Finding good leads is always a problem no matter what you are selling but it is doubly difficult in a competitive market place like business opportunities. There are a few basic ways to get business opportunity leads and we will discuss them below. The thing to remember when you are developing business opportunity leads programs is you can either target a lot of low quality leads or you can go after a smaller number of people who are more likely to sign on to your program.
A good business opportunity lead that is more likely to convert is worth a lot more than a “tire kicker.” A tire kicker is someone who is always looking for free information to feed their dreams about starting their own business which they never quite get around to doing. Although your lead may not actually have to start the business they are interested in they must at least be willing to pay for the information that is provided. If they aren’t willing to pay then you are not running a lead generation business, you are running a charity and that does not make much money for you.

One of the best methods for business opportunity lead generation is to offer some small item in order to get the potential customer’s contact information. You see this all the time on the web, you will land on a site and they offer you a free 7 day course, or a free 47 page ebook but in order to get them you must enter your email address. Then starting the next day, or maybe even that same day, you start to receive email messages with a little bit of information and a lot of selling. You have become a lead by giving away your email address. This is actually a tactic borrowed from the direct mail marketing industry. Many direct mail offerings make no money, the goal is to break even but to generate a list of names, then the real money is made by continuing to mail to the list of names who already responded. These are very hot leads because they have already committed some money to the program and once a person puts a little money down he is very likely to continue to do the same thing.

Actually there have been a lot of direct mail marketing tricks and tactics applied to online business opportunity leads generation. Another method is to offer a very enticing intro to a possible business but leave some mystery as to what the business is. You would be amazed at how many people can’t stand to leave a mystery alone and will do anything to find out what the answer is. This includes giving you their name and address in exchange for information on the business plan.

If you are planning to buy a home business opportunity lead list then be careful where the names actually came from and how they were collected. There are several levels of names and only the top levels are worth dealing with. The worst list is just a general list of names and addresses that have been collected from who knows where. They could be lifted out of a phone book for all you know. The chances of these people being interested in your product or service are about zero.

The next level of leads are people that have responded to some call for more information. These people could have applied for information on about any subject. So, although they are at least actually looking for something, the chance that it is a business opportunity are very slim. The third level is people who have actually bought something online or through the mail and their names have been generated through this process. These people are willing to put money up but they may not be at all interested in your business.

The top group of business opportunity leads are people who have shown a willingness to find out more about your type of business opportunity. This is a very warm lead because they are interested in your subject but they may be only tire kickers looking for some free information. The hottest list is people who have actually purchased business opportunity literature or programs before. These customers are interested in business opportunities and they are willing to pay money to get the information or knowledge they desire. Now it is just up to you to go out and sell them on why your program is the best.

It really is not worth your time at all to go after a business opportunity lead from a general list. You will get some converts but you will get a lot of rejections. You are better off actually going after the higher quality lead. They are a little harder to get but it is well worth it when you look at conversion rates.

]]> http://www.onlinechristianbusinessopps.com/generating-business-opportunity-leads/feed/ 1 http://www.onlinechristianbusinessopps.com/online-business-etextooks-are-a-great-resource/ http://www.onlinechristianbusinessopps.com/online-business-etextooks-are-a-great-resource/#comments Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:46:39 +0000 Andy http://www.onlinechristianbusinessopps.com/?p=162 I have always been interested in business books as I find doing business and commerce to be very interesting. There have been some real great books written over the years that can give one a very good idea of the ins and outs of what it takes to run a successful, long term business. When I was a young man my father-in-law gave me a set of business management books he had acquired during his 40 year tenure as an executive of some of the biggest US companies.

I read every one of them and I must say they gave me a very good foundation as I was just starting out in business and learning how to manage both others and myself. Over the past 30 years I would have to say things really haven’t changed that much although many MBA’s have fooled themselves into believing that the basic of business have changed and that has lead us into decline in this country. We no longer strive to make the best product for the our customers instead the whole game has become how to trick our customers into buying the inferior products we imported from China or India. Hopefully, the new generation of business managers will understand that there are things more important than next quarters numbers and that building a long term relationship with your customers really is the basis for a successful company.

One of the great advances in passing on the time honored business ideas is the business etextbook. You can easily load several books into your reader and then have them at your fingertips at any time. Today’s men and women in business do not have the luxury of specializing in one discipline, they have to be able to wear several hats during their work day. I find having a few different business ebooks going at the same time helps me to keep my mind flexible. If I have a marketing book, a personnel book, a finance book and a strategy book all at my fingertips then I can easily open the one for the area I need some inspiration for at that time. It is really a great way to make the time pay while waiting for your flight and also at cruise altitude.

