By the time you enter into phase two of getting started with your home based business, you have defined your niche and you know there is a market for it. Now what?

Before sending traffic to your business you will want to prepare for the traffic so when they arrive, you have what they want and they want to come back for more.

How does one prepare for traffic?

The first website page you really need for your home based business is a lead generation page. The purpose of this page is to introduce yourself and what you offer in such a way that people wish to stay in contact with you. If your home based business is an internet business, this is a simple process.

The way to stay in contact is by inviting people to give you their name and email address to introduce them in exchange for something valuable you can give as a gift. This gift will introduce people to you and your “style.” It will help them choose whether they want more from you in the future, including products you may sell later.

Why is this one page all that is needed to prepare for traffic?

As people share their contact information with you they are giving you permission to email them. You can then send relevant information based on the niche they were seeking when they discovered your website. They are now a prospective customer. As you send this information you can guide people to products of interest that can make a difference for the prospective customer.

How do you keep traffic coming back to your website?

As you create email messages for people who have shared their contact information you will always talk about a topic that leads people back to your website. Your email will include a clickable link so people can go to the web page mentioned to receive more information or to purchase a product you may refer to. In fact, as you create email messages you can create a page on your website to go with each message.

This way you can create one website page at a time. Just think, over time you will have a very content rich website with a constant stream of qualified traffic visiting it regularly through your emails. The sequential email messages are like having an invisible store clerk guiding prospective clients around the store in a powerful, engaging, natural way.

There one truly wonderful thing about having leads generated through your one website page which you constantly promote. As new people connect with you, your email messages are all set to go. You are not having to write email messages again. Each new person begins with the first message in the sequence and gradually receives all the same messages every other person has received.

In addition to the automated sequence created you can also send out a special message occasionally to announce an event or new promotion that is not part of the message sequence. This is known as a broadcast. You have the best of both worlds when you have been given permission to contact prospective customers by email. You have profit potential through automated messages. You also have profit potential through current activities you may promote that are time sensitive.

What if you don’t have time to create pages but want to hurry up and get your business to be profitable?

It’s easy. Just create the one lead generation page. Then, as you create email messages, send people to website pages that promote products owned by other people. Before doing this, make sure you have become an affiliate and only send people through your affiliate link so you get credit for the purchase when one is made. This can give you an income while you are creating your own product which you will also share about through your emails.

You can find downloadable products to share in your email messages by simply going to directories such as:

· http://www.clickbank.com
· http://www.cj.com
· http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/
· http://www.paydot.com

Simply go to these affiliate directories and search for products that make sense for people in your contact community.

In your email messages you might also provide information about products that are not downloadable immediately but must be shipped. Some examples of directories of products where you can receive commissions when sold are:

· http://amazon.com
· http://clubdropship.com
· http://ebay.com
· http://squidoo.com

Fast Start Summary

In the start up of your new home based business by now you have:
· discovered your niche
· determined how large your target audience is
· determined whether you niche is one where people already spend money
· defined your unique angle on meeting the wants and needs in your niche
· defined how to find your target audience
· prepared a website page designed to connect with your target audience on a regular basis
· created or found a profitable product to promote
· have automated your basic communications to easily move people through your profit centers

Next you will move to phase three of starting your home based business. In phase three I will tell you how to find and move traffic to the lead generation website page you have prepared. This is when the real fun begins!

Did you miss phase one? Go check it out now before you do any of what I’ve covered here.

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Here's the podcast replay from the free Small Business Teletraining I did Thursday May 22nd.

On the call we covered:

1. How do you get paid?
2. Who is your ideal customer?
3. Why can't your customers find you?
4. Why can't your customer hear you?
5. The challenge of Personal Bandwidth
6. What your real job title is.
7. Why your customers don't believe you.
8. The real equity in your business is THIS!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE CALL




This is the RSS FEED link for the call.

What is social media? Social media is the newest trend on the Web, websites that allow those of us non-web designers to be able to post content, video, and other forms of information online. You may have heard it referred to in the press as Web 2.0.

