Product, Leads, and Advertising - the 3 most important elements of any successful home based business.

For this article we will focus on leads. Leads are people that are interested in making money from home. How do we know this?

For starters, they have either put an ad on the internet stating they want a home based business, or they have filled out a form with one of the lead generation companies.

Now how do we go about getting these so called leads? Some businesses put a simple questioner out over the internet that people can access to answer some simple questions.

These questions are usually, how much time a week you can put towards your business, how much money can you invest in your business, why do you want to work from home, etc.

These questioners are usually short and to the point. Once all this information is gathered the business then contacts that individual to sell them on his business opportunity.

Another way to find leads is through the lead generation companies that are on the internet. There business is to compile all the information and then sell it to business owners to use.

This is where it gets touchy. Today there are so many of these "so called" email list, lead lists etc. How do you know who is legit and who isn't?

My rule of thumb on this is, a company offering a large amount (over 5000) leads a month is probably not a very good source.

So what makes a good source to find leads? Well what you want to look at is companies that offer what we call "double opt-in" leads.

What that means is each lead had to fill out one of those questioners and had to put a valid email address on that questioner, so that company could email them for confirmation.

That is double opt-in, that person filed out the form, and then got an email from the company asking if they filed out the form. If they did they hit a link that would confirm that to the company.

Then you want to look to see if that company also supplies the address, phone, IP address of the lead.

And what I think is most important, does the company offer leads that are spam compliant! This means you will not be accused of spam when you contact that lead! And will this lead be unique to you.

What I mean by unique to you is, once that lead shows up on your list, it will not show up on anyone else's lead list.

And last but not least price! Please don't think that the higher the fee the better the leads will be. This is definitely not true; I can vouch for that one.

I have used lead sources to promote my business that cost anywhere from $30 a month for 1000 leads, to $150 a month for 4000 leads. Which do you think I had the better luck with?

You guessed it, the one that gave me 1000 leads for $30 a month was the best deal, and I am averaging about a 28% signup to my business.

It does not sound like a lot, but think, that is 280 people a month, and if only 100 of those do any business for me, that is a bunch of money in my pocket each month. And all that for $30 a month.

So remember when choosing a lead generation company, look for price, double opt-in lead, spam compliant, unique to you, all pert ant information for the lead, and of course how many leads do you get each month!

Copyright 2004 Jim Noel