A simple strategy to attract more buyers for your business. If you have a business or starting one then you know that it is important to have the ability to attract qualified leads on a consistent basis for your business.
NO LEADS EQUALS NO PROFIT STREAMS
Effective marketing does not have to break your bank nor does it have to be rocket science. Let me ask you a question. Why would people want to sign up to your list. What’s the reason that would make them do so?
ITS PROVIDING VALUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE
Marketing has changed. Old method of money driven economy is no longer valid. We live in a world of empathy. People are looking for value, authenticity, uniqueness and trust. When we provide value, we equally attract leads we want to do business with.
Your tip today for effective lead generation is to position yourself as an authentic leader in your industry. How do you become that?
Well! Provide valuable tips and content to your audience related to your business. Providing value builds your reputation. Your audience starts building trust, they start liking you and your tips. And guess what they want to learn more about you, your products and services. They want to know how you can help them.
BAM! You just made a lead. Isn’t it awesome.
I hope you get the point. Provide value, give away free gifts, tips and videos.. Your audience will love you for doing so. This is called empathy driven economy. Providing value first and then making sales.
If you are interested in more lead generation tips and in-depth training, check out the Magnetic Sponsoring, you will receive 7 free boot camp videos to learn how to generate leads for your business effortlessly. Why invent the wheel, when the system is already there for you to leverage.
Would you believe that my 4 year old daughter transformed my life style? It is still hard to believe but those 6 little sweet words struck me hard in my head.
“Dad you are never at home”
But before, I tell you my story, I want to let you in to why I am writing it in the first place. I keep hearing these stupid excuses all the time and it really frustrates me.
“It’s too late, my life is ruined”
“I won’t be able to succeed”
“My life is doomed”
“Oh you were lucky, I don’t have luck”
I keep telling my friends, colleagues and the people around me that “Nothing is Impossible in life”. Here is what I think and a firm believer of:
“If you have the will power to succeed, then you can achieve anything in life”
Ok let’s get to my story now.
The story goes back to 2002; this is when my transformation started. But I will go back a bit further to how I was and what happened next. It will make you understand why it was so important to change the life I was living.
In 1989, while I was working in my country Bangladesh for the French Electricity Company, I was offered to work at the head office in France.
I jumped on the opportunity and was enjoying the new life style in France. I had a nice pay, company accommodation and 4 return trips a year back to Bangladesh. What could someone ask for more!
Unfortunately, this happiness lasted only for 5 years until Dec 1994, when I was made redundant. The life had to continue, my wife joined me in France from Bangladesh in January 1995, and being unemployed, you can imagine how difficult it was to live a decent life.
I did not lose hope. I decided to take up the 1st job that came my way. In Aug 95, I finally managed to get a job as a barman in a big restaurant but the salary was minimum wage. But what the heck! At least I had money coming in.
After 3 months, I got a chance to become a waiter. This post was interesting as my salary was based on the percentage of Sales value and the extra was the tips you made. In some months it could amount to 30% – 40% of your basic salary. Money was good so was life.
We had our 1st daughter in October 1998. I was filled with joy and excitement. My daughter meant everything to me. Things started getting better for me. In 2000, we bought our 1st property, a 2 bedroom apartment. Before that we were living in a 1 bedroom apartment and now it was time to get to a bigger space for my daughter.
My job as a waiter continued in the restaurant. I was doing night shift. My day would start at 3pm and would end at 1am in the morning. I came back home at 2 am and slept till 9am in the morning. My day off was Monday and Tuesday.
Until now, I am sure you are saying when did my 4 year old daughter transform my life! Patience my friend, I am about to reveal to you right now!
It started in April 2002, my daughter was hardly 4 years old and started schooling as in France the children start pre-school at the age of 3.
So what happened?
Well, as I worked night shift and had holidays on Monday and Tuesday, I hardly saw my daughter. I was at home while she was at school.
Then one day, she looked into my eyes and asked the question “Dad, why are you never at home”. Tears ran down my eyes. I hugged her and said that I was sorry because I had to go to work. How could you make a 3 year old understand what work is?
Later, I started thinking. I said to myself
What am I doing?
What life am I leading that I can’t even give some time to my daughter?
What was the point of working and earning money if I can’t share the joy with my family?
Since that day, I became restless, deep in my thoughts, I was cursing myself. I need to change; I have to find a way to get back to a normal life.
The only way out of the restaurant life and odd working time was to rehabilitate myself. So I decided to take up further education. But if I go back to college then that means I won’t be able to work and that means no food for the family. So what do I do!
I kept researching for student scholarships for adults. After a month’s extensive search, I found the ideal course for me. But there was huge competition for the scholarship. “Heck, if you don’t try then you will not know if you will succeed”. Taking action and trying was more important than anything else.
