By Bill Fletcher
Today’s Internet marketing has changed. Just like using old Typewriters of yesterday, the days of running traffic to a lead capture page and 
making an income based on a marketing funnel by itself, is not very efficient.
Unless you are a traffic expert and know how to get hundreds, even thousands of leads per day into your funnel, your best bet when it comes to building a home based business online, is to create content. Not just any content, but good content with targeted keywords. Today you need to establish yourself as an authority. Sounds difficult right? Actually it’s not that difficult, but you need to follow a few simple steps.
Starting a home business with a blog and making money with that blog is as easy as 7 basic steps. Is that all that is necessary? NO but it is a beginning.
By using Social Media and a Blog to connect with your audience and provide them with useful information, suggestions and tips will set you apart from everyone else who they may be looking at to help them solve their problem.
Here is an example of what I mean by setting yourself apart from the “ordinary.” Let’s say your looking to put a new roof on your house and you Googled local roofing companies. Who would you lean toward: a company that said “We install roofing singles and you will like our service.” Or a company that offered information about the different types of roofing singles, which ones are better in different types of climates, on different types of houses, side by side cost analysis, and much more.
I would choose a company that offers “information” and can solve a problem, versus a company that just offers, “we install roof singles”.
In other words, in today’s market, content is king when it comes to gathering attention, using targeted keywords, creating an audience and winning over customers.
At the beginning, I said there were 7 basic steps in starting a home based business and making money with a blog. So let’s explore these basic steps.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #1 – Pick a blog platform.
There are many different options to choose from when it comes to building your blogging platform.
- Free platforms
- Low cost platforms
- Do it yourself platforms
Each of these you could pick and each of these could be costly. Not in price but in time and effort.
The key to picking a platform is to work with one that has the features that you want. Best advice here is to hire someone to build a blog platform. You will find it better and saves you time. Search Google for WordPress designers. Choose carefully and get the price upfront. Fivver is another source for designers.
Some of these features include a lead capture pop up to get the email addresses of your blog visitors, simple upload of photos, videos, images and text, linking to outside pages, social media options that pull featured images into Facebook, Google Plus, etc…
Your Home Based Business…
Step #2 – Pick a niche market of people you are targeting.
On paper, identify your market. Who are they? What are they looking for? What do they need? What do you want? What are their problems? What is the age group? How can you solve issues or help them? Paint a picture of the person or persons. I even go as far as cutting out a picture of them and pasting them in my “master marketing book.”
This will identify your niche and what you need to do to get into this niche.
Once you know your Niche, then you can really focus on providing solutions to them with your content and then of course, your products and/or services.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #3 – Pick all the topics you want to blog about.
By providing your Market with great information, tips and suggestion, you will establish yourself as an authority in your niche market, and ultimately this will get you more business.
So, drill down into each topic about what you think people want to know.
Of course, the more specific and detailed you are, the more credibility you will create because your information will help solve your market’s problems, which is how you will earn their business and trust.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #4 – Pick a day to blog.
It has often been said, “that success is not what you do, but do daily.”
When I said “pick a day to blog”, what I really mean is to “blog daily.” Do this for 90-120 days without missing a day and you will soon find people reading your blog.
This will create an expectation that you will be posting quality content on your blog daily, will bring readers back to your blog. Before you even announce that you have new content people will be returning to see what you have for them.
This is the highest quality form of traffic because people are eagerly waiting for your content and want to consume whatever you publish.
When this happens, you are truly an expert in their eyes and chances are, they will buy from you when they are ready.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #5 – Share your blog post.
One of the secrets I learned about how to be successful in home based business, is not to keep your business a secret. Successful marketers keep getting noticed by either blogging or creating videos or Facebook or all of them.
Unlike the old school days of having to make your list, call family and friends, pitch your neighbors and cold call leads to share your business opportunity, your product, today, we can share our blog posts with the power of technology and automation.
One of the best ways to do this, is through the use of Social Media.
By sharing your blog post links on Facebook Google Plus, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and any other Platform, as long as your friends, fans, followers and subscribers are in your market, they will look for your information and the chance of them becoming customers and/or distributors goes up considerably.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #6 – Syndicate your blog posts.
Not only can you share your blog post links on the Social Media sites like Facebook as mentioned above, but you can also have them Syndicated through a Distribution System called OnlyWire. This service allows you to post one time, and send up to 40 different Social Media and Bookmarking Sites that you have accounts with.
Once you set up OnlyWire to distribute to all your Social Media & Bookmarking accounts, it will save you a lot of time every time you want to get your new post out there for all your market to see.
Pingler.com is another site that will “ping” your blog post. For only $5.00, Fivver will send “backlinks” to get you followers.
Your Home Based Business…
Step #7 – Pick a lead capture page.
By using a “Lead Capture Page” in your blog, people must fill out in order to enter your sales and marketing funnel. This is where an Autoresponder comes in to capture the email address. When set-up your Autoresponder will then send follow-up messages. These can be messages from your network marketing company, your affiliate marketing company or written by yourself.
The most popular Autoresponders are Aweber and GetResponse. Both are excellent and you can’t go wrong with either.
Final thoughts
You need to brand yourself as an authority. This is not hard but also not easy. It takes time, effort, good content and focus. When done property this will increases blog traffic, which in turn, helps you rank for keywords when people do a search for solutions to whatever they are looking for. Remember your idea is to identify your niche market you identified and what they want and looking for.
Of course, being a part of a Blogging Community will help raise the authority your blog has in the search engines, because a majority of the people blogging, even though it may be about different topics, in different markets and niches, everyone blogging on the same domain helps everyone.
There you have it, 7 Basic Steps In Starting A Home Based Business And Making money With A Blog.
Another key to successful blogging, is to be consistent, because if you are not consistent, you become – non existent! Blog daily, use good keywords, good content. Give advice, ideas, suggestions, tips and solve problem.
The home base business is a growing trend and making money in a home based business is not that hard or difficult. Making money with a blog is also quite easy.
While these are 7 basic steps, there is a lot more to successful blogging. Read other articles in this blog site to see additional tips and suggestions.
Thanks for your visit
About Bill Fletcher;
Bill Fletcher is a marketing expert and coach in the use of Social Media Marketing, Network Marketing and Affiliate Marketing. Based in the MidWest, he is the CEO and founder of Planning-4-Success, Master Marketing University and RiteBusiness. Bill main focus is helping home based business owners understand trends in marketing.