Other terms used are social networks (MySpace, Facebook), bookmarking sites (Del.ici.ous, BackFlip), video/ photo sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr), blogs and blog communities (Blogger, MyBlogLog), and widgets / applications (Twitter, Digg).

Social media sites have the advantage of allowing businesses a better way of communicating with customers and prospects than ever before. No longer are business owners limited to advertisements in traditional media (newspapers, yellow pages, or magazines), or even on websites where we are unsure if anyone even looks at the ads.

Social Networks

A social network is a group of people who share a common interest or hobby that have come together online. They communicate through forums, email, or blogs to each other in the same network, as well as designing their own webpages (often with bizarre results) and posting photos and even videos.

Examples of these types of networks include the now infamous MySpace (mostly inhabited by pre-teens, teenagers, and musical bands), Facebook (which started out as a community for university students, but is now open to the general public), Marzar (a business network), and Last.Fm (music lovers).

Some companies have even created a place for other people to build their own networks. The best example of this is Ning.com where you can build your own social network using their basic framework. Ning has networks for firefighters, university alumni, wine lovers, movie buffs, archaeologists, beer nuts, Spanish speakers, and even pagans!

There are a number of business networks built along the same lines as the social networks, but they are designed for building your professional relationships. These business networks include: Marzar.com (a business resource portal), StartupNation.com (for small businesses, lot of great advice here), BizNik (a relative newcomer, but a tagline to die for, “Business Networking that doesn’t Suck”), Apsense.com (they include a business directory as well), and Zion5.com (which has a lot of network marketers onboard).

LinkedIn is an older business network, but it is not really built to be social. Both LI and Jigsaw.com are more of a network for making connections. This is good when you do not have a lot of time to be chatting online. If you do join LinkedIn, I suggest going over to Ning and joining in at http://mylinkingpowerforum.ning.com/ . Here you can talk to a lot of folks who value business relationships and referrals.

Social Bookmarking Websites

Social bookmarking services are a way for Web users to save, organize and search URLs of websites that they want to remember.

Bookmarks appear in Internet Explorer and called “Favorites”. It is a way to save web pages that you want to come back to at another time. The Firefox browser also allows you to save bookmarks. The drawback with these bookmarks is that they stay on your computer, and, if you switch computers, or are using a desktop somewhere else, you cannot get to those bookmarks again.

Bookmarking websites took care of this problem. This type of service allows you to keep your bookmarks on a specific server online, where you can access them from any online computer. In addition, you can share your bookmarks with other people, organize them into specific folders, or put your own tags on them. Or, you can keep your bookmarks private.

I use bookmarking sites to develop my personal brand and show my expertise. Another way of using them is to bookmark your websites so that they will show up on the search engines.

There are quite a few social bookmarking websites (it is known as “social” because you can share them with others). BackFlip.com (quite possibly the granddaddy of all the bookmarking sites) is a good place to start as it allows you to set up a daily routine of the websites that you visit most. My main bookmarking site is Yahoo’s Del.icio.us.com . Not only can you share and organize your bookmarks, but they also have a hot list on the home page, and if you have the Yahoo toolbar on your browser, you can save the bookmarks directly to your account. This has been a huge timesaver for me, especially when I find a great website and do not have the time to read all of it.

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Do you know your way around Web 2.0? We're hiring sharp people to work-at-home part-time doing social bookmarking and site creation for us. If you'd like to pick up some extra cash send us your "Web 2.0" resume with an introduction and some urls of sites that you have built. Send it to david(at)bigmoneyfreetime.com with "Social Media Maven" in the subject line. We'll be in touch!
==============================

I just got back from Texas…want to meet the world's second tallest internet marketer?

Meet Big Jason.

Who's the tallest? It's currently a 7 foot secret…

I shot a video for you from Arlington Texas from the 17th floor. Unfortunately it didn't go according to plan…

I think what happened was…(continued)

When starting your home based business the first thing to do is keep whatever income source you have until you get your home based business off the ground. If you have a job right now, continue it. If you quit too soon, the stress of needing to hurry up your results can actually distract you from what needs to be done.

You may feel that working is taking up too much of your time and keeping you from what is needed to get your home based business going. Using the internet to start your business helps eliminate the problem of finding time. Online steps can be done at any time day or night so any schedule can work for creating this type of business.

