Sunday, April 15, 2007

How to Find the Right Networking Marketing Opportunity

You finally decided to join the thousands of others who work from home. The home business you decide to pursue is network marketing. Now, before you just up and join any network marketing company that looks good on the surface, seems to have a good product, etc. and so forth, STOP! Why stop? Because there are crucial steps you need to take to avoid being in the 93% failure rate of most people who join a network marketing company. Follow these tips and you will way ahead of many other home-based business opportunity seekers. Tip #1: Commit to doing your research FIRST. I can't say enough how important this is. Starting a home-based business is a big decision and should never be done hastily and without careful thought. Commit to doing 5 or 6 hours of research on a number of companies. This one simple tip can greatly increase your level of success and save you years of frustration, being scammed, and most importantly, quitting. Tip #2: When looking at a network marketing opportunity, make sure the product the company promotes meets the needs of a hot and hungry market. In other words, whatever company you are looking to join, make sure there are people out there clamoring for the product and would buy it even if there were no business opportunity associated with it. You see, many people get so emotionally attached to a product or outcome that they totally miss the importance of seeing if there is even a market for it. If there is no market, you will have no success at all. Tip #3: Use Overture. When researching if there is a hot and hungry market for a product, Overture.com is a great way to see how many people are searching for any particular product or service in a given month. If your research shows only 1,000 people are searching for a product, it would be a waste of time for you to join a network marketing company that sells it. However, if you see searches for 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 or even more, you are on the right track! Tip #4: Check out the competitors of a product. Go the search engines Yahoo, Google, and MSN and look at the first 10 companies that are listed. If the first 10 are the same company, it's not good. However, if there are a variety of companies selling the product, this is good because it means that there is more of a demand for it. Tip #5: Use Overture's bid tool. By doing this, you will be able to see if there are many people interested in a product and how much they are willing to pay per click to have folks come and visit their site. If there isn't a lot of bidding going, that's a bad sign. If there are quite a few people bidding on a specific term related to the product the network marketing opportunity promotes, that is a very good thing. These are simple strategies and tools you can use to research if the network marketing opportunity is worth your time and money. If you follow these tips, and your research shows the home-based business opportunity is worth pursuing, go for it!

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Work ON Your Business, Not IN Your Business

Business owners everywhere are working seven days a week, struggling to sell their products and services, as well as attending to all the daily tasks of keeping the business going. The paperwork alone can be a full time job. Few seek help, often saying, "I can't afford to hire someone...I barely make enough to pay myself!" The truth is, you can't afford not to hire help for those mundane tasks. This is especially true if those tasks require expertise you don't have. Every minute you spend learning how to do something is precious time you could be spending on developing your business. Self-made millionaire, Cory Rudl, said the best business decision he'd ever made was to hire someone to help him. Although he was paying out almost half his earnings to his employee, that move freed him to develop his business into a money making machine, to the tune of millions of dollars. You can do the same for your business, and it won't cost half your earnings either. By creating "mini projects" you can hire a freelancer to do those routine chores and pay them for the hours you need them. Creating those mini projects will take some effort at first. It means you have to stop and think before you tackle a task, "Is this something I have to do myself, or can I delegate this to someone else?" Even after getting started on a task, it's important to be aware of your time spent - if it takes you too long to do it, you're wasting your time! That's the signal to hire a freelancer who can do the job for you. Although many freelancers can come to your business office, you can save even more money with "virtual assistants." The craze for virtual assistants has taken the Internet world by storm. Virtual assistants are capable, competent people in every country who are looking for work they can do from their own office. And their rates are incredibly low. For $2 or $3 per hour, you can have your website developed, all your QuickBooks transactions entered, have a software program developed to make your life easier...the options are endless. For a few more dollars per hour, you can hire the best available copywriters, marketing gurus, graphics designers...you name it. The key is to define your mini project, decide what you're willing to pay to have it done and get the word out. The Internet is a great way to get the word out about your project. Websites such as www.GetaFreelancer.com, www.ScriptLance.com, www.Elance.com and www.RentaCoder.com have hundreds of professionals eager to work. Post your your mini project on these websites and you'll have 20 bidders or more in a few hours. In a very short time you'll be able to choose the best qualified professional for your project at your price. So, if you're working in your business, doing everything from sales to bookkeeping, decide now to get help. If you want your business to grow, you can't afford not to.