This blog has been dormant for a while now. As you can see from the last post, it’s been dormant since February. I took over this blog about a month ago, but haven’t had time to start really sprucing it up until now. So these are the things that I’m going to be doing with this blog.

Writing about my own home based company
Posts about great products to help you and me with our WAH adventures
Posts about scams that prey on WAHMs
WAHM blogs and websites
and much more for making WAHM Simple!

Also, in the coming months there will be some changes to the look and feel of the blog. Mostly to make it my home, but also because I’m going to be taking a blog designing course, that will hopefully be a great money making venture! I hope that you’ll enjoy spending time here with me, as my home based business grows. I hope to help as many moms as I can to make being a WAHM as simple as possible!

So won’t you join me in being a Simple WAHM!

This is a 4-week intensive coaching session to help people effectively use their blog as a business marketing tool.

Lessons are delivered via email and as a back-up to unreliable email, in a private online membership area. Each week, the students receive a printable training guide that is accompanied by an audio recording, should students prefer to do their learning by listening.

We all know how powerful blogs can be, but sometimes keeping up with your own blog can be a bit of a challenge.

Alice Seba just posted a highly-useful freebie to her blog. It’s a pre-recorded webinar that discusses the concept of joint blogging which allows you to work with other bloggers for maximum promotion at minimal effort.

Together with Lynette Chandler, Kelly McCausey & Carrie Lauth these savvy women discuss the benefits of joint blogging and how to get started yourself. This 47+ minute audio comes with complete audio transcripts and you can download both at no-charge and without any obligation just by clicking here.

In addition to using private label rights content for your site, blog and newsletter, here are a couple more uses that will knock your socks off.

- PLR as Infoproduct
That’s right! You’ve no doubt noticed that many successful people online have their own information products to sell. But you’re so busy with your business that you can’t carve out any time to create a product of your own?

You can package together PLR articles, add your own content, and you have an ebook to sell! It is that simple. You could even read the content and create an audio to go along with the ebook.

- PLR = easy affiliate income Read the rest of this entry

Your brand plays a key role in your marketing efforts. If you find yourself asking, “What is a brand?”, you probably don’t have one. Your brand is a message that you are sending to the world. This message tells the world what your business is, how your products and services are different from the competition, and what your product or service can do for them, the consumer.

So, why is a brand important? Well, if you have a brand, when you come up with a new product, your former customers will immediately know the new product is coming from you. You won’t have to do as much “up front selling.” Your customers will automatically be drawn to the product.

If this sounds far fetched, think about your own spending habits. If given a choice between a product from a company you have already bought from in the past and a similar product from a company you have never heard of, which product are you more likely to buy?

The first step is to create the brand and then worry about marketing your brand. If you choose a bad brand, all the marketing and advertising won’t help you. All you will be doing is furthering the image of the bad brand. However, if you choose a good brand, then your advertising and marketing efforts will go even farther in promoting your business and brand.

Establishing your brand will also help you decide where and how to market your business. If you have a scrapbooking business, you can brand yourself as the “quick and easy scrapbooker” or as a “classic and polished scrapbooker” or even as an “artistic scrapbooker”.

If you choose the first option, you will want to market your business to people who want simple solutions, such as busy moms. If you chose the second brand, you will want to focus your marketing efforts on clients who crave a cherished memento, such as a new bride. And if you chose the third brand, you will want to target your marketing efforts to those who enjoy trying out the latest and most expressive scrapbook techniques.

Determining your brand can also help you establish yourself as an expert in your field. This will help you market your business. Once you have established yourself as an expert, you will notice that people may start coming to you for advice or asking you to write articles or take part in their seminars and other events. This will give you a whole new audience to share your business with and can create new marketing opportunities.

Without a brand, your business will look “new’’ and unprofessional. You may seem unsure of yourself and what your mission is. However, once you have created your brand, you are able to tell the world, “This is who I am, and this is what my business is all about”.

If given the choice, would you rather walk into an insurance agent’s office where you were greeted with a friendly hello and the staff called you by name when you paid your bill, or would you rather walk into an office where the staff acted as if accepting your payment was a waste of their time?

Most people want to do business with people they like. It is hard to like someone who makes you feel uncomfortable. However, if they feel that they are treated with kindness and feel that you are their friend or trusted advisor, they will feel that they have a relationship with you.

When you take the time to establish a relationship with a customer, you will notice that your customers become loyal to you. They will see you as the expert in your field. They wouldn’t think about doing business with anyone else.

