One of the best things you can do for your home business in most cases is have your own website. Someplace where you can be you, a place to stand out. That’s not something you can do much of if you just use the basic website most network companies offer their consultants. If you want to do better, you need to put your own personal stamp on your own website. Will your network marketing company allow you to do that?

That depends, and it’s something worth checking on. Some companies absolutely do not want consultants to run their own, separate website about their products. Too many liability issues. Others are fine with it, just pay attention to the rules.

What I mean by your own website, of course, is your very own domain name and control of all content you put on it, not the basic yourname.thecompanysname.com that so many opportunities give you. The control you have over such sites is minimal, and you aren’t going to have much luck getting search engine traffic to such a website. It’s too much like every other free page the company has given every other consultant.

What Do You Put On Your Own Website?

If you can have your own website, don’t just imitate the pages of the free company sites you can have. The whole point of having your own website is to stand out – not just by the domain name, but by the content.

Start by reviewing company rules for individually owned websites. You don’t want to get kicked out of your business.

You should be able to talk about yourself at the very least. Give people reasons to like you as a consultant.

Hopefully you can also discuss the products. Share how you really use products. Be careful, however, in the claims that you make. Keep them real, things that can be proven. Don’t claim to cure things your product hasn’t been proven to cure.

Be careful with your disclaimers – do some research and figure out what you need to say. It may take a lawyer to get it just right, depending on the kinds of claims you’re making or information you’re sharing. At the very least, make your association with the company very clear, and that you make money on sales. Don’t hide it in the footer or in small print – these things need to be clearly visible.

Get Social

Check company rules on social media use as well. You may or may not be able to start a Facebook page for your business, for example, but you may be able to promote your business by posting a link to your site on your timeline or profile.

When you’re getting social about your business, remember to keep it interesting. Think about why people have friended or followed you. If it wasn’t specifically about your business, don’t post just about your business. Be the person you usually are, just with a business.

The post Do Network Marketing Companies Allow You To Have Your Own Website? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Joining a direct sales opportunity is one of the classic ways to start earning money from home. Lots of people venture into one such opportunity or another when they get started. It sounds so appealing after all, to build a business with great products and a downline to help you earn even when you don’t make the sale yourself.

There are a number of great direct sales companies you can join too. Some have been around almost since the time direct sales was a possibility, while new companies start every year. Companies come and companies go, making it vital that you choose a good one if this is how you want to make money from home. Losing your business because the company you order products from disappeared is hard, to say the least.

This isn’t the path everyone wants to take when they consider earning money from home. The sales aspect certainly doesn’t appeal to everyone, as most such opportunities have a significant aspect of selling in person as you get started, through holding home parties or by recommending products to people you meet. Many allow for an online aspect these days as well, but it’s not the focus for most. But many people wonder if there’s any other way to legitimately earn money from home.

There are many ways, of course. Some have been done pretty much forever, while others came about because of the internet, for example, daycare, writing, website designing, affiliate marketing, making and selling crafts, graphic design, selling photos, mystery shopping, customer service over the phone, telemarketing, data entry, working as a virtual assistant, technical support, computer programming, blogging, transcription, selling on eBay and other auction sites, running errands, bookkeeping, teaching… the list goes on.

The key here is to figure out what it is you want to do and what you can make money doing. From there you can figure out how to make it work.

You won’t always have to start your own business, of course. There are companies that hire people to work from home, and some of the jobs offer pretty good pay. They aren’t always easy, and they do require you to be professional in your work. If you aren’t visible to anyone else, that means being professional when you speak to people and doing quick, accurate work. Most work at home jobs pay on production in one form or another, so the better and more quickly you do your work, the better off you are. Just don’t sacrifice accuracy because there’s always a high demand for quality.

Running a home business whether online or in person means you must be willing to take the risk of never earning anything. Many fail, but if you succeed you may have a lot more flexibility, depending on the type of business you run. A home daycare operator is not going to have the same flexibility as an affiliate marketer, but one may be more suited to the type of work you’d like to do than the other.

Research Is a Key to Success

If you want to earn money from home successfully, research is the key to any chance you have of success with it. You have to know what you need to do. You can guess and throw yourself into the first opportunity that strikes your fancy, but you’re more likely to fall into a scam than wander into success. That goes whether you’re starting a business or searching for a work at home job.

There must be a match with your skills and interests. There must be a demand for whatever you’re going to do. You must know how you’re going to get things going.

Research also helps to keep your expectations realistic. That’s when you find out that no matter the promises made, you aren’t going to be earning six figures within months. It’s when you realize how much work is really involved. It’s also probably when some of your dreams are dashed by reality. If you had wild dreams of easy success, that’s probably a good thing.

The first thing to check in your research is how to get a start in whatever you’re going to do without getting scammed. Scams outnumber legitimate opportunities when it comes to earning money from home. It’s easy to fall for one. Pay attention and learn what you should be looking for to avoid the scams. Some of the basic signs include the promise of easy money, earning from recruiting rather than selling products, an unclear source of income, a fee for to apply for a job (businesses and information on running one usually cost money; applying for a job should not). When in doubt, ask around and see what others say.

