If you're new to the idea of generating leads for your MLM on-line, the first and most important action you need to take is to put up a website or blog. This is your cyber real estate, and the most essential tool you can have in your marketing arsenal. It is key to every aspect of your lead generation. Today, I'll go through a few of the ways to use your site.

But before I get into that, let's talk a little bit about what to put on your site to make it effective. People go on-line for a lot of reasons, but one of the top reasons is to find information. Google's rise to prominence as a search engine came about because they were so good at providing relevant results for people who were looking for information.

So, the best thing you can do to make your website or blog relevant to your visitors and to the search engines, is to put high-quality, relevant information on your site. Much of the high-quality content on your site needs to be available at no charge to your visitors. This information also needs to be updated on a regular basis by adding pages or posts.

Now, for some of the ways to use your site:

- To position yourself as a leader or an authority in your industry, someone people want to follow. As alluded to above, when you provide good, relevant content on your site, people realize that you know what you're talking about and that you may be able to help them be successful. They are attracted to you.

- To acquire contact information from people, so that you can build a relationship with them via e-mail, mail, Skype, social networking sites, telephone, etc. This can open up several different avenues of communication with which you can further establish credibility with your prospects.

- To market relevant products to your prospects, tools that will help them succeed. There are many ways to market products to your prospects, but affiliate programs are probably the easiest to get started with. Promoting the right products will help you in two ways. First, the sales will help you cover your expenses whether the prospect joins your business or not. Second, the right products can help pre-sell the prospect on the need for additional products.

Of course, it is best if you can market your own products, but that's pretty hard when you're first getting started. Just be sure that the affiliate products you promote on your site are relevant to your site content, and they deliver top quality for your visitors' money. Promoting inferior or non-applicable products will hurt your credibility.

- To expand the ways in which you can prospect, both on-line and off-line. Being able to send prospects to your own quality, information-filled website can help to pre-sell people on joining you in your business. There are many ways in which to get people to visit your site. Here's a short list:

Classified ads - on-line and off-line in newspapers, magazines, trade publications, etc.
Search engine advertising on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, and many others
Writing articles and press releases, on-line and off-line

There are many other ways to use your website or blog, but I hope this gives you a starting point. For help with the technical aspects of getting a site going, I can recommend an excellent video series that gives you step-by-step instructions and valuable marketing advice. Visit my site, and look under on-line marketing for this article, "The Importance of a Website". You will see the text link at the bottom.

To your success, Jeanie

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