The current ebook readers are light weight and very easy to view with the new screens. I think within the decade the vast majority of all reading will be done electronically because it really does make the most sense. Finding a good selection of etextbooks can be a hassle but that is changing. If you are interested in making the most of your study and reading time then visit the link above and start on your way to relearning what the master business builders have known for centuries.

The first model involves selling information usually in the form of an ebook or a report. This is the classic way money is made online because it has almost no overhead. The way it works is you develop a website and then from that site you sell people on the idea of buying your report. When they buy it all you have to do is send a computer file; there are no physical products to handle. This was the number one way of commerce on the web for many years. It was especially effective selling to the make money online crowd. The problem is about the only people who made any money off these programs was the people who sold them.

The next model is called affiliate marketing. With this online home based business plan you still have a web site and you still have a sales page but you are actually selling other people’s products instead of yours. You can sell someone else’s ebook or you can sell physical products through your site. The beauty of affiliate marketing is you don’t have to touch the product. Generally you just send your visitors to the sales page for the affiliate program and then if your customer buys the product you get a cut of the sales price. This was also kind of shady at the beginning but now very large companies such as Amazon and Ebay offer affiliate programs that can be very lucrative. You just have to get people to your site and then convince them to visit the sales page. You then make a commission off of every sale you make.

Another way to do business is to actually sell a hard product. You can easily build a big business by doing this but it is much harder than selling electronic products or being an affiliate. You have to worry about inventory and shipping and many more employees. This can work well as a work at home job but be sure you know what you are getting into.

With all of these online home based business opportunities there is one thing in common. You need to get customers to your site. If you are looking for a system that gets you all the free traffic to your site you want then you need to see what Courtney Tuttle has to say at The Keyword Academy. This is the top notch method for getting customers. You can see everything he has to offer for just $1 for the first month. Once I started applying Courts methods my income absolutely exploded. Check out The Keyword Academy today if you want to learn how to find the most important part of any business, CUSTOMERS.

This is really not true. In fact, if you think the internet offers a completely new way to do business then you really don’t understand what an online marketing business opportunity really is. You still have all the basics of running a business whether it is a mom and pop gas station or a multi-billion dollar corporation. You must have a customer base with a need, or a perceived need, and you must have some way of satisfying that need for the customer that he or she views as a reasonable deal. Doing business on the internet has not changed that at all.

The key to understanding online business marketing is to start with the premise I just mentioned. You must have a customer base which is looking for some solution. It could be a way to make money online, it could be information for a health issue, it could be the latest song or the most up to date fashions. It doesn’t matter what, as long as there is a need of some type. Now that is not to say that you can’t create that perceived need. This happens all the time in advertising whether online or off. You see this a lot in big national campaigns that are geared toward making people realize they had a problem when before they didn’t even know they were lacking something.

But an internet online marketing advertising business will not do this any differently than a business that is based in the brick and mortar world. The fundamentals are exactly the same.

The thing to remember about the internet is it is just a medium that we use to get to our goals. Nothing more. It does not represent a fundamental change in the business structure. It is not a new way of doing commerce. All the web offers is another vehicle for reaching the customer either before the need is perceived or after he is looking for a solution. There have been billions of dollars wasted on ill conceived business plans because this fundamental truth was not realized. People thought that the web was something different than an advertising business. Internet marketing online is nothing more that a very targeted and very effective way to reach individual customers which we have never had before. In that respect it is revolutionary but this does not change our business fundamentals in the least.

Understanding these truths

1. you still need a customer
2. you still need the customer to have a desire
3. you still need to have a solution for the customer
4. you need a way to deliver that solution

allows us to approach an online marketing business with our eyes open. The only thing the web offers is a very effective way to accomplish number four.

Here is a prime example of what I am talking about. How many people do you know who sell things on ebay? Probably a lot. But how many of them make a full time income while they work part time hours? Probably not too many. So why is that? Why can’t they make the kind of money they desire? Because they don’t know the tricks the pros use to make a a good profit.

For example, a buddy of mine has a business as a ticket broker. He didn’t start out making a lot of money but he does now. Why? Because he learned the tricks of the trade. If you want to see how someone took a simple idea, selling tickets on ebay, and turned it into a full time income business then check out his site how to become a ticket broker. He likes to talk about his successes which is good for you because he really gives away more of his secrets than he should. Check out what he has to say and then come back here for the rest of the post.

