by Betsy Canevari

If you own a home based business, more than likely you are looking for creative ways to market your business. Thankfully with the internet, there is a whole online world just waiting for you! By creating an online marketing strategy you can essentially market your business for free and drive traffic to your site. And the great part is that most of these routes are few and don’t require a lot of time or effort.

Here are just a few simple ways to market yourself and your business online!

Blogs

A great way to get started is simply to start a Blog. A blog is completely free and is a glorified online journal. Blogger and Wordpress are two of the more popular hosts. Look around and see what you like and then just get started. Keep in mind the goal of your blog. Is it to promote yourself, your business or simply to talk about your daily life? You can start out slowly by just posting a couple times a week, however, if you really want to utilize your blog as a resource for traffic, make it a goal to post something worth reading on a daily basis.

by Angie Wenke

So you just spent a fortune opening your website and designing it, then countless hours adding your products and tweaking the site to make sure it is user friendly. Now the big question where are the sales? How many times have I been asked this question over the years?

This when I have to lay the unfortunate reality check on them. A good online business with a reputable reputation may take 2-5 years to develop a good customer base. This may be harsh reality for a lot of people, but it is better to be upfront and honest and realize even though your website may be awesome, and you may offer wonderful unique products. In a sea of Primitive and Country Craft websites yours may just be flopping out there hidden amongst them until your site is recognized.

Designing your website, picking out your domain name and adding your products are simply the beginning. You will need to look at your online business as a baby. A baby yes you heard me correctly. Over the next few months you will need to nurture and care for your website in order to see it grow. Meaning lots of hard work and advertising to obtain a good customer base. Let’s take the reality in that with a lot of love, hard work and determination your business will be huge success, just don’t expect it to take off overnight or you business will surely fail.

by Tessa Stowe

Have you ever had a potential client ask you to write a proposal or give a presentation only to respond with "Thank you for doing this and we'll get back to you at some time in the future if we decide to do something"? All that wasted time for nothing.

If only you'd known they were going to say that before you wasted all that time writing the proposal. If you knew they were going to say this, would you have written the proposal? So how do you find out what they are going to say? The way to find out what they are going to say after you have given them your proposal is to ask them the 'magic question' before you have spent time and money preparing the proposal. Simple really.

The 'magic question' is magical for two reasons. It's magical as it transports you both into the future (to the time when they have received the proposal you have yet to write) and it's also magical because much of the need for writing the proposal will vanish after you have asked this question.

by Tina Wells

Yep, you read it right! Stop promoting your business. How many times a day do you surf the net and see ad after ad full of hype. You just roll your eyes and go on about your day totally forgetting that you even saw those type ads. I know we all get so tired of flashy, big promise making, ads. Who are they kidding? I don’t know about you but I can’t seem to take those seriously.

On the other hand you see an ad that doesn’t appear to be promising the farm and has that “down home” appeal. You immediately click on it and see a “real” person’s site with “real” information that appeals to you. Wow the whole story about where they are from, how they got started, their family life- it’s all there in black and white. This immediately sets this person apart from all the internet hype. You read on and they even have a phone number where you can actually “reach” them! Now you’re really excited. You just don’t see it in that fashion these days.

by Barbara Ryan

So many marketing tactics, so little time! It can be overwhelming to accomplish all the marketing tasks in your business, but take notice of this high profile tactic to get your product noticed fast!

Entrepreneur moms who want to get noticed fast and make a lasting impression have a little trick up their sleeves: Product placement.

What is product placement? It is simply getting your product into the right person’s hands. Whose hands? Why, celebrities and industry leaders of course. Hollywood celebrities or so called celebrities or high profile people in your industry. These are the people who generate the buzz, start the trends, and influence the general population.

by S McIntyre

How you conduct yourself online can adversely affect you as a business person, professional or employee/employer. No one wants to be seen in a negative light so how you handle yourself online is very important.

Your words on screen can be seen by thousands of people every day. Search engines crawl and spider everything or almost everything. Even if you went back to edit your posts days later, it's possible search engines have already cached the pages that can be viewed like archives. The damage is done.

Lately, I've seen way too many topics on work at home forums become personal and heated debates. Angry words attacking the person's character and rebuttals injecting just as much sting like two children fighting on a playground. Many of us can get caught up in our emotions without thinking twice and without thinking about the repercussions. This is ill behaviour and it will hurt you and/or your business. What would this look like to your potential customers, business partners or employees/employers? Would you want to do business, employ/work for this person/company?