In this day and age the only real way to achieve massive success in a home based business is to be on the internet. Historically home based businesses have been a small offline game: stuffing envelopes, flyering, sending out direct mail, advertising in your local newspaper, dropping business cards, spending a lot of time in the post office. Home business owners have been limited by the area the live in, the resources they have easy access to, and their budget.

Enter the internet.

Now everyone has a chance to reach all and sundry around the world. Wherever there is an internet connection there is a chance to market.

Most home based business owners have been simply transferring offline strategies online. Buying advertising space on different sites, building pay per click campaigns that can cost them more than $10 a click! I’ve seen home business owners create massive success with paid per click, and I’ve seen it put people out of business faster than anything. This method of advertising can be very effective, but is not a long term strategy for success. With this method you are not leveraging the power of the internet because you are only exposed to prospective customers as long as your money holds out. The key to developing a successful internet home based business is just that: developing.

With so many millions of businesses competing for space online each entrepreneur has to create an online presence and this takes time and work. Internet surfers are more discerning today, they are marketed to all the time and they are sick of it. They ignore ads. They often know the links on the right hand side of Google are paid ads and generally don’t even give them a second glance. To stand out from the crowd of marketers online you have to develop your own voice, deliver useful content, and be everywhere.

Creating Your Voice:

-Pick your target market. What type of people do you want to reach? Who are your ideal customers? In this step it is best to really picture your ideal customer and think about where they are online. What type of questions are they asking? What are they trying to learn about?

-Pick an area of interest you have some expertise in. Expertise does not mean you have to be an expert. In your time on the planet you have had interests, you have studied, there is something that you know about that you can share with others.

-Learn what else is out there for your area of interest. Expand your knowledge so you can really deliver good quality content to your prospective clients/customers.

-Start writing. If you passed the 8th grade you can write good content online. The most important part of writing online is that you are delivering quality information, even if the delivery is a bit clunky. Remember if you write nothing you can reach no one.

-Create a blog or website with your writing. Bring as much good information to the table for people visiting your site.

Information is the biggest commodity online. It’s what people go online to look for. If you can provide good quality information your prospects will be more interested in doing business with you.

A Website is an Island

No one will visit your site until you have bridges to it. You have to reach out to other areas of the web and link back to your own site. A great way to do this is through writing articles, submitting them to article directories, and attracting interested readers back to your website. Another way would be to join the social networking revolution. Create a facebook page, a myspace page, join Twitter. Find people who are interested in your area of expertise and again give good advice and information. Make friends. Have ONE link back to your website on your page and people who find your information and expertise useful will head back to your site to get more.

Remember, even online it’s still true that people do business with people, not faceless companies. Decide upfront what kind of quality you can give people and then deliver, deliver, deliver. You will not only create clients, you will create a network of friends and colleagues.

It sounds like a lot of work, but don’t be afraid to dig in and do it. In home based business the price of success is either time or money. If you only spend money the ads you pay for today will be gone tomorrow. Spend the time now and the content and connections you make will grow and grow upon themselves. Your reward will be both financial freedom AND time freedom.

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