On Mark’s website he gives you the scoop on how he quit his job and turned a hobby into a full time income in no time once he learned the trick the pros use. Don’t you think this could help you to build a work at home business like he did and spend less time working every day and enjoying it more? Often times it is just one little tip that makes the difference.

There are literally millions of ideas like this on the internet just waiting to be tried. All you have to do is have an idea and then implement it like my friend Mark did. Before you know it, you could be working just a few hours a day like he does.

This is going to be one of the biggest growth industries in the next decade so if you are looking for some sort of business opportunity to get into you should definitely think about solar applications of any kind.  I think the biggest possibilities lie in areas where existing technology is utilized to improve our energy usage.

For example, gardeners have been using the rays of the sun to heat their greenhouses for years so why don’t we use that idea in other places.  One big user of energy is water heating and in particular swimming pools and spas.  By utilizing a solar swimming pool cover you can use the sun to heat the water and it also traps the heat already in the pool so you aren’t just radiating it away.  Think of the money to be made outfitting every swimming pool in the US with a solar cover.

By thinking up new applications like this we can go a long way toward building sustainable business opportunities.

Home Business Online Opportunity

We haven’t even begun to see how the internet is going to change the ability of people to reach new customers. One of the fastest growing economies in the entire world is in India. They have about a billion people and many of them are online everyday with thousands more being connected to the web each day. This is a tremendous market considering it is over three times as large as the United States population and the US is the largest economy in the world. As these Indians increase their economic output they are going to be looking for all kinds of things to buy. If you can tap into that market you won’t have to worry about doing anything else.

This ability to reach people all over the world has opened up online business opportunities like never before. Without an internet business there is no way you could ever hope to reach a market of this size. And the really amazing thing is you can reach markets of this size basically for free. The web allows you to market your products or services with no cost when you can get your website featured in the search engine results. This means, when someone is looking for what you have to offer in Google or Bing and your site shows up on the search page then you have effectively advertised for free.

If you want to start a business home income online opportunity then you can get started for next to nothing. You just have to find a product or service people are looking for and then offer that on your website. Next, by using Search Engine Optimization, you get the search engines to send you new customers each and every day. It doesn’t really matter what the home business opportunity idea is as long as you can put these two facts together.

Legitimate Home Based Business

Does this mean you can not make a good income with a home based business? Absolutely not, there are people just like you making a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a day. That’s right, A Day. If you want to make this kind of money the business opportunities are there but you have to understand that it will take some effort on your part.

For example, one very successful legitimate home based business opportunity model involves selling information online. The most lucrative way to do this is to sell the information in e-book form. An e-book is nothing more than an electronic document that is just like the files on your computer. You write the book as a file in your word processor program and then you sell the file just like you would a hard cover book. The beautiful thing is don’t have to pay for printing or shipping or any of that. All you have to do is set up your website so that when someone want to buy the e-book they pay your account with a credit card and then they can down load the file that contains the book. Your customer then stores the file on their computer and can read all or part of it whenever they want.

This is exactly how people are literally making ten’s of thousands of dollars every month. The internet is based on information, so what would make more sense than to sell information on line. If you write a 50 to 60 page e-book it is very common to sell that for $49 or $97. A couple of these sales each day and you can start to make some real money.

Now you are probably asking how you can hope to start a legitimate home based business by writing about something. You probably think you don’t know anything that anyone would want to know. This is just not true. If you have lived at all you have gained experience in different areas. If you are a parent you have definitely learned a lot about raising kids. Why not write a book about some tips and tricks you have learned to get kids to eat their vegetables or be quiet in the car when on a road trip. If you have a pet I am sure you know how to care for that pet. Provide others with the insights you have gathered while caring for your dog or cat or exotic pet. People love their pets and they will do anything to keep their “best friends” happy.

The fact is everybody knows something they can teach others. This is a great basis for a legitimate work from home business. You can make some money while helping others. And if you don’t think you are enough of an expert then pick a topic and do some research. With the internet at your finger tips you can spend a few hours finding facts and information that will easily fill an e-book of 50 pages or so. If you spend a few weekends on this project you could easily be on your way to a home based business that can grow into full time income.

The fact is self-publishing is just one of the thousands of legitimate home businesses that are available. Make a commitment you yourself today to keep looking for the business opportunity that is right for you and then work to make it a reality. You can be a success at online marketing.

Never before has a person been able to start a business for next to nothing and be able to build it into an enterprise that can support his her family and give them the lifestyle they desire. This is not some get rich quick scheme I am talking about. If you are looking for some online business opportunity that allows you to work for about a half an hour a week and get rich then what I am going to describe is not what you are looking for. Instead, you need to realize there is no free lunch and you will have to actually work if you want to succeed online or anywhere else.