So I took the entrance exam. Guess what! To my surprise, I was selected. Well, here is a start of a new life!
So for the next 1 year, I went through an intensive training course. The course and my salary for a year were fully subsidized by the scholarship. I worked hard. I was determined to succeed.
In May 2003, I achieved my Professional Qualification as an Accounting Technician and in September 2003, I was employed by the Practice where I did my 3 month internship.
Now, I enjoy my evenings and week-ends with my daughter and I see her growing up each day.
So what is the moral of this story?
I am a firm believer of these words “Where there is a will, there is a way”. If you really want to succeed in life then you have to ask for it. Nobody will give it to you in a silver plate. I was desperate to change my life and I have succeeded. Guess what my age was then. I was 37 when I took up my studies. So the age should not be a barrier or excuse.
I did not stop there. In 2006, at the age of 41, I moved to Ireland to get higher degree in Accounting and now I enjoy a better career achievement, respect and money.
There is no end to learning. In 2009, I took an interest in internet marketing. Well, the current economic conditions make you look for additional income and so did I.
I have built up a few websites around the passion I enjoy sharing with others “computers” and “cooking”. They are growing gradually. I am not yet an internet success but I am getting there with baby steps.
Success comes by sharing and I want to help as many people as I can through my stories and experience.
We all need a bit of guidance, a tap on the back and a lot of encouragement. I have learned from others and would love to pass it on to you.
I hope my story will inspire you and motivate you to take action. You know it is never too late.
Learn these 3 Ways to Get Noticed with Internet Marketing. In order to promote or sell something online, first you must get yourself noticed. Here are some internet marketing tips that will help you get noticed so you can start making some profit.
Start Blogging
You can start building rapport and credibility as an expert by blogging about your skills, experience or passion. WordPress.org platform is the best known blogging tool out there. By building a blog on a targeted niche, you will be able to attract targeted audiences to your blog. People love to read about good stuff and through blogging you can attract people that are interested in your topic.
Submitting Articles to other blogs
Another way of creating your online presence is by writing blog posts as a guest. If you don’t have a blog and would just like to promote your product then you can add a link to your author resource box linking back to your website in the articles that you submit to other blogs.
Writing for other blogs is not that easy and you would not want to submit to low ranked blogs. It is best to do some research and look for high authority blogs with a good PR.
But getting accepted in high authority blogs is another challenge. You can always contact the owner of the blog and submit an article for review. If the article is of good quality, then the owner will publish the article on their blog. Don’t make your article a sales pitch but rather give them good content that will educate your readers. Build curiosity to get them to click that link in the resource box.
Set up link exchanges with other websites
Building back links is very important for any website/blog. You can contact other websites related to your niche topic and set up link exchanges with them.
The more links you set up the better you will get recognized by the Search Engines. The drawback of this technique is that not all websites agree to do exchange links, especially if your blog/website is new. Obviously, they would like to get also good link juice back to their sites. Everyone is looking for high ranking sites.
My advice would be to start with websites that are in the same level as you are and then gradually scale it up to the next level.
Commenting on Popular Blogs
Yet another method highly used by internet marketers is commenting on popular blogs. Commenting is an excellent method for leaving a link back to your site.
Many bloggers will delete your comment if it is not relevant to the article. It is best to leave a good comment relating to the article if you don’t want your comment to reach the trash or spam folder. If they like what you write then your comment will get accepted thus generating for you a good back link to your blog.
I receive tons of spam comments daily, luckily my Akismet plugin takes care of it by sorting the comments as spam. I only approve comments that I feel is relevant to the topic.
You can get hold of the Akismet plugin direct from WP dashboard (when you install a new wordpress blog, plugin is already installed). In order to activate the plugin you have to open up a free account at WordPress.com, then insert the api key that they provide in the Askimet setting.
Be aware that there are number of SEO guys out there working for you to get back links for your blog. If you have a blog then you will notice that many of these just comment to get a link back to their sites. Don’t be like them or your comment will get deleted.
Conclusion
These are some of the methods I use to get myself noticed. The method the most used by me is commenting. And I can really see the results when I look into the stats. As I am in the blogging industry, I write comments on various blogging sites. The stats do not lie when I see how many of these sites have referred my blog. People are curious and when they see your comments they will visit your website. Honestly I do the same myself.
So do apply these methods and get yourself known to the world. Apply them consistently and you will see the results coming in gradually.
If you like what I post then please do leave me a comment, I would appreciate it if you can share with your friends on Facebook and twitter also.
Literally every website or blog needs to increase web traffic. Web Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business, without it you will not be found.
You can have the best blog design made or the fanciest looking blog but if you don’t get traffic, your blog is worthless. Your primarily goal for your blog is to drive traffic.
