What's the best marketing method for a home business newbie

Successful home business persons weight in.

With so many people having to turn to home business to earn income these days, what would be your top preferred marketing method to help a home business newbie succeed?

I'm mainly into network marketing home businesses, with a little affiliate marketing, so my comment is slanted in that favor.

Categories: A) Online B) Offline C) Other

A) Online:
I have to go with forum and/or blog commenting. It has been such a great reward for me and easy to do. Find home business topics and insert yourself in the conversation.

B) Offline:
Postcard Advertising is a clear winner here. Anyone can do this. Getting your message directly in the hands of ideal prospects can't be beat. Direct response mail still thrives in the internet age.

C) Other:
I'd have to say word of mouth. Not just family and friends, but local activity and events. This allows for immediate contact and rapport to be able to share your opportunity, product, etc.

I believe more people fail in their home business success pursuits do to a failure to consistently and effectively market their business. While this doesn't cover effectiveness, I hope the thread helps home business newbies get ideas on where to start.

All The Best!

For online, I'd say basic SEO, especially backlinks. Backlinks not only help with SEO, they can also drive immediate traffic to your site.

Online: Forum and blog commenting with useful information and tips. Guest posting on blogs and of course good quality article marketing (yes it still works)

Offline: Cold calling local businesses. Of course mine is from a writing standpoint.

Other: Word of mouth. Provide customers value and never treat em wrong.

I have had great success with Squidoo. Shocking to many I know. I do it a bit different than Pot Pie Girl, though I do follow her plan. She says to build your little campaign and set it free and do it over and over. That just wasn't working for me. The goal was one lens once a week for 52 weeks. I have 25 lens currently, far cry from 52. I have babied them over the months though. One little tweak can make a huge difference. My top 6 have 14,790 visits to them so far just this week and four rank in the top 10 in the relationship category. They are all linked to my blogs which has brought 5544 in traffic this week. That's nothing to blink at. It has led to another source of income. People offer to pay me to make lens for them. I don't mean the usual 5 to 10 bucks either.

My website also has a forum which also brings in the traffic with little effort on my part. The amount of visitors is growing daily.

I also pay it forward every chance I get. I help others get what they want. I embrace my competition. I truly believe that is my secret.

That is amazing Robin! I am so happy for you.

I wish there was a like button here like on facebook.

Take advantage of discounted group buys for print products. We do this for our clients all the time. It stretches their ad dollar further than buying individual ads here and there.

I have personally found than a mix of both online and offline techniques are best. I am pretty shy, so doing work with people face to face has always been my biggest downfall...but on the rare occasions that I do choose to move outside of my comfort zone, I find success. Because of my personality, however, online works really, really well for me, and I am building pretty easily using the few methods that I understand well.

Great question. I think it's always wise to NOT put all your eggs in one basket.

cj

My two cents on the subject

A) Online:
Affiliate marketing by building websites, writing articles and getting ranked on Google for them. I promote electronics and treatment reports for several symptoms.

B) Offline:
I work with businesses and other people trying to setup their own site and get known online. I actually got a client the other day for $200 and I'm doing is setting up a simple site for her.

C) Other:
I also do website flipping, where I buy cheap sites or build new ones from scratch, rank them, get them to earn some money (like $100/month) and then sell them for 5x or 10x the price. This requires some effort and time and it usually takes 2 months for a site I have to start making that kind of money. Usually through adsense.

For a beginner, a great place to start is Ebay. You have an army of people with money in their pockets all wanting to buy.
This is great for a beginner as you won't have a customer list and this is one of the biggest hurdles for any marketer (let alone beginners)

Of course, Ebay takes a commission but you will still be making a profit instantly without a list. Not only that, it is possible to grow a mailing list from your ebay sales in an autoresponder linked to your paypal account. I do this with my ebay accounts.

Basically, it is a great proving ground for beginners because you have to deal with all aspects of working from home like,
Sourcing a product to sell
Creating your advert,
Shipping a product,
Doing it again.
All of this without having to worry about driving traffic.
If you can't sell on Ebay then you probably won't be able to sell from a website.

FreeCashMan,

Great question:

I have built home businesses both online and offline. In most (if not all) home businesses relationships are what matter most.

In my opinion relationships are better established in the offline space, however I've done very well building relationships online.

Online:

I'd say forums, blogging, and social media.

Offline:

I'd go with post-it note marketing, meet up groups, and word of mouth.

Other

Seek out a mentor, someone who is getting the kinds of results that you're looking for.

Breakdown your marketing efforts into a series of simple easy to follow steps and follow through EVERYDAY!

Consistency is the key to success.

To the Top,

Ulysses

FreeCashMan: what would be your top preferred marketing method to help a home business newbie succeed?
Online: In conjunction with article and forum marketing, giving away something of value via a squeeze page in order to build a list is a smart way to develop a sound marketing base for the future.

