrases (you will need 3 good phrases to target initially – more as you gain more experience), you can begin to structure your content around those initial keywords. Your articles should be relevant to your niche and based around your main keywords to provide effective, basic search engine optimization (SEO) in order for your blog to be ranked and indexed by the search engines. Don’t overfill your articles with your keywords as this can be seen as spam by the search engines and will affect your sites’ rank.

Blog Marketing Tip 2 – Provide Valuable Content…

Another very important thing to remember is your readers. When a person visits your blog you need to engage their interest. They have come to your site for a reason, so your articles and general content should provide useful tips to help them with the problem they have come to find the solution to. This will build trust in you and they will return again and again. VALUE is the key to success – the more valuable your content, the more leads you are likely to get. Don’t be afraid to give away great tips and content because this builds your credibility and will enable you to get the visitor to give you their details so you can market to them through your email list.

Blog Marketing Tip 3 – Aim To Get The Visitor’s Details….

Now I know you are probably thinking “how do I do that?” It’s really pretty simple if you know about autoresponders. An autoresponder is an emailing program that enables you to set up follow up emails to a list of people who have filled in a form that is on your blog requesting more information about a service or product you have to offer. There are several autoresponder companies out there that provide low cost or free start up (Get Response, Aweber and Mail Chimp to name a few), so do some research to the best one for you. When you get into your autoresponder system you will be able to develop a contact form for your site there. This form can be placed into your blog’s sidebar in a prominent position at the top of the page.

Blog Marketing Tip 4 – Offer A Product To Help Your Visitor….

Whether you have a product you have developed or not, it is useful to have a paid product to help you in your marketing. While you are learning the skills of marketing your blog and finding out more and more about the internet and your new skill set, you can offer an affiliate product that you found valuable so you can “earn while you learn”. Not only do you provide extra value to your blog visitor, you can earn money to help you to fund advertising and educate yourself more to develop your own product that you can sell for 100% profit. This is called a funded proposal and is another useful way to build your email list further.

Make sure that the form you have inserted for your autoresponder has as headline that is visible and clear about the benefit of your product to your visitor to attract them to fill in their details.

These 4 tips are very basic, but necessary in blog marketing for your home business. Blogging is also a great way to get FREE leads for your business. This takes time and a lot of work, so think about the funded proposal and get a product that you can be an affiliate for or develop your own, so that you can earn a little money so that you can build a budget to advertise with.

If you have little or no budget, this method is one of the most effective ways of building your business online. As I said, it takes time and a lot of work! Don’t get caught up in the hype of FREE for FREE. Everything has a value and will cost you, whether in time or money, it doesn’t matter. As in every business, you only get out of it what you put in.

Good Luck

Barrie Evans

Home Business Online? - You Need To Know Basics Of SEO.

Although there are many people who can get to grips with the basics of SEO (search engine optimization) in their online business activities, many of them still don’t fully understand the full process. Should you not know the whole process, which is vital for you and your website to prevent problems for you later on, it’s also vital that you to learn the whole process in basic form so that you have covered this and then can learn the more advanced techniques.

So why must you learn the basics of SEO? Search Engine Optimization is the means by which your site will rank in the search engines. Using these techniques ensure that your site will get indexed and ranked. If you follow these few tips you should be able to get ranked and get some results you’re your effort.

Your Domain Name       

The right domain name is important. You really need to get one that is based around your product, or, if you are in the home based business arena, a domain that is or includes your name. This vital to your branding online. Use a trusted extension such as dot com if you want to be recognised worldwide or one that is relevant to your country if you need more local targeting, e.g .co.uk if you are in the United Kingdom. If based around a certain product try to include a keyword in the domain name as this can help with your basic SEO. A good domain name can in many cases keep you one step ahead.

Do Your Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most vital areas for you. It is important to learn what the best keywords are that are associated with your website. Once you grasp this, it will help you to get traffic to your site and make it easier for people to find your site.

AS soon as you have your keywords all sorted, you need to place them in your site description, page title and in your content. Your main keyword or phrase would need to be in the title and description, but make sure it’s within the first few words. This will add weight to your site and the relevance will be indicated to the search engines and help the ranking.

One thing you need to avoid is using keywords that are too general. Doing this usually means that the competition will be huge and the chance of your site being seen is minimal. Use longer phrases that are still searched for, but have less competition. There are tools available that can help you with this research. One of the best is Market Samurai, where there is a free version and lots of training videos at their support area to help you to master this.

Try to avoid overusing your keyword or phrase. This will be bad for your site and its credibility with the search engines. Spread several of your keywords around in your content, ensuring the main one is mentioned about 4 times on average in your article based on its length. The most important thing to the search engines these days is relevance, but overuse of the keyword may be considered as “spammy” so be careful.

