As network marketers, we have a decision to make on which marketing techniques we are going to implement into our business. Some techniques are essentially “free” while others cost money and these costs can vary quite a bit.

When deciding whether we are going to use paid or free strategies, it is important to remember that we don’t spend in money, we will typically have to spend in time.

So, it’s really a matter of perspective.

While you may not have to spend any money out of your bank account on a free strategy, it will cost you your time, so it is important to decide how much your time is worth to you!

I’m certainly not saying that the following techniques are not worth doing simply because they are free. I just think it’s crucial to point out that you will definitely have to invest your time if you hope to achieve any real results.

I actually believe the following strategies can be quite effective in generating free network marketing leads, so let’s not waste any more time!

Four Strategies You Can Use To Generate Free Network Marketing Leads

1. Article Marketing

Article marketing can be one of the most effective ways to get massive traffic to your website, but it needs to be done correctly. Article marketing is not simply throwing up an article on a website every once in a while.

You need to do some keyword research first, to decide what you should be writing about and what keywords you are going to target. Then you will need to syndicate your content across the web and ensure that all of your syndicated content is pointing back to your original article.

Also keep in mind the use of anchor text, as well as sending your traffic to a website that is ready to convert that traffic. It’s simply not enough to have them read your article…you want to turn that traffic into leads!

There are many tools out there that can assist you with syndicating your content that can save you a lot of time. Some may be as little as $100 or less, while others may cost more, or even require an ongoing monthly fee.

Once you decide that you want to implement this strategy into your network marketing business, I would definitely recommend doing your research to find a tool that will help you streamline the process. I realize that this doesn’t really make this strategy free, but it can save you so much time and is still such a small amount of money!

Something to keep in mind when you are writing your articles is that the point of the article is to share information and teach others. The intent is not to write spammy articles just for the sake of writing something, because that won’t really accomplish any long term results for you.

The great thing about article marketing is that if you do it right and put out good content, you will continue to get leads from an article you write today for months or even years to come. The results are not going to be overnight, though, so it is important to be patient and consistent. However, if you do stick with it, they will come.

2. Video Marketing

This is another great strategy and to be honest, when I got started in this industry, I got some of my first sign-ups from this marketing technique. This can be a very powerful technique because your prospects get to see you, not just your website.

It’s important again, that this technique is done properly. Just as with article marketing, it’s not enough to just throw up a video here or there. There is keyword research that needs to be done here as well.

Also, you will definitely want to have a YouTube account and it’s important that you treat YouTube as you would a social network like Facebook, for example. Meet other marketers, build relationships, provide value and share good content. As always, no spam here…just good quality content!

As with article marketing, there are tools out there to assist you with disseminating your content to multiple video sites. Just like before, do your research to decide what works with your budget and your needs!

3. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing can be a very effective strategy, if done correctly! Joining a bunch of forums and then putting up a post pitching your business opportunity is the quickest way to NOT get any leads for your business.

I’m always amazed by the number of people who actually do this. They join a forum and then proceed to pitch their business in their first post, offering no value to the community. Furthermore, they don’t bother to put up a picture or a bio or even a good signature. It just seems like such an utter waste of time to me.

Don’t be that person…it will just be a waste of your time.

Instead, join 1-3 forums, whatever you think you can commit to and manage. Take the time to fill out your profile and take the time to put up a picture if the forum allows it.

Okay, so what next, you ask?

Well, first of all, like I mentioned above – no pitching in your posts. Any and all selling belongs in your signature. Speaking of that, put a link in your signature that offers people more than a generic company website/capture page.

Forums are places where people with similar interests can share information and ideas. It’s a place to ask questions and have questions answered. This is exactly what you should be doing while you are there.

Get to know other people on the forum and join in the conversations. It really is a community and a great place to develop relationships. Lead with value and you won’t go wrong.

Earlier, I mentioned your forum signature, and I want to touch on that in a little more depth. You have the opportunity to put a link or maybe two in your signature so don’t waste it.

You could send people to a personally branded landing page in one link, and then maybe to your blog or website in the other. Just don’t send them to your generic company website…that’s the worst thing you can do and the quickest way you can let someone know you are not a leader!

As you become part of the community by offering value and leadership, people will naturally become interested in you and will look to your signature to find out more about you. That is how you will generate leads, so make sure you send them some place that can do that, like your own blog or your own capture page!

If you are using a generic lead generation and training system, that would be a great place to send them. As always, make sure you are sending them to a personally branded landing page!

A few great forums you could join are:

* Rich Dad
* Warrior Forum
* Better Networker

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can very quickly turn into a time vacuum so be very careful with this one!

The first thing you want to do is join some of the top social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is important that you take the time to complete your profile, but don’t make it all business.

Remember that these are social sites, so it’s important to show that you have more than one dimension and you’re not just a network marketer.

Now, go out there and make friends. Get to know people and join in the conversations. Most importantly, listen to others and find out what it is they want. Share with your friends, don’t just sell to them.

It’s okay to occasionally promote an affiliate offer or your own offer, but 90% of the time, you should be providing value and demonstrating leadership.

Also, you are going to be provided a place where you can put links for your websites. Please please don’t send people to your generic company website/capture page like I mentioned above. (Do I sound like a broken record yet? GOOD. It’s really THAT important!)