Offline: Word of mouth. It's the easiest, cheapest and most effective marketing approach there is.

Other: Find a mentor and mastermind group for guidance, inspiration and encouragement. The more someone can absorb from others involved in a similar pursuit, the greater the benefits will be in the long run.

CJConsulting: I am pretty shy, so doing work with people face to face has always been my biggest downfall...but on the rare occasions that I do choose to move outside of my comfort zone, I find success.
So CJ, if you work on changing the rare occasions you step outside of your comfort zone to frequent occasions, you will see a dramatic improvement in your success rate. You will also cultivate a much larger comfort zone and that will help you sustain a proportionate level of success.

Hermas

Oh my, where to start?

I LOVE article marketing and probably always will. It is my number 1 most effective method for:

creating backlinks to my blog
creating targeted traffic to my blog and capture pages
sticking around for many months generating traffic.

As indicated above, I do have a blog, several actually, but my main make money online blog does fairly well. I think that once you start hitting that thousand unique visits a day mark, you are going to start making some fairly good income if you are monetized properly.

For newbies, I teach the same thing over and over:

Post on classified ad sites with a lot of traffic like craigslist and backpage
Post inside of active forums (one of my faves)
Comment on high traffic blogs
Facebook marketing (this one a little more complicated, but not too much)

After a little bit of time and understanding I move folks on to creating fb pages (which I have seen really start to rank very well in the SERPS by the way), developing those squidoo lenses (Way to go Robin!), and creating hubpages.

All of these methods also require you start to get into link building, so I like to see folks really start to write a bit here.

I don't know what you are looking for exactly, it's been my experience that while a LOT of people sign up to do things and say they want to market online, very few are willing to put forth the effort to do so. That's OK because I like being in the 5% to 10% club, but for a long time I was down because while I could sign up a lot of people to a program or system, I couldn't get a lot of people to duplicate my effort.

This stuff is fun to me, my passion, so it's never work, but it can take an incredible amount of effort to get going, so I always try and focus on why someone wants something and make sure that they know there is work involved. I have found that this actually works much better than telling them it's simple or easy.

Online- We have found that simply blogging everyday, consistently and producing backlinks is the strongest and most cost effective way to show presence online. We recently teamed up with a Blogging Platform that has extreme credibility with Google. Simply posting everyday, our content is being recognized very highly!

Offline-I agree with A8ch on this one. Word-of-Mouth marketing is to this day the most effective form of advertising to date. "Friends do what friends do!"

Other-I too believe in the power of mentorship. We have teamed up with 5 of the top earners in the world ranging from MLM, internet sales, etc. The knowledge received on a daily basis is priceless.

I have enjoyed all of your comments I'm new to the IM and any thoughts that I see that will make me more energized and willing to learn this stuff is great.

If someone would point me to a way to learn more about backlinking and keywords without having to purchase a product that will do it for you I'd like that....

I just want to learn ..... and have the time!

Lynn

This is a great thread topic and there is some very useful information here, but let me(being a newbie) ask a simpler question. I get that having a signature with a hot link on a forum could generate traffic to one's own blog or website. However, if I were to comment on a blog, how does that get traffic to my site. Can I add in a hotlink for my site on another person's blog? Also, I am a little unclear on how "do follow" works. Is this a software program that works behind the scenes and just tracks traffic and creates a recognized link between one's own site and someone else's. I realize some of this is basic knowledge, but I am quite new to this. Thank you for any additional details.

Kyle_K: Can I add in a hotlink for my site on another person's blog?
Absolutely, at least on most blogs & forums such as this one.
It's in your profile along with instructions for the proper format.
On most blogs it's a line to fill in, along with your name, on your comments.
Kyle_K: Also, I am a little unclear on how "do follow" works. Is this a software program that works behind the scenes and just tracks traffic and creates a recognized link between one's own site and someone else's.
Yes and no, it's a setting on the blog or forum and really doesn't matter.
If it is dofollow then search engines and Alexa count it as an inbound link.
Even if it doesn't count it still can bring you traffic.
Kyle_K: However, if I were to comment on a blog, how does that get traffic to my site.
That depends on who reads your comments and if they see value in your link.
Don't promote your business, stick to the topic at hand and provide value.
If you only post to get your link seen that's all you'll get, not clicks.

Just2EZ: That depends on who reads your comments and if they see value in your link.
Don't promote your business, stick to the topic at hand and provide value.
If you only post to get your link seen that's all you'll get, not clicks.

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the information Just2. I greatly appreciate it.

You could start posting in forums aswell as article marketing. Ezines is a great place for articles. There are many great answers in this thread and you have to decide which route to take.