Deep Discount on Mom Mastermind Membership

Recently a member of Mom Masterminds suffered a tragic loss of her son. You can read about her loss here….http://acherishedangel.com/.  After hearing about Melissa’s loss, many of the members of Mom Masterminds asked what we could do?  Kelly McCausey came up with a great idea to have a fundraiser to help the Ingold family in their time of need.  So she went crazy with the idea of offering a DEEP discount on the lifetime Mom Masterminds membership and donating the proceeds to help pay for little Kyle’s funereal costs.

You can see the offer here at -MM July Pricing Special

Even though this is a tragic loss for one of our fellow members – this is a great opportunity for you to take action in your online business and create a new future!  I can’t tell you enough about Mom Masterminds and how it has helped me in my business.  Definitely worth every penny – and I didn’t have an opportunity like this!

Hope to see you at MM!

Home Jobs Online

Home Jobs Online – How to Find and Get One

© 2010 Leslie Truex
Wouldn’t it be nice to roll out of bed, slip on a robe and slippers and shuffle down the hall to your home office to work? Today over 137 million people world-wide do just that at least part time as more and more companies take advantage of the cost savings that telecommuting programs offer. One of the best places to find these companies is online, but you must beware. While more and more legitimate work-at-home jobs can be found online, so can scams.

Here’s what you need to know and do if you are looking for a real work-at-home job online.

1) Understand that you aren’t going to sign up to work at home. Telecommuting work is found in the same way that traditional work is found and usually involves an application or resume, and interview process.

2) You can’t pay to get hired. Any company that says you can work for it by sending some money is not offering a job. It’s okay to invest in a good work-at-home job database or hiring a professional resume writer, but you should never, ever, ever, pay to get hired. Let me add here that a legitimate company will never need to use your personal bank account to do business either. Never pay money nor use your bank in a work-at-home job.

3) Be open to many job types. Instead of thinking, “I want to sit home and type,” think about all the skills you have that can be used at home. Are you a good researcher? Do you have good phone skills? Are you highly organized? Are you creative? Can you write persuasively? Make a list of all your skills, experiences, talents and hobbies and search for jobs that need those attributes.

4) Learn to do a job that has a high demand for workers. There are certain job types that have many job openings right now such as copywriting, customer service, web and graphic design, medical transcription, writers, and more. If you can’t do any of these jobs, why not learn how? Most can be either self-taught or learned through an online or correspondence course.

5) Look for work where jobs are posted. Most people get in trouble because they look for the wrong types of jobs in the wrong places. Use job search sites not search engines to find work-at-home jobs. Visit reputable work-at-home websites (offer articles, tips and information beyond affiliate programs) to learn about working at home and also to get job leads.

6) Be professional. I can’t believe some of the email I receive from people who want to work at home who tell me they can type and yet their letters have typos and grammatical errors. Or they say they want to work at home, but provide no information on what they are qualified to do. You have one chance to convince a potential employer that you can do the job. The employer doesn’t care about your childcare hassles or illness. She only cares about finding the best person to do the job. All your interactions should focus on what you can do for the employer.

Today, the opportunities to get hired to work from home are endless and continue to grow. But if you are to get hired, its important to understand what work-at-home jobs are, why companies offer them, and how you can position yourself to get hired. By understanding the six telecommuting rules outlined here, you will find legitimate jobs faster and improve your chances of getting hired.

Leslie Truex is the author of The Jobs Online Toolkit which provides step-by-step details on finding and getting a work-at-home job, including a list of over 300 companies that are frequently hiring. Visit The Jobs Online Toolkit and start applying for a job today!

Mom Masterminds May Madness

May Madness Has Begun At Mom Masterminds!

Every year the members of Mom Masterminds create an amazing offer to all their subscribers called the Mom Mastermind’s $5 May Madness Sale. Members of Mom Masterminds offer some of their best products for only $5! The offer is only good for 10 days – starting on May 10th and going on until May 20th. Amazing! Why?….Why not! As a member myself, I am offering low cost advertising here on the HBRD Business Directory and Shopping Mall. You can adverstise your business for one whole year for only $5.00!

