Make it Great

I know we all know that in order to have a successful business we have to let people know about it. We have to tell everyone we see, email, call, exchange money with, do our home repairs, etc. We must never miss an opportunity to advertise!

But, are the people you talk to day in and day out, looking for your business? Example, if you sell bears, is the man who just fixed your toilet and has 15 more toilets to fix by 5:00 pm, really thinking about a teddy bear right now? No, probably not. I mean you may get a call from his wife or aunt but, come on who can build a business on that? You need solid leads.

You can get solid leads many ways. They can be cheap, free, or expensive. If you Google in leads- in my case, candle leads, lots of lead companies will appear, all claiming to deliver me fresh  inexpensive leads that will sky rocket my buisness. Aren’t I glad!?! For $75-$100 I can build a team of 20+ people over night! Then I woke up.

Buying leads can be really tricky business, there are lots of lead companies that want your business. You should make sure to ask your sponsor, upline or mentor (whichever one you have) if they use leads and which ones work for them. I would NEVER buy leads without checking them out first. If you don’t have $75-100 to waste, don’t buy them. There is no gaurantee that people will call you back, no matter how fresh the lead is or how reputable the company is. Do your research and if you can’t afford to flush $75 down the drain, find a cheaper route.

Placing ads- This is basically trial and error. You have to find out what you can afford. Offline ads via newspapers, newsletters, or vaious flyers can be expensive. Here are some questions you can ask the owners of these newspapers and varoius circulars:

• How many readers do you have? Ask about their subscribers, if they don’t have subscribers, ask for the number of places they leave their information.
• What is the cost per line, word or paragraph?
• How many other work at home opporuntites do you already have in your paper? You don’t want to get lost in the shuffle.
• Where will my ad be located? If its somewhere at the bottom of the last page next to an ad for psychics, please pass. Not worth a dime.

Make sure you find out what other companies are also advertising in that particular paper. If there are more than 20 other companies in a small, 10 page paper, you will probably get lost in the shuffle unless you are at the top or have a border and bold writing.

This type of adversing can be pricey. I tend to lean towards small papers that cost about $5-10 an ad and run for 2 weeks or so. They are out there, you just have to look for them.

Online advertsing- Placing buttons and banners on websites. I follow the same criteria as above. I ask for their stats. How many hits do they get a day? Unique visitors? I ask the same questions for blogs and websites.

If they get a large amount of hits a day, I am talking hundreds, I still don’t pay more than $20 per month. Thousands, I won’t pay more than $40 a month. I know, to some this is cheap, but there are other less expensive options and my money doesn’t grow on trees.

If there are lots of other buttons and banners all over their website, I don’t even bother. Think of it this way, what is going to make my button stick out? Nothing. I would rather be somewhere clean and less cluttered = less competition and more hits. New websites and blogs are great for this, I am constantly searching for fresh blogs that have almost no advertising, these websites usually charge $5, which is in my budget.

I go for family friendly sites where moms usually hang out. That is where my product and business fit in. So if you sell s - e- x toys, I wouldn’t suggest you advertise on these sites….just saying. Your target market would be a bit different of course. Try blogs and websites targeted towards marriage and dating, you would get more hits on those.

I’ll have more advertising tips next post~