Before You Begin… Your first action may not seem very exciting to you but trust me and do what I tell you. This is no hype. It will benefit you to “slow down to hurry up.” It will save you much time and money to visualize what you want your business to look like.

Write your answers to the following questions:
1. On what main niche do you want to focus?
2. What have you seen, heard, or done that makes you to think you can provide something needed or wanted by people regarding this niche?
3. What other products do you see provided for this niche?
4. Do you see any gaps you might fill in what is now provided?
5. What difference do you want to make that is not now being made?
6. What is unique about what you want to offer in this niche?
7. Do you see people actually spending money on products for this niche?
8. What is your compelling reason for starting your home based business in this particular niche?
9. How much time per day do you wish to devote to your business?
10. Do you want to do business only online or do you want to also have a local brick and mortar location?
11. Do you want to sell your own product or other people’s products?
12. Do you have an idea for a product you want to have manufactured or is it something you can create yourself like an information product or a service?

Who Will Buy?

Once you are clear about the answers to the above questions you will want to research to make certain there are enough people looking for what you wish to offer to give you the income you need or want from your home based business. The internet has made it very easy to research your niche to make sure there are enough people looking for what you offer to make it worth your time to offer it. Another consideration in doing your research is to discover whether people actually spend money on products in your niche even though there may be thousands searching for your niche daily.

Following are some research tips:
1. Brainstorm a list of words potential customers might type into a search engine when they are looking for a solution for a problem you wish to solve for them.
2. Use a free service to discover how many people search for your topic daily. You can do this at the following locations:
a. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
b. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
c. http://goodkeywords.com/

3. Type in the broad keyword from your list. By doing this you will see all the variations of phrases people type in that include your main keyword.
4. Check your brainstormed list and type in any keywords you wrote that are not shown on the list given under your first broad keyword typed into the keyword research tool.
5. Place a star or check mark beside words on your list that are searched 10,000 times or less. (When first starting your home based business you will want to focus on products that are searched but have not too much competition. Later you will be able to move into the more competitive areas if desired.)
6. What magazines would people in your niche tend to read? You can find all the magazines that are relative to your niche at http://magazine-directory.com/
a. This can give you an idea of what sub-topics people like to read about your niche.
b. It is also a good resource for where to place your ads offline when you are ready to spend money on ads.
7. Determine whether people are spending money in this niche.
a. Are there ads being shown for products in your niche? If so, people are spending money in that area. Business owners do not spend money advertising a product that is not bought.
b. Look for ads in magazines that are relevant to your niche. What products are being sold through those ads? Are the ads repeated for months in a row? Repeated ads shows results must be occurring that make it worth spending on the ads.

Once you determine people are actually spending money on the type of product you wish to provide think about why they are willing to spend money for this. Before you spend time or money attracting potential customers you will want to create a compelling reason for them to buy once they arrive at your store or website.

Is your product something they want or is it something they need? What is it that makes them want it? Or what is it that makes them need it?

Your next step for your home based business is to prepare for traffic. You will not want to invite people to an empty “store.” I’ll tell you how to get results and how to keep people coming back.

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I recorded a small business marketing training video for you.

What makes the link mentioned in the video so
important is …. (continued)

If you have come to realize how important a blog is to your business as an entrepreneur, you may now wonder how to get started and at what cost. Ideally, as a business owner, you will hire someone to create your blog. When first getting started you may want to create it yourself. If this is the case, you will learn where to create a blog. If your virtual assistant has no experience at creating a blog, share this information so he can easily create one for you. Included will be a few tips about using each of the different blog applications most powerfully.

WordPress.com is renowned as a blogging platform. Incredibly, it is free and easy enough to set up your blog in as little as five minutes. It's the backbone of what I use here on this blog.

When creating your blog, the username you choose will be included in the URL. It’s wise to somehow incorporate your main niche keyword as your username if possible. This will help search engines to find your blog and index it in their listings. The URL will be theusernameyouchoose.wordpress.com

When creating the Blog Title make an interesting statement that also uses the niche keyword again. And for Privacy you DO want your business blog to appear in search engines like Google and Tecnorati and public listings around WordPress.com.