Mom Mastermind’s $5 May Madness Sale Here is what you can get for $5 –

Affiliate Marketing Sweetie System
Regular Price: $37.95

How Video Helps Women in Online BusinessThe Amazing Offers Start May 10th
Regular Price: $7.99

Real Life Guidance Guides
Regular Price: $11.99 – 19.99

Become A Blog Consultant
Regular Price: $27.00/mo

Mom’s Talk Network Advertising
Regular Price: $10.00/mo

The Small Business Study Social Networking Guide
Regular Price: $20.00

Scrapbook Business Success
Regular Price: $9.00 – 19.95

Lifetime Directory Listing in Christian Moms in Business
Regular Price: $17.00

Hot Seminar Series
Regular Price: $19.00

Blog Internship
Regular Price: $10.00/week

25 Christian PLR Articles
Regular Price: $15.00

Internet Marketing Business Clean Up Self-Study Course
Regular Price: $47.00

PMS & Cravings
Regular Price: $14.99

Online Marketing for Offline Business
Regular Price: $49.97

Lawn Greetings 101
Regular Price: $19.95

Keyword Research
Regular Price: $30.00

How to Use Squidoo
Regular Price: $14.97

7 Types of Publicity & How You Can Repurpose Them for Affiliate Success
Regular Price: $17.00

Promote Your Business with a Video
Regular Price: $49.97

Blog Posts, Customization, Custom Graphics (That’s us!)
Regular Price: $12.00 – 50.00

Organized Assistant (The Spreadsheet with Brains!)
Regular Price: $25.00

Advertising for your Direct Sales Business
Regular Price: $29.97/year

Marketing 101 for Small Business Owners
Regular Price: $19.95/mo

TechBasedTraining
Regular Price: $19.98 per course

Weekly Meal Plan
Regular Price: $10.00/mo for 12 months

Kids’ Business Ideas
Regular Price: $9.97

How to Build Backlinks Quick and Easy
Regular Price: $10.00

Learn to Re-write PLR in less than 10 minutes
Regular Price: $10.00

SEO for eBay sellers – Part One
Regular Price: $12.99

Aweber Basics: Getting Acquainted With Your Autoresponder
Regular Price: $19.97

iThrive Membership
Regular Price: $20.00/mo

Virtual Event Case Study
Regular Price: $17.00

SMART Guide to Life Balance
Regular Price: $10.00

Advertise Your Product or Service Based Business at HBRD
Regular Price: $15.00/yr

Blogs de Mamis
Regular Price: $17.00
Important notice: This product is in Spanish

Reports from Premium Web Mastery – Empower yourself to Master Your Online Presence
Regular Price: $7.00

Twitter and Facebook icons
Regular Price: $15.00

40 minute telephone coaching session w/ Coach Nikki B.
Regular Price: $59.00

As I said before…..Amazing! With such great deals, I plan on doing a little shopping myself!

To learn more about each product or service offered, click here! You don’t want to miss out on these amazing deals, so hurry and order your products and services today! Offer ends May 20!

That Darned Google Sandbox

If you’re a new website owner you probably know the pain of being left in the Google Sandbox. It doesn’t seem to matter how good your website is and how successful you are in creating a buzz for your website in other ways, Google will not give you respect in their search engine results. 

Last year new site owners were playing in the Sandbox for three months or so. Now many are reporting that they’re not coming out of the box for nine or ten months! This is testing the patience of many new internet marketers. 

The way to handle the situation is to ignore it and keep doing what you know you should be doing. Despite what some may advise, you won’t successfully manipulate Google. Trying to do so could get you into worse trouble than the Sandbox. 

Remember too that Google is not the only search engine in the world. Most see traffic from MSN, Yahoo and others within a month or so of launching a new website. 

Instead of focusing on Google – focus on providing your target market with what they want. Concentrate on these basic areas:

  •  Create valuable content that your target market is looking for.
  • Distribute articles to the article directories.
  • Submit your website to appropriate directories.
  • Develop friendly relationships with owners of similar websites.
  • Create an interesting blog and submit it to blog directories.
  • Develop a few valuable resources (reports, ebook or audio) to give away freely – and allow others to give them away too.

 These activities will quietly grow your inbound links. The idea is to be consistent and natural in everything you’re doing. No manipulation, no oddball search engine spamming techniques, just good web practices that add value to your website and to the internet as a whole.

If you do these things, you will find that your website traffic is growing consistently despite the Sandbox and one day when you least expect it Google traffic will start flowing. 

 Article by: 

 Kelly McCausey is the host of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio and author of The Power of a Focused Business www.thepowerofafocusedbusiness.com Learn how to laser target your business and blast past your competition! 

Lead Generation Explained

In most businesses, success means showing consistent or growing sales volume to an expanding customer base.  Lead generation refers to finding potential buyers, and is an essential activity for growth.  There are many ways to keep a steady stream of prospects available, each offering specific advantages. 

Some businesses hire companies to generate highly qualified leads.  Because these lead generation services are designed to the business owner’s specific needs, they offer a significant return on investment.  This option is often expensive, and therefore best suited to businesses with generous marketing budgets.