Establishing relationships with people will take time. They don’t develop overnight. The following are some tips on creating relationships with your customers.

Offer your sincere help: Your customers are coming to you for a reason; they need your product or service. Instead of acting like you are doing them a favor by providing that product or service, offer them your most sincere “thank you”, and make sure you offer them your sincere help.

Instead of thinking about the things you will get for helping them, think about the things that they can accomplish with your help. If someone is just looking for advice, give them the answers they need.

Let them see the real you: Yes, it is important to present a professional image if you want to be taken seriously, but you don’t want to seem so professional that you intimidate your customers. Let them know that you are human and that you occasionally have a bad day or have a day where you wake up and the kids are sick and, from that point on, everything is off kilter. If people can see that you are “one of them”, your chances of a sale go up.

Communication: A key component of any relationship is communication. Keep your customers updated on a regular basis through your blog or website. If someone has recently purchased something from you and has a question or needs assistance, answer their email (or outsource this to a virtual assistant).

By implementing these practices into your business, you will see that your customers will feel appreciated and valued. They will also be more likely to send you referrals as they know how great you treat your customers.

There are many advantages to having a website. Just a few of them include being able to market your business globally, being able to accept orders while you sleep, and allowing people to receive information about your business in real time.

When you put your site online, you have a couple of choices. You can use a free web host or you can pay for web hosting. Your web host is the company that transmits your site onto the World Wide Web.

Web hosting is very affordable, and even those on the tightest budgets should make this a priority. Here are a few reasons why hosting your own site is the better alternative.

First and foremost, using a paid web host will keep your business image professional. When you use a free web host, you may look cheap or inexperienced. That isn’t the image you want to project to potential customers.

Many providers of free web hosting will display banner ads across their users’ sites. Since they are not receiving revenue through payment for their web hosting services, they need to earn revenue somehow. And so, these companies either display their own ads or the ads of others’.

As a user, you have no control of which ads are displayed. These ads could potentially offend your target market. If, by chance, the ad has something to do with the content on your page, your website visitor may click the ad, leave your site, and purchase an item from the other company instead of purchasing your product.

Many web hosts offer great customer support – to their paying customers. If you choose to use a free web host, they may only offer limited support or no support at all. If you have trouble transferring files or something of that nature, you may be left to figure it out by yourself. This can cause a lot of frustration.

Depending on the company you purchase your web hosting from, various features and benefits will be included. Some common features and benefits include message boards, online photo albums, blogs, shopping carts, and more. These items may not be included in the free web host plans.

When you pay for your web hosting, your web host company will guarantee the amount of time your website will be up and running. Usually, the guarantee rate falls between 95 and 99 percent. Free web hosts do not guarantee how much “up time” you will have. If your website is only up 50% of the time, you are potentially losing 50% of any traffic you send to your site.

As you can see, paying a small monthly fee to a web host is well worth the money. You can find web hosting for under $4 per month. Some companies will allow you to host unlimited sites for under $10 per month.

As a network marketing veteran, I always apply the God gave us two ears and one mouth rule – ask questions and then listen. Listen to the answers.

It doesn’t matter if you are working with a potential customer, speaking with a prospect or working with a member of your team, powerful questions is a habit you want to engage in habitually.

The more you know about people, the more effective you will be in bringing value to them. Ask questions so you can get to know that person, really know them. Engaging in conversation and showing you care begins the process of relationship building through network marketing. Read the rest of this entry

Squidoo is a website where a network of users can create pages, known as lenses, on various topics that they have knowledge in, or at least have some interest in. Ads are displayed on these lenses, and the users who create them can receive commissions when those ads are clicked upon by their lenses’ visitors. However, you can earn even more by using Squidoo to market your products.

Marketing your own products with Squidoo is very easy. When editing your page, use the “write” feature to add some simple HTML. If you sell information products, you can offer a free ebook or special report and a link for the sign-up form for your newsletter. Once they are your subscriber, you can continue to market your products to them.

You can also use the “write module” to post articles and links to your information product’s landing pages. Providing the content will help you get indexed in the search engines and your visitors will appreciate the fact that they can learn something from your site.

Since each lens should have its own unique topic, you can create a lens for each of the topics you would like to establish yourself as an expert in. You can then create a lens roll and link your lenses together. This can create a stream of traffic for you. If you have other business blogs or feature a podcast on the subject, add that information to your lens as well. If you have created a physical product, you can add pictures of it to your Squidoo site.