Why? By having your blog automatically listed in search engines, you will often have traffic to your blog that found it by simply typing in the niche keyword you have used for your title and URL. This is known as organic traffic. Organic traffic is any traffic that comes naturally and without specific effort on your part. This traffic is surfing the “net” looking for information about your niche and is typing in your keyword.

Once you sign up for the blog you will receive an email to confirm the new account. Your blog is already created and on the world wide web as simple as that. You can view it or login and start posting information

You can upload an avatar so your picture is next to posts you make to your blog. This is a great feature as people like to begin to identify you with some sort of image. The image doesn’t have to be you, but could be a representation of you that you would like to become known for. Avatar simply means a graphical image that represents a person, a personification or attitude depicted.

Akismet is a “widget” that can be easily added to your WordPress blog to fend off spam comments. People will often spam a blog with comments just to have their own links in as many places online as possible as this is believed to help their blog positions in search engine indexes.
You will want to download Akismet. It will require you to add an API Key which is very easy to find in your profile at WordPress.com

Now you are ready to Write a New Post. Always include top niche keywords in the Title of your posts. Then simply type to your heart’s content as easily as using Microsoft Word and its features.

The next simplest free blog you can create is at Blogger.com. Once signed up there are many similarities to WordPress.com for completing your blog setup. Here your blog URL will also be as close to your niche keyword as possible and will be yournichekeyword.blogspot.com

A great feature of Blogger.com is that the Advanced Setup allows you to create your blog right onto your website domain. This way you will not have to have the word .blogspot.com in the URL. Having blogspot.com in the URL will not hurt your search engine position but just doesn’t seem as professional as having your blog on a real domain.com

Advanced Setup is easy and all you need is the username and password of your hosting server. As you go through the setup process don’t hesitate to call your hosting provider if you have a question about anything regarding FTP. Your hosting provider should be quite happy to give you any information you need and will know what you are asking. They will most likely be very familiar with blogger.com and will know your exact needs.

A great feature of creating a blog at Blogger.com is that it’s easy to include your Adsense ads on your blog with a few simple clicks. To use this feature you will need to have an Adsense account at Google.com first. Blogger.com actually belongs to Google.com.

Another great feature of Blogger.com the simplicity of adding an RSS Feed to your blog. By having the RSS Feed on your blog visitors can click and add your blog to their list of favorite blogs so they can keep up with your new posts easily without having to constantly go to the blog itself. As a result you will want all Titles of your posts to be compelling enough to cause these people to choose to read the post for that day. By clicking on the title of the post, readers will be taken to your actual blog in one single click. If your title is not compelling they may skim past it and miss your valuable content since the title did not capture their attention.

Finally, let’s quickly touch on the ease of creating a lens at Squidoo.com Squidoo.com is a fabulous tool for you to create a blog-type website in minutes. You can use it as a blogging platform as well as an e-commerce platform. The search engines seem to favor Squidoo lenses so it is recommended that you create a lens at Squidoo.com at your earliest convenience in addition to your business blog so the Squidoo lens can link to your business blog. There are many great features and benefits for having a Squidoo lens – so much so an entire report could be dedicated to this topic alone. Meanwhile, at Squidoo.com the instructions are pretty self-explanatory for the basic Squidoo lens.

For now, though, just choose and get blogging! Start with WordPress.com and learn all you can there. Then move to the next if desired.

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If you like making Squidoo lenses, we are currently hiring freelance Squidooers on a work-at-home part-time basis. If you would like to get paid to build lenses with all the content provided, send an email to david(at)bigmoneyfreetime.com with "Squdioo Ledoux" in the subject line. Tell us about yourself, and with a link or two to existing lenses that you have built. We'll be in touch!
===================================

I was sitting at a poker table at the Green Valley Ranch in Vegas last week when I glanced up at the plasma flat screen on the wall. Good old Larry Kudlow was yammering with a bunch of CNBC "experts" on how easily America avoided the recession and laughing at the chicken littles who were crying that the sky was falling.