Relevance of Content

Relevant and unique content is the best method. The way the search engines check up on your site nowadays is more based on uniqueness than ever before. (This of course is only if you keep any copies to a minimum. You could post an article to a few sites and these could be taken and used on other sites providing that they leave the links in. Don’t make 5 sites of your own that have duplicate content because the new rules suggest your rank will suffer.)

Your content should be relevant to your keyword or phrase and your product. The more relevant your content, the better rank you will get. The domain name, title and description of your sites pages will give the search engines the first clue, the relevance of the content on the page is the key to even better rank. Focus on the keyword usage and placement in order to get the best from your optimization.

Get Backlinks

One of the most, if not THE most important part of SEO is getting relevant backlinks.

You need to go out and generate valuable links to your site and use relevant keywords and key phrases as “anchortext”. Anchortext is simply the key phrase that has been made into a link to your site. For example, if your site is about dog training, and anchortext may be “how to train your dog”, which is made into a clickable link within the content by means of what is called “hypertext”. This link is shown as relevant by the text used to link to your site and adds more weight to the credibility and will improve the rank again.

There are several ways to get these backlinks. You can write articles and submit to various article directories such as Ezine Articles. You can use a free service such as the free traffic system where you are able to get 2 anchortext links in each article back to your site from each site you submit to and get accepted. Go to online forums focused on your niche and take some time to research them and then start to add to conversations by valuable comments. This will enable you to get in front of more people and your link will be noticed and you will get more targeted traffic.

Whatever you do with the article directories and forums, take time to make sure you follow the terms and conditions of linking and stick to them, or your account will likely be removed.

These basics of SEO are the essence of getting the best from your website. I hope you have found this useful.

Barrie Evans

The Importance Of Giving Value When Marketing Home Based Business.

How important is giving VALUE when marketing home based business?
In fact, the old saying “Give and you will receive” is more relevant nowadays than ever before. Why?......
In today’s society value is one of the most important elements in ANY business, but more so in the home business arena. With the dominance of social media and other methods that are now used to build relationships, it’s vital that you don’t get left behind in your business while others are taking big steps in their business by adopting the new techniques.
It’s not that long ago that marketer’s would contact their list of customers / prospects and just pitch for a sale and be successful in getting the sale. Yes, there was always a benefit and some value, but now people want to know what YOU personally have to offer them if they buy from you.
When building email lists, it’s more and more important to have some personal insight into what is happening in your day, building trust through the knowledge you are a real person. Then you move on to offering something that is deemed to be of benefit and valuable to the reader and then giving them a reason to act by clicking the link to your product or service. Free information helps to build this trust, but that has to have VALUE, or it will be ignored and your credibility will suffer. It’s possible to give away some of your BEST ideas and still make a profit, simply because of the value and the assurance to the potential customer that you are genuine and not just looking for the “quick buck”. Expectations from potential customers DEMANDS more value. Personal branding and offering valuable information for FREE is a major part of the sales process these days.
When using Social Media giving value is even more important. If you become somebody’s friend or follow a business page and you just go to promote your business or offer without adding to the conversation you will soon be ignored and even blocked from commenting. If, however, you find something of interest to you and provide a useful tip or add to the conversation in a practical way, you are offering value and you will be noticed and will get more people to follow you and therefore more leads.
Value builds relationships, email lists and therefore your business, so don’t get left behind.
Barrie Evans

Can you Generate Free Home Business Leads? Yes, But...

You need a system. And you need to be consistent in working that system.

To be able to generate free home business leads first you need a website. If you can get a domain name then get one in your own name if it’s available so you can brand YOURSELF. It would be beneficial install a blog, such as wordpress, so that you can write (or obtain) articles to post that are relevant to your business. Make certain that the articles add value to the reader and help to build that trust needed in order to get their details from a form you have on your site. You will also need a Capture Page to get these details. The capture page should offer a solution to the problems the visitor is experiencing by sending them a useful free product you know offers value, enabling them to join your email list.

Get an auto responder. To enable you to market your opportunity to your new list, you need an auto responder. There are many available, some free to use for an initial amount of subscribers (and some for reasonably low cost) until you get a large list and then the pricing kicks in or goes up. Do your research to find the best one for you.

Now you have 2-3 key elements you require to begin to build your “toolbox” to generate free leads.

What you now need is traffic to your website and capture page. If you don’t have funds available to invest in your education, you need to invest time to find good tips and advice to learn how to get this traffic. You can find ways to get your articles seen and get some “juice” that is good for the search engines. Two good sources are Posterous and Only Wire. You can use each of these for free. When you have written your article you can post the article to Posterous, making sure you include a link back to your website in an “anchor text”, which is the main keyword you are targeting in the article. Posterous will send your content to a few social media sites and blog platforms as long as you set up your account to do this. You can also post the same article to Only Wire, which then posts your content to several other social media sites. Make sure you do your keyword research properly. Take note of the competition and use longer key phrases so you have a chance of getting your article seen and ranking in the search engines. If you are working against millions you will not get seen unless you are a real expert or very lucky.

