AntiSpam Guide
Get The Word Out: Promoting Your Home Business
from: Gary Marsh
It's an exciting adventure that you're about to begin by being self-employed. It's time to let everyone know about your soon-to-be successful company by promoting your home business.
While hiring a marketing or public relations firm is an easy option, since you are just starting out, it may be a tool you cannot yet afford. If this is the case, it is up to you to develop different media means to promoting your home business.
The most obvious is starting a Web site. There are many freelances out there who would gladly do this for you for a fee, but this is not really necessary if you have basic computer skills. Several sites are dedicated to instructing you on a step-by-step procedure on how to create a Web site for promoting your home business. Many provide usage for a price, but there are some out there in which you can use for no cost at all. This would be a practical option. A free site might not offer all the flourishes of a paid-for one, but as your first priority would be simply promoting your home business, other features, graphics and designs can be added once the money starts rolling in and you have extra cash to spend on creating a stand out site.
When you use free web space, just know that you will have other people making money off your site with there advertisements. You can always get your own services for a great price. I personally use Host4Profits for all my sites. Why? Well, Host4Profits cost around $10 a month and you get access to tons of tools to help set up your site. Help is just a click away and the best thing of all! When you begin to generate traffic and money, if you decide to start another site, it will only cost pennies a month extra. You can do your homework and see if what I say is true by either typing in Host4Profit in your favorite search engine or go to my home page via the signature file in this article. Heck, $10 a month's is like 2 double shot mocha's from Starbucks. I think you can afford that in order to look professional.
Another thing about having your own website free of other's advertisements is being able to monetize that space with Google Adsense! There are people making hundred's of thousand's of dollars this way. That's for another article in the future. If you have some extra money to spend on advertising, I highly suggest you looking into Google Adwords. There are tons of eBooks available to help you learn how to bid on keywords, what keywords you should use, and everything else associated with Adwords advertising. Once again, do your homework folk's, otherwise, you can really drain your bank account fast if you don't do this write!
Once you start becoming established on the internet, you need to start writing a weekly or monthly newsletter which is a great marketing tool in promoting your home business. Fill the copy with your personal background, services provided and costs involved. Update your newsletter with savings advertisements, new services offered and comments from pleased customers when promoting your home business through a newsletter. How in the world do I write a newsletter?
The best way to start your own newsletter is to write out about 7 newsletter articles to start filled with great usable content your subscribers can use to make there lives better or pocket books fatter! Once you have these articles written, subscribe to an auto-responder program like Get-Response. Plug those articles into your autoresponder system and have them ready to send to subscribers as they sign up. Go to Get-Response for information on how this is all accomplished, it's really simple once you get everything in place. After you are completely set up to begin marketing your newsletter, you will need to come up with a way to get people in front of your subscription link. You can go to my site in the signature file and see two of many ways I get subscribers to sign up to my newsletter. Speaking of which; if you are really serious about building a business on the internet, you need to sign up to my newsletter. I have so much information that you could build your business with that alone! Ok.
What I'm about to say comes with a lot of flack. If you went to my signature and clicked on my link, you'll see a sign up link on the left. You can do it this way and get a few results or...
You can also use a POP-UP! There, I said it! A lot of folks hate pop-ups and for good reason too. They can be an annoyance at times. Notice that even if you have a pop-up blocker, they still pup up? It's all in the code. Anyway, I use pop-ups because they work. They work, they work... Ok, you get the point. You can find free code anywhere on the internet and place these on your site in just a matter of minutes. Within just a couple of years, you could easily have 30,000 subscribers. Does that get your attention? One of the best ways to use a pop-up is actually a pop-under. A pop-under opens underneath your main page, when a surfer leaves your site, before they can leave; your pop-under catches them to remind them to sign up.
One of the best ways to get subscribers is to offer free stuff just for signing up. You could use a free eBook on whatever your niche is, a free report, or free software. The free item could be just about anything as long as it is something that has huge value to your potential subscriber. Back to your web page posting.
While posting a link or subscriber option to your web site for the newsletter is a given, additional initiative must be taken as part of promoting your home business. Obtain e-mail addresses of several companies or individuals who might be interested in using your services. Shoot for the addresses of actual people rather than sending a letter promoting your home business to a general business site. You are then taking the risk of becoming a deleted spam file. Nowadays, you have to be really careful about sending emails to people that have not requested your email. One of the best ways is through syndicated articles published in the many of thousand article web publishing sites. If you do not want to write, hire someone to write for you, what's call a ghost writer.
Ghost writers can be found easily by going to Google and typing in ghost writer. Be careful and do your homework as to whom you chose to write your article. Once your article is written and you have paid, that article now belongs to you as if you wrote it. Make sure that is in the contract between you and the ghost writer. Depending on your article, it will cost around $15 to $30 and all you'll have to do is proofread it to make sure it's exactly what you want.
Article publishing is by far the best way to get traffic to your site. The more traffic you get, the more money you'll make! Writing gets easier the more you do it. Just like everything else in life. I personally write all my own articles because in the beginning, I had almost zero money to spend on building my business. It takes a lot more time, but when you see your articles posted on other websites, in Google, AOL, and MSN; it sure makes you feel good!
If you would really like to do your homework, click on my signature file and read everything I have to offer. Be sure to go to my home page and search the right column for a link called List & Traffic. You will be amazed at what Jimmy D. Brown can help you with. He has helped me out tremendously over the last few months. How about locally Gary?
If your home business is a local and you want local traffic, such as a day care or accounting service. Advertise in your local newspapers and trade magazines. Coupons always catch a consumers eye, so including them in your ad would be a key tool in promoting your home business. Offering a 10 percent discount is always a plus.
Also, holding contests with prizes would catch they eye of a newspaper or magazine browser. Consider making the prize a week of free service or a sales item.
Lastly, get some business cards together as part of promoting your home business. You can design and print them using a home computer or pay a professional printer who may have additional design ideas that would capture consumer's attention. Distribute your business cards to individuals and companies, and post them in every store that offers a free advertising billboard.
About the author:
Gary Marsh Break Away From Corporate Life And click here.
Related story:
The Art of Successful PR
from: Rachel TitheridgeThe Successful Art of PR - the follow up.
Author: Rachel Titheridge
When you are your own boss you know it's hard to be off duty. New ideas and thoughts pop into your mind at the most inconvenient of times. This is something we should always remember as you are always an ambassador for your business.
1. Whenever you meet new people, spend your time listening to them. People will more readily talk about themselves. Remember that everyone you meet is a potential customer, lead to a potential customer, or recommend you to a potential customer.
2. Always ask new contacts for their business card, it's so much better than offering them to take yours, and only offer your card if invited to do so. Human nature dictates that's they will ...
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