In addition to adding content, links, and pictures to your lens, you can join Squidoo groups. If someone is searching for information on a topic, they may choose to find a group on the subject in order to find lenses on that subject. This will also allow you to interact with other people interested in the subject of your lens. This is a ready-made market of people interested in your products.

Just like your website, you will want to keep your lens fresh by adding new content each week. This will encourage your visitors to return again and again. You may want to pick one day each week to add something such as an article or a link to something your visitors may find useful. You can even add links to viral reports and other things that you are offering on your own website.

By using these techniques you can add targeted traffic to your site, increase the size of your mailing list, and add to the number of your customers. Plus, Squidoo is free. You’ll be growing your business and saving money that you may otherwise be spending on pay-per-click programs.

There is no question that blogs are great for business. When you blog, you can connect with your target market and promote your product(s). Blogger is a free, easy to use blogging service offered by Google. Using this service can be a great way to market your business.

When you use a service such as Blogger, you can create posts that explain the features and benefits of your product in a subtle way. For instance, if you have an information product on growing tulips, you can create posts that give a bit of helpful information. At the end of the post you can add “for more information ”.

If you have a physical product, you can create similar posts, giving people reasons to buy your product. If you happen to sell kitchenware, you could create an informative post about the benefits of silicone bake ware. You can add pictures of your product to your post and include a link to the page where your readers can buy the bake ware.

Blogs serve as a great communication tool. You can keep your readers up to date with any changes you have made to your site, provide information on new products you are going to be introducing, and receive feedback on the types of products your customers wish you would develop.

Another way to communicate with your target market and position yourself as an expert is to establish a “question of the week” feature to your blog. Simply have your readers send in their questions, and then, one day each week, choose one of the questions to answer. Your readers will look forward to this interactivity and will take note to visit each week to see if their question was chosen.

You can also use Blogger to increase the size of your mailing list by adding a sign up form to your newsletter or other autoresponder list. Once people are subscribed to your newsletter, you can continue to market to them.

Adding links back to your website on your blog will also help your website gain search engine traffic. The search engines crawl the Internet, and when a site has a lot of links coming into it, the search engines take notice. This can help your website rise in the results pages when someone performs a search using one of the keywords on your page.

These are just a few of the reasons why it is important to have a blog and how you can use a service like Blogger for marketing purposes. As you get more familiar with blogging, you can add an RSS feed to your blog, which will notify your readers that you have created a new post. This will keep your readers coming back regularly, and further help your marketing efforts.

When it comes to marketing your business, something as simple as a memorable graphic or catchphrase can help you immensely. A business logo or slogan can create brand recognition and help you establish your business reputation.

When you think of Nike, what do you think of? For most people, the image of the Nike swoosh or the words “just do it” automatically jump into their mind when they think of the company.

When you see an image of an apple with a bite taken out of it, what do you think of? Many people will answer that question with either “Apple Computers” or “iPod”. Several years ago, Dell Computers created a successful string of commercials that featured a teenager saying, “Dude, I’m getting a Dell”.

Even though the commercials have been off the air for some time, there are probably many people who tell their friends and family the same statement when they purchase a new computer.

Establishing your own business logo or slogan can help people remember your business in the same way. Perhaps you have a website and someone visits for the first time and considers making a purchase, but then they decide to comparison shop. They may end up looking at several sites before making a decision.

It is common for people to get so caught up in looking at different websites that they cannot remember which ones they have even been to. If your website featured a catchy logo or slogan, your visitors would have an easier time differentiating between you and your competition.

If your logo or slogan involves a common word or object, they may think of your business every time they hear that word or see that object. For instance, if you have a business related to children and an elephant is featured in your logo, each time your customer sees an elephant, they can end up thinking of you. The more they think of you, the likelier it is that they will buy from you.

When deciding which type of logo to use, think about your business and how you want to be perceived. Who is your target market and what type of things are they interested in? If your target market consists of grandmothers who are active, adding a rocking chair to your logo may insult them. However, featuring an older lady in tennis shoes or a in a jogging suit doing pilates may make them laugh. This could be the type of logo that will stick with them and make them remember you.

The same goes for your slogan. Think of how you want to be represented and what appeals to your target market. Stay away from anything offensive, such as curse words or slang.

You will also want to stay away from trends. Your business logo and slogan can be with you for years. What is “cool” today can be “cold” tomorrow. Plan for a long-term investment and stick with what you will be proud of five or ten yeas from now.