Email Marketing is a great tool that can increase many areas of your business including residual income, repeat purchases from current customers, lead generation, education to your current customer base and if your into network marketing like me, find future distributors and business partners.

For those of you who are brand new to the term, “email marketing,” it’s a way to create a following, or a list of people that have opted in to receiving emails from you or your company. In a sense, you are building a list of emails from people who might be interested in what you have to share. Now, you can probably agree that most don’t sign up for your email campaign to receive daily sales pitches to their inbox. That is the less effective way to email marketing. Just as it is with blogging, the way to promote your product or service is to offer something for free that is of value to your readers. They get something out of the deal first. They you can subtly offer your product or service.

Most people in your list will simply enjoy the “Free Value” of your efforts while others will take further action. And example offering a free newsletter with tips about making money from home. As you can see, I have an “Empowering Quotes” opt-in form to the right. There are many things you can do to offer something free and something of value.

Recommended email marketing software

But I’m not here to teach you how to do an email marketing campaign, there are tutorials all over the internet that can do that for you. I simply wanted to give you three different options, all with at least a 30 day trial period, to start your email marketing with. Each is unique in design and functionality.

1. AWeber – AWeber is the easiest one to use in my opinion. From creating emails to contact forms, the ease of use is second to none. They have tutorials guiding you step by step along the way. The first month is $1 and depending on your email list, the price starts at $20 per month.
2. Constant Contact – I just signed up for the trial. Most email marketing sites have a standard “enter your email” form that leads to a separate subscribe page where the subscriber can enter more details about themselves. This is one of them. I was referred to this one through my web hosting company, Ipower.com and has a free 60 day trial period.
3. Rate Point – This one is very similar to Constant Contact with a free 30 day trial.

In the income opportunity I am involved in, I use a tool called NorthStar to manage my email marketing campaign. It is only available to those who are part of my business. If I had to choose between the three listed here, Aweber is my choice over the other two and there are probably more options on the net. Do your research, get started on building your list of contacts and watch your business grow in ways it wasn’t before! Have fun with it and be creative in your marketing approach.

As many of you know I am a home based business entrepreneur and have been working from home for the last 5 years. Every once in a while I have people who want to know why I chose to get involved in a home business instead of doing some kind of brick and mortar business. The answer is simple, it’s all about lifestyle for me. I wanted so much more than just the bi-weekly pay check with two weeks of paid vacation. That’s a life of misery. I wanted financial freedom and the time freedom to enjoy it. I wanted to be at home, to be my own boss and set my own schedule. That’s why I choose to stay right where I am. It’s lucrative, it has given me lifestyle and I am my own boss. What more could you ask for?

So as you all know, a business requires marketing. I do several things for my marketing but my major source of lead generation is through my self-hosted WordPress blog. I share tips on mindset, personal development and business opportunity and by doing so, people naturally become interested in what I do. For me, it generates some of the highest quality leads one can get. If they like my content, chances are, they will enjoy my business as well. The perfect lead! Qualified with a common interest.

With my WordPress blog, I have certain plugins I use to promote my content and extend its capabilities. If you have any good ideas for new plugins, I’d sure like to try them out. They are as follow:

• Platinum SEO Pack – Prepares your blog for Search Engine Optimization
• All in one Adsense – Enables the all popular ad serving network of Google to place relevant ads on your site. I also use it to place a contact form directly following each of my blog posts.
• Twitter Tools – Connects your blog with your Twitter account and updates your Twitter account every time you publish a post.
• WPing.fm – This plugin makes ‘Twitter Tools’ and ‘Wordbook’ nearly worthless. It uses a service called Ping.fm to automatically send a status update every time a blog post is published with a link back to your post.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This doesn’t necessarily assist in extending my blog but is a very convenient plugin. The name should be pretty self explanatory.
• Vipers Video Quicktags – This makes posting videos to your blog posts easy!
• Google XML Sitemaps – This will aid you in a few things. It helps you track the health of your blog by seeing how Google, Bing and Yahoo search bots view your site. It also gets your site indexed with the major search engines quickly.
• Add to Any -This is a social bookmarking plugin that allows your readers to quickly share your content on various social sites around the web.
• Stray Random Quotes – I love quotes and love to share them. This is a plugin that will easily allow you to add quotes to your blog in various locations. Have the quotes rotate, stay the same or change with each visit.
• Wordbook – Updates your facebook account with every published, edited or revised post and/or page.
• Yet Another Related Post Plugin – Enables your readers to get deeper into your archived posts. It shows posts with similar tags and topics below the post they are currently reading.