Purchasing lists of names to be used for telemarketing, direct mail, and internet marketing is less expensive and still somewhat qualified.  The drawback of this method is that lists become outdated very quickly, making it more effective for an email campaign than a costly direct mail program. 

Internet marketing offers a simple, immediate, and low-cost method of reaching a wide audience.  Using a website, business owners can generate their own leads by offering an opt-in newsletter subscription, give-aways, contests, and surveys.  Publishing a sign-up form on the website provides a large mailing list which owners can use to market new products or services. 

Employing a capture program on the website will provide information on every visitor to the site, providing useful demographic data which can be used to tweak product offerings and marketing strategies that will generate future leads.

Marketers who sell products or services locally often offer incentives to generate new business.  Direct sellers, for example, hold product parties hosted by their customers, who in turn receive rewards based on sales volume.  During the party, the seller will gather names of guests who wish to host a party in the future, thus ensuring ongoing business prospects.

Another simple practice employed by sales professionals is simply to ask their satisfied customers for referrals.  Being referred by a prospect’s friend or colleague gives the business owner more credibility, thus making the first contact more likely to be amenable.

Qualified leads are those that meet specific criteria.  For example, women are a better-qualified market than men if a business is selling baby products, while people in sunny locales are more likely to buy sunscreen than residents of rain-prone areas.  While maintaining a large pool of leads is important, the quality of those leads must also be considered.  The more qualified a lead, the more likely it is to generate a sale. 

Market research is essential.  Business owners who know their market will profit most in the lead generation efforts.  By knowing as much as possible about one’s customers and employing a variety of methods to capture their interest, business owners can generate a constant supply of qualified leads, ensuring steady sales and a growing customer base.

How to Market My New Business – First Places to Start

Starting a business is an exciting time. Marketing a new business often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list when there is so much to accomplish.  However, to really get your new business up and running, move marketing to the top of your task list and watch business start pouring in.

Marketing your new business task list:

#1  Get listed.  This is an easy step, get your business website listed on the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.  Once you’re listed then you can go about increasing your search engine ranking. To get listed, you can submit via your website host if they offer submission services. If not, simply visit each search engine and manually submit your URL.

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Quick Tips for Getting (and Keeping) More Clients

As in any business, you live and breathe by your clients, right? Getting and keeping more clients are important to your success. Here is a list of five quick tips for getting and keeping more clients.

#1 Ask for referrals. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. In fact, customers are often happy to refer you to others, they just need to be reminded to do so. And, if you can create a referral program where your current clients receive a discount or credit for your services, then all the better.

#2 Be professional. If you’re an excellent person to work with, you’ll keep your clients – even if your rates are a bit higher or your timeline a little bit longer than others. The truth is, we place a high value on our business relationships, at least the clients you want to work with do. And if you can build a strong relationship with your clients, you’ll keep them for the long haul. They’ll also talk about you, and word of mouth is a great, and free, marketing tool.

#3 Communicate on a regular basis. You don’t have to have an opt-in list or an email marketing campaign, but if you regularly connect with your clients, you stay in the front of their mind when they have a need or when someone asks them for a recommendation. Here are two approaches to client communication that you can utilize to fit your business. They are:

- Promotional Email – Send your client list an email once a month, or more often if you like, highlighting a promotion. For example, “10% off any orders of $50 or more for the month of April.” 

- Informational Email – Send your client a note when you’re thinking of them. For example, “I saw this article and thought of you.” This helps build a relationship to them and it’s a great way to stay connected.

#4 Get Social! Participate in social networking, blog and be a guest blogger. Generate awareness about you and your services. One new client can turn into many new clients over the course of a year – just through social networking.

#5 Be helpful. Be willing to help and inform others in your community even when there isn’t any apparent reward. Whether you believe in the law of attraction or not, when you give to others, they give back. This doesn’t mean you give away your services; what it means is that you’re willing to help others by providing insight, information and a listening ear when they need it without expecting anything in return.

If your client is trying to resolve an issue and you can help them with your experience, help them. They’ll appreciate it and you never know when they’ll be able to return the favor.

Much of the art of keeping clients has to do with building relationships, and it’s also intricately linked with getting new clients. Word of mouth from satisfied clients is a wonderful way to fill your schedule with your ideal clients and projects. Connect!

Does Your Website Need a Makeover?

Websites, like any marketing materials and business processes, needs to keep up with the times. Whether that means tweaking your website from time to time to keep it up to date or completely redoing it, is a decision that can only be made by you. Here are some questions to help you decide if it’s time.