Of course, the real experts at the poker table were snickering. One old fart called Kudlow "a lying douchebag". Oil hit $122.50 a barrel that day. We were paying $3.86 a gallon for the cheap stuff at the pump.

What's the economy REALLY like?

Do you want to know what I found out about what's going on in the trenches where the real Americans are?

Let me know your thoughts.

Is there a real recession on? What's the impact on YOUR business?

Leave a comment below.

An Avalanche of Ideas - How To Manage The Mental Messages You Get Daily As An Entrepreneur.

You’re in your car on your way to an interesting gathering of business networkers. Your are imagining the conversation and what you want to say. As you practice your “script” in your mind, an idea pops into the script suddenly and you can’t write it down.

What can you do?

Develop a system that makes it effortless to keep up with ideas you feel have potential in your business. It’s important to allow ideas to surface and flow through you. As you know ideas can evaporate quickly.

There are several possibilities for getting these unexpected thoughts captured without pen, paper, or even computer.

1. You could call yourself and leave a message on your office phone, your cell phone, or your home phone. By doing this you will need to make sure you check your messages pretty quickly and get the ideas in writing or into your computer. This works until you have created a more efficient way to avoid the need to empty your idea messages as immediately as possible. If not captured they can be erased as well as blocking other messages when your voicemail may tend to fill up. Your idea messages can cause it to take more valuable time when trying to get to other saved messages also.
2. Grab a free conferencing line at Basement Ventures to record your idea. This service can be beneficial as well to use when speaking with colleagues and brilliant ideas service. By calling in to your conferencing line whenever talking business, the conversation is recorded so any unexpected brilliance can be retrieved later when neither of you remembers exactly how the concept was stated. How many times have you been in a mastermind conversation, said something profound, and when asked to repeat what you said, you have no idea what you said. Your state of mind was in a “zone” where you were not fully conscious. It’s an almost hypnotic state where your thoughts can soar unblocked by your conscious level critiques and inhibitions.
3. Send yourself a text message. Whether in your car at your computer, it is crucial to have a manageable system for capturing ideas that come up as you surf the internet or post to forums or social networking boards. Send the idea to your email with a subject line and body that is clearly a reminder about the idea.
4. As an added advantage use a phone service provider that offers a feature that transcribes your voicemail messages instantly. With this feature your idea is sent directly to your email. When using organizational features of your email software your ideas can simply be stored in an email ideas folder waiting for your consumption and application at your will. Some companies that provide this service are Vonage, GotVoice, SimulScribe and others. This technique is invaluable to you as an entrepreneur desiring to take your hands off the “work.” Famous real estate investor guru, Ron Legrand says, “The less I do the more I make.” Get your ideas in text instantly so your valuable time is not sidetracked by little “to do’s.”
5. Do your ideas and memos tend to be long and possibly wordy? If so, get a digital voice recorder. It can fit right into your pocket for constant, easy availability at any moment an idea, topic, or memo comes to mind. We recommend getting a recording device that works with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcribes your recordings into text. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will only transcribe one voice on a call and cannot transcribe other voices that do not access the phone line initially but call in after it has been opened.
6. And the simplest tool for capturing your ideas is to always have a small spiral note pad with you. Write down your ideas and as it fills up, file it and pull out a new one. Watch what happens when you begin to write your ideas and put them away. You just make wake up one morning with most of the ideas completed as you naturally draw toward any pathway that will lead to having your idea come to fruition.
7. My personal favorite is Jott.

Simplify your life.

As an entrepreneur you probably have an avalanche of ideas daily. Your mind is open and seeking new ideas. Your subconscious is awakened and listened to. As an employee you probably learned to block your ideas from rising up. You knew they would not be implemented or even acknowledged and desired in the usual J.O.B. type environment.

If you are new to being an entrepreneur and don’t have a flood of ideas yet, don’t worry. It’s only a matter of time before they surface. For now choose the technology that you feel most confident in and prepare to use it as your ideas emerge.

You couldn’t have been an entrepreneur in a better time in history than right now. Almost every obstacle, every strategy or technique, every task can be made more free and efficient by using technology that is virtually designed for the entrepreneur of today.

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