Join online forums and find those relevant to your particular niche. You can get links back to your website by including them in your signature. Make sure you follow the terms and conditions of the forum to achieve the best from your input. Remember; always give value to the conversation. Your reputation will grow with that.

Use social media. With hundreds of millions using social media, it’s likely you will find a lot of prospects there. If you are not already on it, get along to Facebook and create an account. Add some friends and see how the interaction works. Then you can get yourself a fan page, where you can promote your business to whoever you get to follow you. When you get a fan page, go to interact with other fan pages and it’s surprising how your followers can grow. One tip for you, don’t go onto another fan page and blatantly promote your business. Add to the conversation and give VALUE. People will be curious to know who you are and will follow you. Then you can promote to them because you have built up some rapport and trust.

Be warned, this could take you a long time. Yes, there are people who have been able to generate income quickly, but they have proved their consistency and level of effort to get there. Three hours a day minimum is what is required to get quicker results, but it is hard work and hard learning. The rewards are satisfying and it will get easier.

When you have earned some money, put some aside to invest in more education and marketing. Then your business will grow faster and you will make more money.

To the future.

Barrie Evans

For True Time Freedom - 4 Tips To Automate Your Home Business Efforts

Whether you are involved in MLM home business or internet marketing home based business, one thing we are always told by our peers is: "You need a system to succeed."

These days, from what I have learned, it’s fairly obvious that you not only require a ‘system’, you need an automated system in order to get the best from your home based business. An effective system will start the process of getting the lead and also begin the task of building the relationship. Do this right and this will lead to financial and time freedom for you.

Adopting these four tips properly WILL, in my experience, increase your earnings with ANY home or internet business opportunity.

1: Create a "capture" or 'squeeze" page.

Don’t know what this is? Have you ever been to a page that shows you a very special offer and filled in a form to get the information? If so, you have certainly seen a capture page and even been ‘captured’ by one.  A capture page is simply a page that is set up to give some brief information about a product or service, prompting the visitor to leave their details. More often than not, the page is constructed to get your interest and offer you a solution to whatever problem you wish to solve. Generally, the most effective capture pages touch on the prospects personal, business or financial needs compelling them to find out more by filling in their information, which is then sent to your own auto responder message system (more about this in part 2). When the prospect enters their information, you own their information for as long as they stay a subscriber and you can continue to follow up with them, building a relationship and trust by offering tips and free advice or even offer them a paid product you have developed or an an affiliate for.

Capture pages are an absolute necessity in order for you to effectively building your list in order to develop these relationships.

There are many products out there that help you to build capture pages, so go search for the best one for you.

The most successful home business owners and internet marketers have built up large lists of thousands over the years. Because they have developed good relationships over time, they can promote any new product, service or opportunity to their list first. This system helps you to gain a big head start in your business and if your products are trusted and sought after because people trust you to provide great value and training, your list will stay loyal to you.

Moving on….

2: Following up with prospects via email

This is the easiest, most recognizable and cheapest form of follow up. When the prospect fills in the information form on your capture page, you need to get this information redirected to an auto responder. There are several auto responder services out there that provide great deliverability and tracking for your campaigns. With your auto responder service set up, when a prospect fills in their information, you not only get to keep their information for your list, but now you can follow up with them daily, weekly, monthly easily. Of course, you have to write your email follow up messages ahead of time, but once you have them completed, you can follow up with your prospects over and over. The best way to do this is to set up about 4 or 5 emails to describe the product or service a little and build some trust. Offering something for free will help because you can sell to your prospects later when they trust you more. People always buy from those they like, know and trust. The most important email is the very first one. All this needs to give is your name and contact details, saying a little about yourself and assuring the new prospect you are there to help them at any time.

After the initial 4 or 5 emails it’s important to email your list every day (twice is good) and build on the real person image. Start by telling your prospect a little about your day before you get into the ‘meat’ of the email content and eventually to the reason why your offer can help them and then the call to action to click your link.

Follow up emails are a great help in getting your message out there, but don’t get sucked into relying on it as the ONLY method you need. This would be a huge mistake. Truth is, that email follow up and marketing may become far less effective due to spam laws and people filtering their email accounts. Be truthful and ethical and you will have a good chance of more success.