You can avoid a lot of the usual scams if you start your own completely independent business. It’s not a scam to start a business writing for others or designing websites. You do, however, need to figure out how to get clients and make sure they pay you. There are a lot of great people running all kinds of businesses from home and you have to learn to deal with your customers and the competition.

Keep Trying

No matter what it is you choose to do to earn money from home, you’re probably going to have to work at it a while to see results. Just because you can, theoretically, work in your pajamas doesn’t mean it’s easy. You have to really put in the effort to get the results.

The post Can You Make Money From Home Without Going Into Direct Sales? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Two of the most popular home business opportunities right now are network marketing and affiliate marketing. It’s no wonder, with all of the hype that surrounds both of them. They both sound like a great way to earn an amazing living from home.

So which should you choose?

There’s really no one right answer that will suit everyone. It depends on you and what you want to do.

When to Choose Network Marketing

Most people who do network marketing are going to deal a lot more with customers, even if you run your business primarily online. You have much more responsibility for order fulfillment and dealing with customers with problems and without.

You’re more likely to want to recruit people into your downline as well as have customers. A downline means that you’ll be earning from their sales as well as your own, and this may go several layers deep.

When to Choose Affiliate Marketing

There are many ways to do affiliate marketing. It can be very hands off and impersonal if you like to run a lot of tiny niche sites. It can be deeply personal if you blog about the products you’re selling. Or anywhere in between.

As an affiliate you will only occasionally deal with upset customers. If you make a bad recommendation you’re more likely to hear about it. But the company who is selling the product is the one who takes all the orders and sends everything out. You don’t have to make yourself easy to contact, although it can be a help in making sales on occasion.

You will only rarely get residual commissions or downlines as an affiliate. However, so long as your links are valid it may be possible to keep making sales from them.

Affiliate marketing is often done entirely online. There are products you can offer in person and help the person to order online, such as SBI, but not many affiliates go this route.

You can offer just about anything as an affiliate. Join the Amazon Associates program and you’ll be able to offer just about anything on their site. Visit your favorite websites and check them for links to affiliate programs. You might be surprised at how many companies now have affiliate programs.

What About Combining the Two?

Some people combine network marketing and affiliate marketing. You can make sales to your downline that will help them to build their own business. Affiliate with a website hosting company, for example, and help your downline start their own website.

The Renegade Network Marketer is a great tool for people wanting to go this route. It’s not the traditional network marketing method yet, but adding an online presence is becoming more and more popular and important to really building a healthy downline.

Take Your Time

There’s no rush to pick the exact right home business. You may feel like hurrying, but you may be better off taking your time and really figuring out what you want to do. You’ll waste more time if you make the wrong choice than if you spend time thinking about what you want to do.

Remember, enjoy your business. Becoming successful in your own business requires passion, dedication and a whole ton of time. If you don’t have that, success is not going to come easy.

The post Is It Better to Start a Network Marketing Business or an Affiliate Marketing Business? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Despite being home pretty much all day, the one thing a stay at home mom needs from a home business opportunity is flexibility. Being home doesn’t mean lounging about watching soap operas and eating bonbons, after all. It more likely means chasing after kids, taking them places and keeping house. It can get pretty hectic.

Starting a home business is a good idea for stay at home moms. It helps to keep skills up. It can bring money in if the efforts are successful. It’s often fun. It’s a good example for the children.

So how do you find something that can cope with all the demands of a stay at home mom’s daily routine? Especially if that routine changes every few months, as it does for so many moms?

Here are some online business ideas and what makes them flexible:

Network Marketing/Direct Sales

Pretty much the classic! Stay at home moms have been getting into network marketing for a long time now, and it shows no signs of disappearing.

There are a lot of things you can do now in network marketing that you couldn’t do in the past, however. The internet has really increased your options. It’s not all about begging your family and friends to join your opportunity anymore.

Check out the 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing to learn more about how network marketing has changed with the internet. And check my direct sales/network marketing opportunity directory to see if any appeal to you.

Blogging

You can’t get much more flexible, although it can be quite demanding if you want to earn a living from blogging.

You can write at whatever time of the day or night, and most blogging software will let you schedule the posts you’ve written as far out as you’d like. You can start for free to see if you’d like it, but I strongly recommend getting your own hosting and installing WordPress if you’re going to treat it as a serious business in the long run.

You’ll still need to learn how to promote your blog, which can include tactics such as commenting on other people’s blogs, guest posting, article marketing, pay per click and much more.

Virtual Assistant

If you have a lot of office skills, being a virtual assistant can be a pretty good business. You decide which of your skills you want to offer, such as writing, customer service, data entry and so on.

There can be some time specific demands, however, especially if you promise to handle customer issues within a certain time frame or if you need to speak to people on the telephone.

Selling Products Online

This is a huge category. You can sell products you made yourself on Etsy, for example. You can sell products on eBay. You can do drop shipping.

