Hi my name is Bill Robinson. I have been a webmaster and an Internet Marketer for over 10 years. I have had many successes and many failures also. Not everything works in life but you have to weigh out the advantages and disadvantages of each new endeavor and then move forward.
So you joined a Network Marketing company and you are excited and ready to go. But go where?
To the top of course. You are ready to sell thousands of dollars of the best product on the planet and sign up hundreds and hundreds of distributors that are all going to do the same as you.
It certainly is a nice dream but the reality is that most people that join a Network Marketing company fail! But that is yet another subject. I am going to talk about the website that you’re new MLM provided for you.
First you need to understand some of the basics about web sites and traffic to your websites. There are basically two types of traffic that your web site will receive. The short term traffic and the long term traffic.
What is short term traffic? That would be any traffic that you get when you pay for a service and as soon as that service complete its run then the traffic stops. Some of these would be:
- Direct Mail Advertising
- Craig’s List Advertising
- Classified Ads ( on or offline)
- Purchasing hits to your web site
- Pay per Click advertising
- Mailing Postcards
Each one of the above types of advertising will generate some immediate traffic to your site and then it will dwindle down to nothing unless you purchase the advertising again. The hopes of this type of advertising is that you will make some sales or sign up some distributors which will allow you to purchase more advertising to go another round. That is not necessarily a bad way to go if it works. Hopefully you have had the foresight to send the traffic to a lead capture page so that you can have your potential prospects receive a series of follow up messages. If you have not done that then the short term traffic just got shorter. Let’s face facts, your opportunity or product is not good enough to just have your potential buyer just signup on the spot.
What happens if the unthinkable happens and your advertising dollars go out but there is little to no return? Then you must dig a little deeper into your pocket and shell out some more cash for another round of advertising. Enough about short term traffic and its many downfalls.
What is Long Term traffic?
Long term traffic is generated by building a web site or blog about your product or service that utilizes search engine optimization so that the search engines will deem your web site as worthy enough to include in there searches. You see most people do not use this approach because simply said they are not willing to make a commitment to the long term. They are usually out for a quick buck and when all of their advertising methods fail they go out and find another way to make a quick buck and then that one fails too. I know from experience.
I used to own a lead site where I sold leads to Network Marketers and over the years I worked closely with many of them. They would always be moving to the latest greatest deal and never focusing on any one of them long enough to realize a profit. I have done the same myself. Until I realized that this is a lot like gambling. You throw your money into the next best “thing” and when that fails you look for another. What would have happened if these people would have found something that they were passionate about and stuck with it? I’ll tell you that they would have built up long term traffic to their web site and been recognized as an authority on their product or service and had long term traffic to their web site.
You may be thinking but Bill I have a company provided web site and it is beautiful and full of information. I will admit that the websites that are provided are usually very nicely designed and also provide the signup and ordering forms needed to sell product and sign up new distributors. That is something that you will need.
But we are talking about building up traffic to your web site thru the use of search engines. You absolutely cannot do that with a corporate supplied web site. These are cookie cutter web sites. Everyone has the same one. All the content is exactly the same. Search Engines do not look at these web sites as having valuable content. How could they? They are all the same. So how can one be deemed more important than the other? They can’t. Many search engines actually penalize your web site for having identical content.
You cannot even submit these web sites for inclusion to the search engines because you do not have a web site you actually have a set of pages that is on the company’s web site. I have checked a number of these web sites over the years and the keywords that the company includes for the replicated sites are either not there or they will never be searched for. And you do not have any control over the content used in these web sites.
This leads me to a discussion about Lead Capture pages. I have asked countless people for their web site URL and they send me to a lead capture page. In my opinion that is not a web site. It is just what the name implies a “lead capture” page. The page requires that the new potential customer’s fills out your form so that you can include them in a series of follow up messages. These pages are critical to your success but they are not a web site. They perform a specific function and nothing else. So many people go out and they register a domain name only to have a lead capture page there and that is all. What if you could have both? If you were to register a domain name say:
mygreatebiz.com and then built an actual web site on the front end of the site and then had a lead capture page here: mygreatebiz.com/leadcapture
You can drive your short term traffic to any page that you want so why not drive it to a page on your domain. What difference does this make? Well that frees up your domain to actually have a web site with valuable content so that you can promote to the search engines. Now you can have a web site and a lead capture page and you only registered one domain.
If you are inclined to have more than one web site then you can link them together and get back links to your web sites. Many people might say that this will not work. What if I send people to my lead capture page and they just go directly to the main site and bypass my lead capture page? So what! They are still reading your information and you should still have forms on your main site for them to sign up and receive more information.
Let’s talk a little bit about passion.
When people do sign up for a Network Marketing opportunity they usually focus on a single or just a few aspects of the business. You will either get excited about signing up people or you are excited about a particular product that they have. Rarely do you focus on everything. What does this matter? When you have a corporate replicated web site it has everything. When you have your own web site you can concentrate on what you are passionate about. For instance, say there is a product that helps with back pain in your product line and this product has helped you. You could have a blog as your web site and write articles about back pain. You could include other articles as well as your own about back pain. You can weave in information about how this product helped you. Search engines love blog’s and they really love blogs that add regular content. You quickly gain momentum with new links to your site and a place where people will want to read what you provide.
Does this happen overnight?
The true answer is, it can. BUT usually it builds up over time. But that is what we are talking about here. Long term traffic. You see by building your traffic this way a number of things happen;
- You setup your blog
- You start to add some articles
- You do a research about your products
- You find even more information about your product/s
- You add some more articles
- You become even more passionate as you learn and also educate others
- You start to become an expert on your product
- All the while your blog gains momentum and more links
It truly does happen this way. Can any of this happen with a corporate replicated web site? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
Over time I have found that there are only a few types of people that try to start a business on the Internet:
- Those that have a large budget and are willing to throw a lot of money at a new business.
- Those that have a limited budget but ample amounts of time to apply to a new business and actually will apply the time needed.
- Those that are on a limited budget that have the time and just do not have the passion or internal fortitude to apply the time consistently.
I have no idea which one you are. Unfortunately most people fall into category #3. They just do not have what it takes to make a long term commitment to anything. It is a shame that most people could achieve great things over time but they are usually looking for something with instant gratification.
Let’s assume that you are #2. You realize that you need to do something that will build a long term business. Great! I would love to help you get started. A blog is by far one of the easiest forms of a web site that you will ever find. Wordpress is a free program that can be installed on a server and there are almost an endless supply of themes and plugins that you can use to help you build you online presence. I strongly suggest that if you are willing to commit to this course of action that you make a small investment in a domain name. Yes there are free sites that you can have a blog on BUT do not forget that you are trying to build a name for yourself not the free site. You cannot do that unless you have your OWN DOMAIN NAME. Not someone else’s. Branding is a very important part of the long term process and you need have your own domain name.