I also mentioned that email is the cheapest – why? Yes auto responder service companies charge monthly fees based on the size of the list you have. Consider this, some marketers have lists in the tens of thousands, and could charge the highest fee of say $70 per month. You could be mailing to these prospects twice a day, every day. If you had a list of 10,000 how much would it cost you to send out mail by conventional means? You have those costs PLUS the cost of the card or letter in conventional mailing, whereas email is just the monthly cost for as many as you want to send, simple really isn’t it?

In order to reach as many people as possible, you need to adopt additional methods of marketing.

3: Video message

Whatever short message you have, you can now set up a short video on sites such as You Tube. This will get you seen and will give you the chance to get more prospects to visit your capture page and sign up to your email list. Your video need not show you personally, it can be a short power point type presentation that you dictate your message over. When you get more confident, than you can “show yourself” and be more personal.

4: Get your own Website or Blog

Developing a website or blog can enable you to build more trust. Learning the right skills in keyword research and basic SEO (search engine optimization) it’s possible to develop a 30 minute a day plan that will boost your presence and give you the opportunity to gain more leads.

The blog will give you more opportunities to get your message out there and provide more opportunities to build your email list by offering forms, again linked to an auto responder, that allow visitors to get more information from you. Blogging is another great tool for you to provide free and valuable tips and tricks is the articles that you write or obtain for your visitors.

Adopting these 4 tips to develop your own automated system will definitely increase sales and income. Also your new system will be working for you while you are doing the things you enjoy, and it will offer you opportunities to contact prospects by different means without you being there.

Remember, it is not always enough just to have a system. You need to have an automated system that you can plug each prospect into that will run itself while you focus on building your business.

Barrie Evans

5 Tips To Find The Best Home Based Business For You

Have you been thinking about starting your own home based business, but don’t know where to begin? Take a look at yourself first.

Here are a few ideas for you so you can discover the best home based business for you.

1.      Do you have any hobbies – or something you enjoy that you know a lot about?

Write down all the things you really enjoy doing in your own free time. Include everything because this will help you in your search. Chances are that you will know a lot about what you enjoy and can share good tips and tricks with others.

Because you do these activities regularly without outside encouragement, it’s safe to say that hobbies are a great source of motivation and energy for anyone. If you're already doing something without being paid, you would do it for money wouldn’t you? The major difference being that money would come second in comparison to the immediate satisfaction you get from doing something you love to do.

2.      Do You Have any Expert Knowledge?

When working in your past jobs, it’s likely that you have accumulated a great deal of knowledge and expertise on a specific subject. Because of this expert knowledge you can help others too. Don’t let your skills go to waste. You can use them to help others and profit from them.

Make a note of your knowledge and also any specialized skills you may have developed too. Whether this be in sales, event organization, public relations, accounting, counselling, etc.

3.      When visiting a Book Shop, which section do you head for first?

I bet you are asking yourself, "What? What has that got to do with anything?"

It has a lot to do with everything. The FIRST place you head to in a book shop usually indicates which topics you love reading about doesn’t it?

Think about the authors you like and subjects that you love to read about and you have another list. If something inspires you, you can use it in your business development.

4.      What have you enjoyed in the past?

Times change and life changes with it. Have you thought about something you used to do that you just don’t have time to do now? Did you want to develop this activity but never got round to it?

Life changes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go back to things we used to do. If you are still passionate about something you used to do, make a note of it.

5.      What comes Naturally to you?

In order to find this out, it would be best to ask your friends what you are naturally good at – you may be surprised what you find out! What you think you know about yourself is not going to help with answering this one. If you discover things you didn’t believe you were good at, then you can expect to open doors to the best home based business for you. Don’t hang about. Go and call several of your friends, and ask them "What do think I'm good at?"

Don’t question or argue with their opinions. Take note of everything, including the good and bad, take it all in and act on it. At the end of this exercise, I bet you’ll discover things about yourself that you never believed you were good at.

It's astounding sometimes to find out what others know about you that you don't know yourself.

Then the Road Becomes Clearer.

Once you have completed the steps discussed here and have a list of things you love to do, what you are naturally good at and your level of expertise, then you can do your research and find your best home based business.

Does this help you to see the beginning of an exciting journey towards your dream business, rather than an intimidating chore?

These short exercises should help you to choose the RIGHT business and the one you are most excited about. Starting this journey will be easier because you will enjoy what you do.

Don’t get any misconceptions about not having to work hard though. It takes time to build any business. Steady and deliberate progress is made by ACTION and planning. Get whatever extra training you require and act on it, step by step.

Remember that action and planning will lead to success. Think at least 1 to 2 years realistically to start to get where you want to be. If you can get there sooner, Good Luck!

If you are having FUN when carrying out your business it will be easier to work at it. These steps should help you achieve both fun and fulfilment when you start your home based business. The money is the bonus!!

Barrie Evans