Each of these has its own challenges, but what’s right for one person may not be right for the next.

Selling your own products means you’ll have to get to the post office or otherwise ship products out promptly. You’ll of course have much of the day to handle that, but it’s not something that can wait until the kids go to bed for the night.

Affiliate Marketing

Why sell your own products and deal with customers when you can sell someone else’s? That’s pretty much the idea for many affiliates.

Affiliate marketing can be a lot of fun as well as a lot of work. You can use blogging to sell products, or pay per click advertising, or article marketing, or create a product comparison website, or….

There are a lot of options out there.

The challenge is in finding the profitable niches. They’re out there but it’s not always easy to pick the right one, and it can take time to figure out what works. But you can work any time day or night, and that’s a pretty nice advantage.

Of course, you can succeed or fail in any home business, and there are other flexible options out there. Just because it’s flexible enough to fit your schedule and you enjoy it doesn’t mean you’ll make a living doing it. But it’s better to try than to say it can’t be done.

The post What Online Businesses Are Flexible Enough for Stay at Home Moms? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

You’ve found that perfect network marketing opportunity. You love the products, you love the plan, you love the people above you. Everything’s looking great.

Now you just need to get people buying products from you and signing up under you. So much to do.

Fortunately, many opportunities allow you to promote your business online. Not all of them do, and most have rules about what you may and may not do, so be careful and follow the rules so that you don’t lose your business.

Start a Blog

Well, it doesn’t really have to be a blog, but some sort of website under your own domain name, with your own words talking about your business and your products is really helpful. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to do that, especially if you aren’t into website design.

Get some quality hosting and install WordPress on your site. It’s really easy, and if you don’t want to do it manually, most hosts offer installation through Fantastico on the control panel. It’s not a big deal.

You’ll want to find a good WordPress theme that you can adapt to your own style. You may need to pay for help or buy a theme that is made to be changed around and work through it on your own. But you don’t want to look like hundreds of other sites if you can help it.

Then get started. Write about how to use your products. Be personal. Be honest. Be really honest, as you don’t want to be accused of making false claims. Be ready to back up any claims you do make. Once again, know the rules of your opportunity. And promote the opportunity.

Start an Email List

A blog or website really isn’t enough. You want to sign up with a good email service and have it send updates from your blog to subscribers. Some people may choose to subscribe via the RSS feed that WordPress blogs come up with, but you really need to offer them the email option. Not everyone uses or understands RSS.

The advantage is that you can offer email-only specials to your subscribers, things you don’t want to necessarily post on a blog because you’d have to take them down when they expire.

The other advantage is that it gives you more chances to make the first and future sales to your visitors.

Hold Drawings

Drawings can be a great way to build your email list and to bring people to your site. Offer a free product in your drawing, and include a catalog when you send it to the winner. There are many websites where you can list your free drawing. Try some and see who brings traffic to your site.

Whatever you do, know the rules and don’t be afraid to ask your upline for help when in doubt about something you want to do. It’s better to be sure that you’ll be all right and not hurt your business.

Read the 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing to learn more about what you should not be doing to promote your network marketing opportunity.

The post How Can You Promote Your Network Marketing Opportunity? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Network marketing has been around a long time. There’s plenty of advice going around about how best to build a downline and a customer base to help you succeed. But not everyone takes advantage of the Internet.

Sometimes it’s due to lack of comfort with it. If you don’t think you can make a good website, you’re probably not even going to try. If you assume that it’s beyond you, it will be…

At least until you give it a try.

Now the first thing you have to do is find out what the company’s rules are regarding marketing on the Internet. Some have very strict rules surrounding what you can do. You may not even be able to mention the company’s name. Others provide you with a website you can sell through.

But even if they provide you with a website you need to build one of your own. Replicated websites don’t attract their own traffic. They also don’t allow you to show your personality, yet your personality should be one of the key factors to recruiting a downline. You want people to want to work with you.

Fortunately there are many ways to create a quality website even if you haven’t tried it before. Blogging is very popular, with WordPress being the most popular software. Once you have a theme selected, all you have to do is write your posts.

Well, that and market your site.

It may seem that you’re adding to your work by adding a site. Now you have a business opportunity and a website to promote. However, since the one promotes the other it’s not as bad as it may seem.

There are lots of opportunities to promote your website. Twitter is getting very popular with marketers. You have 140 characters to express yourself in. You can’t just market your business and expect people to follow you, but if you’re interesting people will take a look at those times you include links.

You can market on forums, write articles, pay for ads, whatever suits your style, just so long as you know when to sell and when to offer advice.

The beauty of it is that you can interact with people all around the world, rather than being limited by the number of people you interact with each day. You have a much better chance of finding people who might be interested in your opportunity.

Better yet is that some of them will be looking specifically for it.

A big part of network marketing is that you can choose to sell something you are really passionate about. Let that show in your Internet marketing activities and you improve your chances of building a really great business.

There’s a lot more you can learn about what you’re doing right and wrong with your network marketing opportunity. Read The 7  Great Lies of Network Marketing and think about where you can take your business.

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