I admit it is not a mere task but if done wisely and consistently we can achieve tremendous results in a short period of time. The main key to success having consistency in what you do. The problem with many users is they give up easily not seeing results. There is no magic formula. You have to try and test and try and test and see what best works.
Miracles don’t happen overnight but yes they can be accomplished. Nothing is impossible if you have the motivation to do it.
If you are just beginning, then you want to use methods that don’t cost you money. Yes, starting an online business can be very challenging. I would like to share with you some free traffic methods to increase web traffic for your blog:
Keywords Search
Before writing your article, it is important to do some keyword research and find the keywords related to your topic. Many make a mistake of searching for high demand articles. If you are just starting out then go for the low demand articles. You can also make a variation of low/high demand.
Keep in mind that it is easier to rank in the search engines where there is low competition. The high demand articles will have high competition and it is will require a lot of work to get your article ranked for that keyword.
Although there are very good tools out there online, even the Google Adwords Free Keyword Tool will give you excellent results. In addition to Google’s free tool, I also use Market Samurai. Market Samurai gives you extra bit of information about the different keywords which is limited with Google’s tool.
Hint: When looking for keywords do an Exact match search, this is what the people type when they are looking for something and target those keywords rather than Broad or Phrase match
It is important to use the keywords in your Title Tag, first paragraph, a couple of times in your body content. Don’t stuff them with keywords; it will only make it worse for you.
Building link backs with Article Directories
Post your articles to different directories. There is confusion about duplicate content. Some say that Google will severely penalize you if they find duplicate content. Actually this is only in the case if you have exactly the same content in two different web pages in your website.
It is still better to create variations of your articles and post them to different article directories and link them back to your website.
Social Media Platforms
In today’s world, social media can play a vital role for your website. The friendship that you build in these different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace can be different. What I mean by that is you may have friended John in Facebook and you have Tom following you on Twitter.
The best way to get your article out to your friends and followers is to let them know. So do post your articles in these social media platforms each time you post an article on your blog.
You are bound to get visits from people who have shown interest in what you do. Social media will not bring you visitors but will also build credibility. You will start building relationship with your readers and this will result in repeat visitors.
There are various other methods to increase web traffic. Some of which are interacting in forums, commenting on other blogs related to your niche, etc… These again create backlinks back to your website. Well, this will be for another day.
Hope you appreciate these methods. They are free and may take some time to develop, but in the long run you have nothing to lose. Not a penny to spend and a lot to gain.
My apologies to my humble readers for not being present and posting here. Since December last year, I have been facing some serious problems in my professional and personal life. As many of you know that I am a finance pro and I love my profession. Internet has been for me a passion and my hobby. It is something I like to spend my time on rather than being lazy in front of the TV. Although, I do make a money out of the online world, my day job is yet my primary source of income.
Last year, I decided to move back to France from Ireland. In February, this year I quit my job and in March I was back in Paris. Honestly, I should say in this present economy, I was lucky to find a job so quickly and it is a great company to work for. It is one of the world’s best fashion design company « La Haute-Coûture » as we say in French.
The Salary is excellent and all the benefits that go with it. I should say there was nothing to complain about. But here comes the sad part. Even with this good job, I can’t afford to bring my family in France. When we decided to leave Ireland, we had planned to rent out our house as with the present economy, Ireland has taken a big hit and the housing prices have gone way down beyond expectations.
Today, I will be making a loss of 160k€ if I try to sell the house. I am not the only one; every single owner is facing this horrible crisis. The worst thing is that I can’t even rent it today as many, like me, have thought of moving out of the country.
My house is located 70 km from Dublin and hence quite far to commute and you can guess now, no tenants to rent to. Irish news has stated that about 1000 people are leaving the country each month. So who is left behind, the poor land owners who can’t rent or sell, someone like me.
The saddest part is that as I can’t rent, I can’t bring my family. Paying the mortgage premium and the rent for a flat (very expensive in Paris) is out of the question.
The Decision Time
After a lot of thought, today, I resigned from my Paris job and am heading back to Ireland in a month’s time. Yes, honestly the decision was not easy for me but looking at the circumstances, I think it is more reasonable and a priority to save my house at the moment.
No job in hand but yet a lot of hope. Sometimes, we just have to make sacrifices and take serious decisions for the well-being of our dear ones and for the future.
And the great news, I will be able to get back from my bachelor life back to my family life once again and also spend more time on my blog.
Do you think I made the right decision? I would love to get your feedback and comments.
Hi! I'm Nurul Chowdhury, a Business Coach here to help you transition from your 9-to-5 to successful online entrepreneurship. This blog offers practical tips and guides on everything from launching your online business to starting a profitable blog. Get ready to transform your skills into a thriving digital venture!
