Recently I have had many thoughts and conversations and what it truly takes to create success in a home based business. If we were to look at the statistics of successful home business owners versus unsuccessful ones, I am pretty sure the majority of the numbers would point towards those who have failed, given up or have not yet experienced the success they had expected. In fact, if we look at any business or industry, not singling out just network marketing, the statistics would be in favor of the unsuccessful.

It’s a sad thing, I know…..but in my industry, network marketing, there’s a significant difference between those who succeed and those who don’t. That difference is contained in the word “Expert!” That’s the secret. In order to truly succeed in your home business, you MUST become an expert in your field. There’s no way around it.

Now, I know there are success stories of people who have zero experience that come into a home business and make a ton of money really quickly…..but where’s the rest of the story? Someone can make a quarter million dollars with a good home business opportunity simply by pursuing their warm market….the people they know. But what happens when that warm market is all spent. They are stuck in the mud without  four wheel drive and the momentum they had once before because they have run out of people to talk to about their amazing home business. And guys, I’m not making this up! I have seen it happen over and over again. They come, they have an awesome first year, they halt in income, and they check out. This is one of the reasons you see people doing what we call “Opportunity Jumping.”

The secret to true, prolonged consistent success in a home business, is to become an Expert. And what I mean by that, is to become really, really good at whatever it is you do. To give you an example: You can obviously see my blog, since you are reading it at this very moment. I have some decent traffic coming into this site through the marketing I have done for it. I rank first page on Google, Yahoo and Bing for some of the most competitive keyphrases in my industry. I have a presence on the internet and have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars because of it. Now, a year and a half after starting this business, I had no clue about marketing. I was having someone else do it all for me and was paying them to do it. I distinctly remember not even knowing what a URL was or that it needed an http://. I was clueless.

But you know what happened? The paid marketing fell through and I was forced to learn it all. I studied, I Googled,  I did everything I needed to do to learn how to market. I became and expert in my field. I became really good at what I do and in order to create prolonged success, that’s what it takes. Sure, you may make money by paying someone else to do it all for you, but what happens when that falls through? What happens when your new distributor gets started and your marketing guy can’t take any more clients? Then what? You must become a marketing expert! It’s all about duplication…..and that is able to be duplicated.

When all the smoke and mirrors are gone, the excitement of starting that new business wears off and your warm market is exhausted, your success really teeters on how good you really are in your niche. If you are actively engaged in your self education, you’ll excel and create the success that you deserve…..and you’ll keep it going for a really long time. Become an expert marketer and success will follow you like it has never done before. I promise you that!

As many of you know I am a home based business entrepreneur and have been working from home for the last 5 years. Every once in a while I have people who want to know why I chose to get involved in a home business instead of doing some kind of brick and mortar business. The answer is simple, it’s all about lifestyle for me. I wanted so much more than just the bi-weekly pay check with two weeks of paid vacation. That’s a life of misery. I wanted financial freedom and the time freedom to enjoy it. I wanted to be at home, to be my own boss and set my own schedule. That’s why I choose to stay right where I am. It’s lucrative, it has given me lifestyle and I am my own boss. What more could you ask for?

So as you all know, a business requires marketing. I do several things for my marketing but my major source of lead generation is through my self-hosted WordPress blog. I share tips on mindset, personal development and business opportunity and by doing so, people naturally become interested in what I do. For me, it generates some of the highest quality leads one can get. If they like my content, chances are, they will enjoy my business as well. The perfect lead! Qualified with a common interest.