Feel free to look them up in the “plugins” section of your WordPress back office to see what they do. Each of them play a significant role in my marketing campaign.

One of the beauties of being self employed is your ability to literally dictate your schedule as the day goes. This weekend is going to be a busy weekend for all of us parents. Today happens to be my oldest daughters birthday and this morning, my second daughter received her very first award in her school today. It’s nice to have the freedom to just go. No approval from the boss, no worry over losing paid work hours….just the freedom to go and do.

Now as you all know, it is Halloween today and if you have a family, with children, your weekend is going to be busy. Get out with your kids. Be young again and dress up. Have a blast! But as I have always said, be your business. With what I do, I am able to integrate my business into my lifestyle. So just because I am off during the holidays doesn’t mean I’m not generating revenue. That’s the whole point of a home business. It integrates itself with your lifestyle. Some of my best days, weeks and months in my business have come when out having fun.

You become your business. You can’t really sell it to anyone. The only value given to it is what you give to it. Live your life and throw your business around it. If you are open and alert, marketing opportunities will be available to you almost anywhere you go and with nearly anything you do. Should you choose to jump on Facebook to see what your friends are up to, if you are your business, people will start asking questions. Should you choose to go to the store, if you are your business, conversations will start and people will ask what you do.

With a pocket full of business cards and drop cards, an open mind and a smile, opportunities to grow your home business are abundant. But you have to be looking. Once and entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. In my opinion, if you are looking to get away from your business completely, the only option is to quit, sell it or get a job. The ones who are paid a wage can truly say, that when 6pm rolls around, they are OFF of work and don’t even have to think about it until the next morning the moment their alarm clock rings. With a business, it’s different. If it doesn’t consume you, within reason, you are probably getting mediocre results. The moment you allow yourself and your business mold together is the moment things start happening. That’s called passion.

So Happy Halloween everyone. As you are out tomorrow with your kids, look for opportunities. They will be everywhere!

Many of you know that I am part of many social networking sites on the net. Honestly, creating profiles on social sites has been a little addicting and before I knew it, I was part of several hundred social sites ranging from Home Based Business Communities to Personal Development Communities. Trying to stay somewhat active in all of them is quite frankly impossible.

One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to link all of these social sites with my blog so that when I published a blog post, it would show on my social profiles. Some social networks aren’t as advanced as others, so I wanted to pick several of the main ones I was active on. Some of the big ones are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. How could I update these places without having to do them all individually or without having to find a WordPress plugin for each individual social site?

Ping.fm

I discovered a site called Ping.fm that did exactly what I was looking for. It is a site that can send an update to all of these major social sites as well as many others simply by typing it on their website. All I had to do is configure my social sites on Ping.fm, enter an update and click “Ping It!” It keeps track of your character count for the character sensitive micro blogging sites such as Twitter. You can also choose what you want the service to do on any specific social site such as micro blog or status update.

So, the next task was to figure out how to update all of these social sites every time I post a blog entry with a link back to my blog post. Since I use WordPress software to power this blog, I found a plugin that works perfectly called WPing.fm. You can configure this plugin to update Ping.fm with the title and a link to your blog post. Very cool!

This one plugin has increased my readership to my blog and saved me so much time. I have made thousands of dollars from the readership I get from this service as well.

They are continually adding new social sites to their list so check back to Ping.fm frequently.

For me, I give it 5 stars out of 5.

If there is a better service out there, I would like to hear about it. Because as of right now, Ping.fm is it!

Generating leads is one of the easiest parts of my business opportunity. Every person I come into contact with during the day is a potential lead. I mean, think about it, how many conversations do you overhear that have to do with how much that person hates their job or isn’t happy with their life? One of the quickest ways to make a lot of money in my business is through your warm market, the people in your immediate world. Yeah, but how is it done?

Here are a few of the ways that Amy and I generate leads for our business while out living our lives.

