Online Marketing 101 - Home Based Business Opportunities Turn Successful

More and more people are considering home based business opportunities, bearing in mind unemployment rates are their highest in decades 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, you must learn how to market online. The good news is that using 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 doingThis article will give you 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 Wholesale Knives rankings, LinkedIn, YouTube, Keyword Research, tags, and the list goes on. There is so much information, it can make an online marketing virgin's head spin and feel so overwhelmed and anxious, they want to give up. Don't give up! This article is going to be immensely helpful to you.Let's turn back time to before the internet. If you were in a business to sell a product or service, you most likely had a brick and mortar location.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 Wholesale China (AKA traffic) 2. Convert visitors into buyersGetting Visitors to WebsitesGenerating 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 widespread is because they are fast, incredibly effective and FREE. So, clearly, these are outlets worth paying attention to, if your budget is limited. Converting Visitors into CustomersConverting your traffic into customers is the name of the game. This is where winners and losers are identified. 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, figured out a system that is very effective 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. This is free material that draws in the website visitor and will help him or her solve the problem they were searching on. Your website offers this piece of information, for free, in exchange for a name and e-mail address, and perhaps other contact details. When the website visitor completes the form, 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 immediately 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 present or recommend products, that simply add to solving the initial problem for which they visited your website. Most sales funnels progress from smaller ticket items moving towards your big, profit making item. 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 important 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, top-earn-secrets.com.