You can actually start a business based on a free blog platform and us all free tools to make it a success. A blog is nothing more than an informational website. You write posts that give people information. It used to be that you had to know special computer languages in order to build a website and it took a lot of time to learn how to manipulate those websites into something people could use. That is no longer the case. Now with just a few simple steps you can actually be publishing your words online in as little as 5 or 10 minutes.

The best and easiest free blog platform in my opinion is Blogger.com. It is owned by Google so you know it will work well. All you have to do is go to the website and answer a few simple questions. Within a few clicks you can have your own blog and start writing what ever you want on the web.

The next question is what to write about. In my opinion again you will want to be writing about things you are interested in because that is much easier but you also want to write about what other people are interested in because then they will want to come and visit your blog. You can use another free tool from Google to find out what other people are searching for and thus what they are interested. It is called the Google Adwords Keyword tool. You can find it here Keyword Tool. This tool is absolutely amazing because it tells you approximately how many people are searching for a particular keyword phrase. If you pick a keyword that a lot of people are searching for and you can get your website to show up when people search for that phrase you will be able to get a lot of visitors to your website.

So how do you make money from people once they visit your site. Again another free program from Google can help you. Google makes their money by selling advertising. They make billions of dollars a year doing that so why don’t you piggy back along with them and make some money too? The best way to do that is to sign up for a Google Adsense account. Once you do that you can have advertisements show up on your site and if your visitors are interested in the ads they will click on one to learn more and you will get paid every time they do. Again, a completely free service.

With just these tools you can build a legitimate home based business that can you can build into a money making machine that will pay you for years to come. If you want to learn more there is a great way to learn how to utilize all these tools to build your free home based business. It is called the Keyword Academy but it is not free. It will cost you a whopping $1 to check it out. If you have any hopes or dreams about building an online home business you need to go right now and check out what they have to offer. You can learn everything they teach on your own with trial and error but why not speed up the process to your money making online business by seeing how the experts can help. Courtney Tuttle of the Keyword Academy is one of the most successful internet marketers using this method and he is willing to show you how. Click here The Keyword Academy and start your internet business today.  You won’t find anyone on the web with more integrity than Courtney.

No legitimate home based business opportunity is going to come in an email message that you haven’t requested. If you get an email telling you about some fantastic opportunity then send it on to the scam center. These are often times based on the Nigerian scam. Some one will send a message saying you can get several millions dollars just by giving them your bank account number. Once you provide the number they clean out our account and are gone. Do not respond to any unsolicited messages about making money.

There are some assembly work jobs that are legit but a lot of them are not. What they do is charge you a fee up front for the material to make the item. You then spend your time creating the crafts or whatever and then when you send them back to the company for payment they deny them saying they aren’t of quality. You are out the money for the materials and the time you wasted on the project and they are off to scam the next victim. For a real work at home job you shouldn’t have to pay up front in order to do the work.

Another scam is based on high tech so it seems more like it is based in legitimated home based business opportunities. This one involves recovery shipping charges from UPS and Federal Express. The add says you can make boat loads of money by tracking packages for companies and then recovery shipping charges if they are late. Not only is no business interested in this but it is against the shipping agreement of UPS. You spend hundreds of dollars up front for the software and then have no where to use it.

Envelope stuffing and data entry are two more classic work at home scams that have been updated for the new century. With envelope stuffing the ad says you can make hundreds stuffing envelopes. You buy the information booklet and find that you are supposed to place ads for envelope stuffers and collect the money when they buy the booklet you just bought. There really are not envelope stuffing opportunities any more because of automation. With data entry you often times are forced to buy a training package and then once you have completed the training they tell you to go out and find some people to transcribe for like doctors and lawyers. What? They don’t really have any jobs they just make money by selling the training to unsuspecting people.

Medical transcription goes along with data entry above. This is a great skill to have if you know someone to work for but there are a lot of scams out there that sell you training and software that supposedly is going to help you get a job. Once you have spent all that money they tell you to call doctor’s offices and see if they need transcription done. The vast majority won’t even talk to you.

It is very hard to find a Legitimate Home Business that involves working at jobs that don’t require business skills. If you are looking for a way to make extra money then you would be better off trying to find something in your community like child care, making craft items to sell locally, or putting together gift baskets to sell locally or by specification. If you want to start a business online then that is a different matter that takes a different skill set than just sitting in your bathrobe drinking coffee and waiting for the money to arrive.