With my WordPress blog, I have certain plugins I use to promote my content and extend its capabilities. If you have any good ideas for new plugins, I’d sure like to try them out. They are as follow:

• Platinum SEO Pack – Prepares your blog for Search Engine Optimization
• All in one Adsense – Enables the all popular ad serving network of Google to place relevant ads on your site. I also use it to place a contact form directly following each of my blog posts.
• Twitter Tools – Connects your blog with your Twitter account and updates your Twitter account every time you publish a post.
• WPing.fm – This plugin makes ‘Twitter Tools’ and ‘Wordbook’ nearly worthless. It uses a service called Ping.fm to automatically send a status update every time a blog post is published with a link back to your post.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This doesn’t necessarily assist in extending my blog but is a very convenient plugin. The name should be pretty self explanatory.
• Vipers Video Quicktags – This makes posting videos to your blog posts easy!
• Google XML Sitemaps – This will aid you in a few things. It helps you track the health of your blog by seeing how Google, Bing and Yahoo search bots view your site. It also gets your site indexed with the major search engines quickly.
• Add to Any -This is a social bookmarking plugin that allows your readers to quickly share your content on various social sites around the web.
• Stray Random Quotes – I love quotes and love to share them. This is a plugin that will easily allow you to add quotes to your blog in various locations. Have the quotes rotate, stay the same or change with each visit.
• Wordbook – Updates your facebook account with every published, edited or revised post and/or page.
• Yet Another Related Post Plugin – Enables your readers to get deeper into your archived posts. It shows posts with similar tags and topics below the post they are currently reading.

Feel free to look them up in the “plugins” section of your WordPress back office to see what they do. Each of them play a significant role in my marketing campaign.

One of the beauties of being self employed is your ability to literally dictate your schedule as the day goes. This weekend is going to be a busy weekend for all of us parents. Today happens to be my oldest daughters birthday and this morning, my second daughter received her very first award in her school today. It’s nice to have the freedom to just go. No approval from the boss, no worry over losing paid work hours….just the freedom to go and do.

Now as you all know, it is Halloween today and if you have a family, with children, your weekend is going to be busy. Get out with your kids. Be young again and dress up. Have a blast! But as I have always said, be your business. With what I do, I am able to integrate my business into my lifestyle. So just because I am off during the holidays doesn’t mean I’m not generating revenue. That’s the whole point of a home business. It integrates itself with your lifestyle. Some of my best days, weeks and months in my business have come when out having fun.

You become your business. You can’t really sell it to anyone. The only value given to it is what you give to it. Live your life and throw your business around it. If you are open and alert, marketing opportunities will be available to you almost anywhere you go and with nearly anything you do. Should you choose to jump on Facebook to see what your friends are up to, if you are your business, people will start asking questions. Should you choose to go to the store, if you are your business, conversations will start and people will ask what you do.

With a pocket full of business cards and drop cards, an open mind and a smile, opportunities to grow your home business are abundant. But you have to be looking. Once and entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. In my opinion, if you are looking to get away from your business completely, the only option is to quit, sell it or get a job. The ones who are paid a wage can truly say, that when 6pm rolls around, they are OFF of work and don’t even have to think about it until the next morning the moment their alarm clock rings. With a business, it’s different. If it doesn’t consume you, within reason, you are probably getting mediocre results. The moment you allow yourself and your business mold together is the moment things start happening. That’s called passion.

So Happy Halloween everyone. As you are out tomorrow with your kids, look for opportunities. They will be everywhere!

Generating leads is one of the easiest parts of my business opportunity. Every person I come into contact with during the day is a potential lead. I mean, think about it, how many conversations do you overhear that have to do with how much that person hates their job or isn’t happy with their life? One of the quickest ways to make a lot of money in my business is through your warm market, the people in your immediate world. Yeah, but how is it done?

Here are a few of the ways that Amy and I generate leads for our business while out living our lives.