Generic sites dont’ allow your friends to get to know you better and they definitely don’t provide them with any value.

Sending them to your blog would be a great start. They can get to know you better, see the value you have to offer and sign up for your mailing list while they are there!

This will allow you to build an even stronger relationship with them, and from there, who knows? Maybe down the road, they will purchase one of your affiliate products, or maybe even end up on your team.

Well, there you go. Four easy ways to generate free network marketing leads. While they are not the only four, I think they will get you headed in the right direction!

For those who are looking for more info about the sphere of one way links, please check out the page that is quoted right in this passage.

Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com

“So, what do I blog about each time?” is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you’re not blogging, your idea cup runneth over.

The primary thing to remember is that blog posts don’t have to be long and complicated. You’re not writing an article, a report or a thesis. Many times a blog post is only a paragraph consisting of a few sentences that contain your thoughts about something. Now, doesn’t that sound easier than composing a 600-word post each time you sit down to blog?

Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you’re stuck for an idea:

1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what’s happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.

2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it’s to those that I look to for what the trends seem to be. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.

3. Get personal. Tell a story about what’s happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers. Chronicle both your highs and lows, your wins and your struggles. One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more “real” you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a “real, live” human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.

4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it’s an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.

5. Frequently asked questions. If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market’s most frequently asked questions.

6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they’re having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client’s permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client’s identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.

7. Interview an expert. What people do your know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you’d like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.

8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your ezine subscribers or blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.

9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren’t limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.

10. Read other blogs. Go to Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.

11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don’t need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you’re in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.

12. Create a tutorial. There’s always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.

13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I’ve received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.

14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you’re a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you’re a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what’s often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.

15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone’s Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.

16. Create a “Best of” list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.

17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard — the sky’s the limit!

18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn’t work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.

19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn’t know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.

20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I’m inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you’ve discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.

This is just the tip of a very large ice burg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what’s happening in the world around you. You’ll soon begin to see more potentials for blog posts that you ever thought possible!

While no one knows exactly what the formula for search engine rankings is, we do know that it has a lot to do with how many “votes” you have out there on the web. These votes are counted as backlinks. If you think about it, what do you when you find something you really like and want to share with others? You link to it! That’s why the search engines count these so highly. While you should definitely aim to get to the point where others will link to you, it’s possible to take things into your own hands for now.

Below are some of the top strategies you can use for building backlinks to increase the value of your blog in the eyes of the search engine.

Write Articles and Submit Them

Writing and submitting articles is a great way to build backlinks! There are sites out there like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com that allow you to post your content with a link back to your site. That means you get to have your link on authority sites! The more articles you write, the more you can submit them. The beauty of this is that you can often submit the same articles to different sites, or rewrite them quickly to have something that is more unique.

Comment on Other People’s Blogs

It’s a great thing to remember that a huge part of blogging is getting involved in the community. Commenting on other people’s blogs will not only get you some recognition from their readers right away, it also counts as a backlink! Keep in might that some of these links are termed as “nofollow”, which means the search engines may not pass along ranking or “juice.” That’s okay, because the algorithms are always changing, and since these links are so highly targeted they are a great thing.

Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts for other niche blogs is an amazing strategy. People love to let you do this because it gives them a day off from blogging. Readers love it because they get a fresh perspective on a topic they are interested in. You’ll love it because it means you get a link back to your site and all you had to do was write an extra post for the day.

Use Social Bookmarking Sites

Another thing you can do is bookmark your sites. Now, there are some rumblings out there that these won’t count as highly in the future as they do now. Still, bookmarking your sites lets the search engines know “you are there” for fast indexing. If you take the time to make sure the sites you bookmark with are high quality, you’ll get the benefit of those links as well.

Paying for Links

There are many different ways you can pay for links. It is important to know that Google and other search engines frown on this because it’s like you’re gaming their algorithm. Whether you choose to do this or not is up to you, but it can be an effective strategy if you don’t go overboard and aren’t obvious. You can contact people directly or even work through link exchange networks.

Learning how to build backlinks to your blog is extremely important if you want to rank well. Add a few links at a time and they will build up in a massive way over the long run.

Internet Marketing Product Launches

These few important affiliate marketing tips will help you choose the best affiliate program for your unique needs.

So, how do you go about choosing the right affiliate marketing program? Well, there are a number of considerations when looking at different programs.

Besides the product itself and the company you’ll be representing (make sure you do your homework here), one of the primary considerations will be the type of performance base your program rewards you by.

Programs will pay per click for ads that you place for products and or services; pay per lead, in which cast a prospect simply fills out a short information form; and still others pay a percentage per sale.

It will be up to you to look at how your efforts will be rewarded and to also check into how other affiliates rate each program. Some programs require that you have a website in place with a minimum amount of daily web traffic to promote their product and others not so much.

When making your decisions, keep in mind that it’s easier to get a click than it is to get someone to fill out a form; which is in turn easier than helping someone make a purchase. Depending on your audience and how well a program can be expected to perform, make your selections accordingly.

Another very important consideration is the level of support and training you receive from the program you select. From the perspective of using these programs to increase you knowledge of online marketing, I’d rate this point at the top of my list for choosing a program to join.

Finding a program that offers you the tools and support to learn and do well should be a number one priority in your selection process.

Internet Marketing Product Launches