1. When was the last time you updated your website design or functionality? If it’s been more than a year since you’ve done anything to your website other than add content, then it’s probably time to at least give your website a few touch-ups.

2. Does your website design still accurately reflect your company personality, brand, vision and mission? Businesses change and grow and you can easily outgrow your website design. If it no longer represents who you are and where you’re going as a business, it’s time for a makeover.

3. Is your website able to accomplish all that you need it to accomplish? Old website platforms may not be able to handle all of the functions and features you’d like to offer your audience. For example, including a opt in box to encourage customers to sign up for your mailing list.  

4. Have you rebranded your business? If you’ve rebranded your business then your website most certainly needs an update.

5. Is your website poised to handle the future? If your website already has a retro look and feel, it may not be ready for what the future has in store. A touch-up now may prevent you from having to do a complete overhaul in the near future.

What you can do to spruce up your website

* Upgrade or fix the navigation. Navigation, or how your users are able to get around on your website, is essential to them staying on your site and revisiting it. If things are difficult to find, you can bet impatient website visitors will not stay. Navigation is an important function and is a good way to update your website.

* Design. When people think of makeover this is what often comes to mind and yes, you can change or update your colors, design, layout, logo, and graphics to give your website a fresh look and feel.

* Search engine optimization. Hopefully you’ve been updating your keywords and SEO tactics as your business grows and your audience changes. Internet users have become significantly savvier when they search and it’s important to keep up with the trends. This is more of a behind-the-scenes makeover and can be handled by a SEO professional or by you or an educated administrative assistant.

* Functions and features. Today’s prospect likes to interact online and that means offering web 2.0 features and functions.  Most often this doesn’t require a complete overhaul but rather adding some user-friendly items to an already existing site. However, if your platform hasn’t been updated in a long time, you may need to upgrade to stay current.

To stay competitive, it’s important to assess your website on a regular basis. Every six months to a year is a good idea to keep things fresh, innovative and interesting to your audience.

Analyze Your Productivity

As a business owner, you are both the boss and the employee.  Some people can thrive in this type of situation and achieve more than they could in a traditional work environment.  For other people, this situation can spell disaster.  To be a successful home business owner you need to increase your productivity in your business. Every once in awhile you should stop and ask yourself the following questions to ensure that you are staying on track with your business goals.

Are you focused on your business?

It can be easy to lose focus when you work at home, as there will always be other things competing for your attention.  It is difficult to work at home when there are other things that needs to be done also. To combat household distractions, set an hour timer for work followed by a 15 minute break to tend to small household distractions. If the distractions are thwarting your productivity, take your business elsewhere. Mobilize your business and go to a coffee shop or park. With less distractions around you will be able to concentrate more. Remember, it is okay to let the house cleaning wait for a few hours while you work on your business. A clean house can’t pay your bills, but those few hours you put into your business could reap you many financial rewards.

Not only is focusing on business tasks important, but it is important to be focused within your business.  It is easy to get sidetracked with new business ventures and other ideas. It can be hard to spread your time and energy over too many projects. If you find yourself working on many projects, concentrate on the projects that are primary to your business needs. Other projects that are not as tightly woven within your target market can be set aside for the time being. Focus on your business priorities first by write down all your projects and prioritize them by importance.

Are you being productive?

At the end of the day, do you ever feel like you worked all day but accomplished nothing?  Take a look at the tasks you are working on, and whether they are actually important to your success.  If you find yourself getting sidetracked by surfing the web, chatting in forums, or reading blogs, try to schedule time for those activities after your “real work” is done.

On the other hand, if you feel your time is being sucked away by answering email, updating your website, or collecting research for an upcoming information product you are working on, try outsourcing those tasks to a virtual assistant.  This will help you free up some time to work on business tasks that need more attention.

Are you reaching your goals?

If you find that you are constantly missing your goal deadlines, you may want to take the time to revamp your goals.  Create an action plan that will be easy to follow and help you get to your end result.

3 Simple SEO Tips

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is tossed around the web like no body’s business. The problem is a lot of the people talking about it really do not know much about it. SEO is complicated in many ways and really does require a lot of time, research and consistency. However, there are a few simple things to get you started if you are a newbie to SEO, cannot afford to hire an SEO expert or time is limited for you.

Simple SEO Tips to get you Started

Keywords

You really need to do research and find out what niche works best for your website. Once you do that focus on two no more than three keyword/phrases. Once you know what they are, make sure you have them through out your page. Do not over use them though. It must be well balanced.

Make sure you have some bold, italicized and/or underlined. Not all…just a few here and there. [Read more...]