1. Meet new people. Every time you meet a new person, what is the most common question that comes up? “What do you do?” Right!? “Well, I teach people how to make money working from home, here’s my card.” It is as simple as that. Of course, when you meet them you must say a bit more than just “hi!” If they don’t ask you what you do, ask them what they do and most likely, they will ask you back. If they are curious, they will ask more questions. That is a good thing!
2. Direct approach. While out and about, you may hear someone speaking with a very high energy or enthusiasm about life. That person may be a salesman, a bank teller, a grocery store manager or someone that works at a tire shop. If you feel they would have potential in your business, tell them. Say, “You know, you have a great energy about you. I work with a small group of people in a business that pays some pretty amazing profits. Someone with your energy would be amazing at it. You deserve to check it out. Here’s my card. Call me later if you’d like more information!” While doing this, you must be bold. You can’t look to the side like you are bashful or wishy-washy about your business. It’s all in the confidence you show. Be confident!
3. Drop Cards. I always carry a few drop cards with me everywhere I go. These can be business cards with a simple ad on the back or something that you can simply drop on the ground, place on a car or pin to a bulletin board. I specifically use a drop card that resembles a $100 bill. It works wonders. I think it also ticks people off when they find out it isn’t real! So it’s fun too! Place these cards in credit card slots at gas pumps, drop them on pay phones, leave them on the newspaper stand or just take a few out and insert them. There are a ton of places for drop cards.
   
4. Drive a very nice car! This is one of my favorite because it is effortless. Now, when I say to drive a nice car, I am not meaning a brand new Ford Escort! When I say a nice car, I mean something you don’t see average income earners driving. So get yourself a Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Denali, Escalade, or something with style! You won’t even have to approach anyone about what you do. It will be the most common question you get. “Wow! Nice car! What do you do for a living?” Trust me, in my business opportunity, the car will pay for itself over and over again!
5. Place an ad on your car. There are a few areas to place an ad on your car. The best place is right across the rear window with vinyl lettering. If you don’t want to be a mobile classified ad, simply put your website on the window. You’ll make money! I promise. License plate covers can be created custom with your website address as well, magnetic bumper stickers or signs for the side of your car work as well. Before we sold it, we drove around an H2 with vinyl lettering on the back window. And yes, we made a lot of money from it!

So there you have it. These are just a few ideas to aid you in your success. The biggest key to any sort of lead generation is your mindset. Confidence has a huge effect on your lead generation! If approached, be prepared to say something and say it like the successful entrepreneur you are. People are looking for a leader to teach them how to make it happen in their own lives. Either you can be that leader, or someone else will. Make it you!

There are two kinds of Entrepreneurs: Those who advertise for themselves and those who don’t! So it is obvious that you will get business for yourself if you advertise, so how do those who don’t advertise get business? Well, they bottom-feed, meaning, they click on your advertisements, listings, and classifieds and look for a phone number or an email address to market to. Some of them even take it to the next level and actually fill out your form, allow you to call them, the listen for a while and then they somehow try to turn it around and tell you what they are doing in hopes that you will catch an interest. Have you had this happen to you? Here you are, having a conversation about somebody else’s offer, knowing that they clicked on your PPC ad and cost you money, all just so that they could give you their pitch!

Bottom-feeding is the poor Entrepreneurs way to advertise and when all else is lost I guess it is an approach to consider, but it sure is annoying. It is a lot of effort, alot of time and chances are, you will get the cold shoulder more than not.

I had a guy call me the other day that flat out lied to me and it was obvious. He called me and said his name was Mark. I said, “Hi Mark, refresh my memory a bit as to where I know you from or what you are calling for.” He said that I had called him yesterday and that he was returning my call. Well, I hadn’t called anybody named Mark the day before. Good grief! If you are going to bottom-feed, at least be honest about it.

Integrity is a big part of who I am and reflects in everything I do so I hung up on this guy. He deserved it right!? If you think I’m wrong please feel free to let me know. I only work with like-minded people who represent integrity, truth, ambition, and an burning desire to succeed. I don’t work with those who deceive or twist the truth in any way.

Don’t be a bottom-feeder in your business. Show integrity in everything you do. It is so easy to be rude, unprofessional or out of character when communicating through email, text or the internet. Don’t fall into that trap. It will ALWAYS catch up to the ones who do!

There are a ton of “tools” out there on the net that can be used to strengthen your marketing campaign. Some are useful for getting the word out and others will let you know where you stand via statistics and feedback. Here are a few that I use consistently:

1. Twitter
   
2. WordPress Plugins
3. Mint tracking
4. Website Grader
5. SEO Tools
6. Google Adwords
7. Feedburner

In the next few posts I will go into depth on how I use each of these tools to market my Business Opportunity and how they work!