Online Marketing 101 - Home Based Business Opportunities Turn Successful

More and more people are considering home based business opportunities, considering this country has a jobless rate at an all time high AND baby boomers are deciding not to retire, thanks to a beaten up retirement portfolio OR they simply don't want to. For anyone who is currently running or considering a home based business opportunity, the use of online marketing is going to be crucial. If you are not technologically savvy, have no fears, online marketing is very cost effective, anyone can do it (including internet virgins!), and it can be a whole lot of fun if you understand what you are doing

My goal today, is to get you to understand the big picture of online marketing. If you haven't been keeping your head in the sand, then you have probably heard a lot of terms thrown aroundlike Facebook, Twittter, MySpace, SEO rankings, LinkedIn, YouTube, Keyword Research, tags, and the list goes on. There are so many bits and pieces floating around, it can make an online marketing virgin's head spin and feel so overwhelmed and demoralized, they want to give up. Don't give up! This article is your lifesaver.

Let's go back to the old days for one minute, before the internet existed. The majority of businesses had a physicial location, sometimes referred to as brick and mortar.

If you are running a home based business opportunity, the only modification is that your brick and mortar will be your website. This will be your hub, where people can get to know you, what you do, and how to buy your products and/or services.

Once you have the website set up, you have 2 simple goals:

1. Get visitors to your website (AKA traffic)
2. Convert visitors into buyers

Getting Visitors to Websites
Generating website traffic is really quite simple and inexpensive All of the social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc, are simply ways to drive traffic to your website. That's how these outlets fit into the big picture. The reason they are so popular is because they are fast, incredibly effective and FREE. In other words, it doesn't matter if your budget is limited, you can still drive tons of traffic to your website.

Converting Visitors into Customers
Converting your traffic into paying customers is the where the rubber meets the road. This is the piece that draws the line in the sand between success and failure. A 5 year old can generate website traffic, but if you are good at converting your visitors into buyers, you can make millions.

A handful of internet geniuses, in the 1990s, came up with an effective system for converting website traffic and is called the "sales funnel." This is the key to internet marketing success - understanding and implementing the sales funnel.

There are three goals of a sales funnel:

1. build a relationship with the prospective customer
2. filter out the people that would not be ideal clients
3. generate income on traffic that may or may not buy your big profit item.

The reason you can truly make millions with a sales funnel is because of the amazing leverage generated through the internet. You can reach thousands and thousands of people a day, and you don't even have to be there. It's all on auto pilot.

A sales funnel begins with an "irresistible free offer" on the home page of the website. An irresistible offer is a piece of information or something else that will help solve your ideal client's problems. Your website offers this piece of information, for free, in exchange for a name and e-mail address, and perhaps other contact details. If your website visitor bites, he has immediately taken one step closer to qualifying himself as an ideal client, and you collect his contact details in a database where you can begin establishing a relationship.

The name and e-mail address of your website visitor go straight into a program called an automatic responder (A/R), where you house your database. Here, you have set up a confirmation and thank you e-mail sent straight away to your prospect, and includes your free information. In addition, you will have set up a series of follow up e-mails that keeps your business in front of this prospect and continues with developing a relationship.

At some point in the follow up e-mails, you will offer or recommend products, that simply add to solving the initial problem for which they visited your website. Most sales funnels will begin with selling smaller priced items and then move to bigger priced items. Also in most cases, the smaller priced items are not necessarily the products that will make you fortunes...but if you are only focused on selling the big ticket item, then you are missing an crucial piece of the sales funnel. For each product your prospect purchases, he continues to qualify himself and, eventually, will sell himself on your big ticket item, without you doing a thing! In addition, the small ticket items help cover your costs of operating...so when you finally sell your big ticket item, the profit is all profit. There are NO expenses to cover.

I hope that you can see the power of the sales funnel and that I have clarified how it leverages the internet to build thousands of relationships, lets the customer self qualify and puts money in your pockets, all while you sleep.

If you are a network marketer, or considering network marketing, I have a sales funnel all set up for you to begin using today, with the ultimate goal of selling distributorships in your network marketing business. If you set yourself up with this sales funnel, I have no doubt you will be one of the top producers in a short time, and it involves absolutely no chasing of friends and family, hotel meetings or asking friends to host a party in their home. This is the exact technique used by the top producers in your MLM business, but they fail to share that with you. If you are interested in learning more, go visit my website, www.top-earn-secrets.com.