Having a home business is great – you can set your own hours, work in your pyjamas, and be there for your children and your family at any time. You can also vacation when you want to and you can take care of all kinds of things right from home. It can be a great life, and you can really enjoy it, but the key to having a home business that is successful is making sure that you have clients that are going to want to have your services and that are going to want to have you do things for them in exchange for money.
So, when it comes down to it, advertising is an absolute must. You have to be able to draw people in and you need customers in order to have your website work. You have to have traffic to whatever site you have for your home business and you have to be sure that you are getting business. This is important to do no matter what type of home business you have.
However, not a lot of people that start up home businesses are wealthy to start with, and you might find that you don’t really have a budget for advertising. When this happens it is important to remember that you have to be able to budget not only your time but a little bit of money, towards advertising.
There are many ways to get lots of business, cheaply. There are things that you can do with limited funds to make sure that you are getting the customers that you need. First of all, you have to be sure that you are putting up advertising in the correct place. Are you having a business from home that caters to just your area, such as a hair salon or a photography business?
If so, then your advertising should be in print, because you don’t need the whole world to see it. If you are localized, don’t bother spending your money on internet advertising, just do print advertising with your website on it. This is the best way to advertise, and you can always do this cheaply by finding a cheap place to have posters and business cards made up.
However, if you are running a home business that is on the internet, this means that you want the whole world to have access to it. In this case, don’t bother putting up flyers in your hometown, work on internet advertising. You can find many free blogs that will let you post a link to your site and there are many places that you can get your name out there. The fact remains that you just have to do it – you have to spend several days surfing the web and getting your name out there in whatever way that you can.
Here are 5 ways to advertise your home business for free on the internet:
1. Trade links with other websites. They should be related to the subject of your website. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc.
2. Start an e-zine for your website. When people read each issue they’ll be reminded to revisit your website. They’ll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders.
3. Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others.
4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, websites and magazines that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article.
5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This’ll increase your ad exposure and attract people to your website at the same time.