1. Meet new people. Every time you meet a new person, what is the most common question that comes up? “What do you do?” Right!? “Well, I teach people how to make money working from home, here’s my card.” It is as simple as that. Of course, when you meet them you must say a bit more than just “hi!” If they don’t ask you what you do, ask them what they do and most likely, they will ask you back. If they are curious, they will ask more questions. That is a good thing!
2. Direct approach. While out and about, you may hear someone speaking with a very high energy or enthusiasm about life. That person may be a salesman, a bank teller, a grocery store manager or someone that works at a tire shop. If you feel they would have potential in your business, tell them. Say, “You know, you have a great energy about you. I work with a small group of people in a business that pays some pretty amazing profits. Someone with your energy would be amazing at it. You deserve to check it out. Here’s my card. Call me later if you’d like more information!” While doing this, you must be bold. You can’t look to the side like you are bashful or wishy-washy about your business. It’s all in the confidence you show. Be confident!
3. Drop Cards. I always carry a few drop cards with me everywhere I go. These can be business cards with a simple ad on the back or something that you can simply drop on the ground, place on a car or pin to a bulletin board. I specifically use a drop card that resembles a $100 bill. It works wonders. I think it also ticks people off when they find out it isn’t real! So it’s fun too! Place these cards in credit card slots at gas pumps, drop them on pay phones, leave them on the newspaper stand or just take a few out and insert them. There are a ton of places for drop cards.
   
4. Drive a very nice car! This is one of my favorite because it is effortless. Now, when I say to drive a nice car, I am not meaning a brand new Ford Escort! When I say a nice car, I mean something you don’t see average income earners driving. So get yourself a Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Denali, Escalade, or something with style! You won’t even have to approach anyone about what you do. It will be the most common question you get. “Wow! Nice car! What do you do for a living?” Trust me, in my business opportunity, the car will pay for itself over and over again!
5. Place an ad on your car. There are a few areas to place an ad on your car. The best place is right across the rear window with vinyl lettering. If you don’t want to be a mobile classified ad, simply put your website on the window. You’ll make money! I promise. License plate covers can be created custom with your website address as well, magnetic bumper stickers or signs for the side of your car work as well. Before we sold it, we drove around an H2 with vinyl lettering on the back window. And yes, we made a lot of money from it!

So there you have it. These are just a few ideas to aid you in your success. The biggest key to any sort of lead generation is your mindset. Confidence has a huge effect on your lead generation! If approached, be prepared to say something and say it like the successful entrepreneur you are. People are looking for a leader to teach them how to make it happen in their own lives. Either you can be that leader, or someone else will. Make it you!

There are two kinds of Entrepreneurs: Those who advertise for themselves and those who don’t! So it is obvious that you will get business for yourself if you advertise, so how do those who don’t advertise get business? Well, they bottom-feed, meaning, they click on your advertisements, listings, and classifieds and look for a phone number or an email address to market to. Some of them even take it to the next level and actually fill out your form, allow you to call them, the listen for a while and then they somehow try to turn it around and tell you what they are doing in hopes that you will catch an interest. Have you had this happen to you? Here you are, having a conversation about somebody else’s offer, knowing that they clicked on your PPC ad and cost you money, all just so that they could give you their pitch!

Bottom-feeding is the poor Entrepreneurs way to advertise and when all else is lost I guess it is an approach to consider, but it sure is annoying. It is a lot of effort, alot of time and chances are, you will get the cold shoulder more than not.

I had a guy call me the other day that flat out lied to me and it was obvious. He called me and said his name was Mark. I said, “Hi Mark, refresh my memory a bit as to where I know you from or what you are calling for.” He said that I had called him yesterday and that he was returning my call. Well, I hadn’t called anybody named Mark the day before. Good grief! If you are going to bottom-feed, at least be honest about it.

Integrity is a big part of who I am and reflects in everything I do so I hung up on this guy. He deserved it right!? If you think I’m wrong please feel free to let me know. I only work with like-minded people who represent integrity, truth, ambition, and an burning desire to succeed. I don’t work with those who deceive or twist the truth in any way.

Don’t be a bottom-feeder in your business. Show integrity in everything you do. It is so easy to be rude, unprofessional or out of character when communicating through email, text or the internet. Don’t fall into that trap. It will ALWAYS catch up to the ones who do!