For several years I owned and operated a traditional brick and motor business. It was fun, but I could not leave the business unless I completely shut it down which I did over the Christmas holiday season each year. Although I enjoyed the business and working with some great people, when I sold the business I promised myself and my husband that I would not pursue a business again that tied me down.

When I started looking into marketing on the internet, I thought I was headed toward another business that would be very time consuming, but at least I would be able take the business with me when we travel. When researching how to go about building a business on the internet, I became overwhelmed with the information and 'gurus' out there who all seem to have 'the answer'. I tried some of them that were not very helpful and others that have helped me grow at my own pace and build a steady flow of income.

Article marketing was and is one of the most powerful online marketing methods available. Not only does it do wonders for you and your business, it is free!

Article marketing consists of writing helpful, informative, easy to understand articles that actually help your readers, not try to sell them something. Then you submit them to article banks, directories and to ezine publishers. When your article runs in a popular ezine, it can do great things for your business. Writing articles is not as hard as you might think so give it a try. You will be surprised at how much it can do for your business.

Remember:

• Don't worry about fancy words. People are looking for help not big words.
• Advertise in your resource box, not your article.
• Provide real, helpful info and resources, not hype!
• Write from the heart! Let your personality shine through in your articles.

The three people that have helped me the most are: Wendy Mills and theWorksTeam, Mike Klinger and Renegade University, Terri Seymour and Seymour Products. For more information on Wendy and Mike, check out Irene Kirkman's hubpage on "Who Do You Listen To?"

Terri Seymour has been in internet marketing for over ten years and has seen marketing techniques come and go. Some are still around and some are new and innovative. Below you will find what she believes to be the best and most effective marketing techniques.

Blogging is a newer form of online marketing that just started becoming popular in the late 90's. Blog is short for weblog and means an online publication in the form of a log or journal. Blogs can increase your customer base, your traffic and your search engine ranking, thus increasing your sales!

Blogging can be done for free through such sites as: blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com. There are sites that charge a small fee and can provide some services such as SEO. A site that I recommend is Squarespace.com which has a free trial for 14 days and then a basic fee of $7/month.

Be sure and update your blog regularly; everyday would be best (weekly as a minimum), as people like fresh content, ideas and information. Think of things that happen in your daily life that teach you and then write about it. You will notice on one of my blogs listed below, that I have an area for Christian women. Many of my ideas for this area come to me from my daily devotionals.

Ezine publishing has been around much longer than blogging and is far more effective, in my opinion. Your ezine needs to contain helpful resources, information, not just sales pitches. Develop a relationship with your readers. Let them know they can trust you and rely on you when they need your help.

Things to remember when putting together your ezine:

• Keep it clean and easy to read.
• Limit your advertising and be selective.
• Always provide quality content and information.
• Add your personality so your readers can get to know you.
• Always provide contact info; make yourself available
• to your readers.
• Be consistent; send your ezine out regularly as scheduled.
• Be sure and proofread your ezine before sending it out.

Online networking, as with offline networking, is very important to your business. This is when you contact as many people as possible to learn more and share more about your business. Many leads can come from networking.

There are several ways to do this online.

1. Email Discussion Groups - go to yahoogroups.com and search for the appropriate groups.
2. Message Boards - Be sure and follow the rules and offer help whenever possible.
3. Social Sites - Such as MySpace, Facebook, Ryze, Merchant Circle, etc. These can be great ways to make more contacts and get more leads. Invite others in your group to be part of the site that you are on. This helps grow your circle of friends. TheWorksTeam has a great recorded call on Social Marketing that will help you in this area. See my contact information below if you need the username and password to this site.

This is when you enter into an agreement with another online marketer that will benefit both of you. This is how I discovered Terri Seymour and it can be very profitable for you also. I recommend that you only do a joint venture where you are using the product/service that you are affiliated with. You will get calls and emails asking your opinion and you want to be able to give an honest answer.

Examples of joint ventures are:

• Ezine ad swaps
• Ebook ad swaps
• Subscription page ad swaps
• Affiliate programs
• Exchanging advertising for percentage of sales

and the list goes on and on. Be creative and come up with new ways you and another business owner can help each other.

Podcasting is using digital media files which are distributed all over the internet via syndication feeds. Podcasting is still a fairly new way of online marketing. Podcasting can be powerful because it uses voice, not words to get the message across.

Offer your articles, do voice interviews, offer a chapter of your ebook via podcast, etc. Again, use your imagination and create new ways to spread the word about your business.

Renegade University has just added an area that will assist you with how to create a podcast. This is a great way to promote yourself. Keep it light and interesting and always remember to provide value to your viewiers.

Advertising your business, product, service, etc. in quality ezines can be well worth the money spent. There are a few things you can do to help you choose which ezines to advertise in.

Do a search to find ezines that cater to your target market. For example: if you are advertising kids books, you don't want to advertise in a all about cars ezine. Once you find several target market ezines, subscribe to them so you can look them over, find out about the dependency of the publisher, read feedback from other subscribers and just overall learn what the ezine is about.

Try contacting the publisher to see if they respond to your email. Ask about testimonials from other advertisers. How many ads do they run per issue and what the ads cost. Ask the publisher to do an ad swap to test the waters and see if you get a response to your ad. Be selective in your choices and always code your ads so you know which ezines actually deliver results.

I hope this article has given you some insight as to how to market your online/home business. I use several of these methods ( and the rest of them I should be using) and know from experience that they work!

The possibilities with the internet are endless and we need to keep up with new and innovative ways of marketing our business. And we also need to keep using the tried and true older methods of online marketing as well.

Many of the ideas in this article are taken from an article by Terri Seymour with full rights to reproduce. You will find that her sight - Seymour Products - has lots of great ideas for promoting your business online.

Please feel free to contact me with your questions or if you need assistance in getting started with your internet business. You can contact me at 843-246-0136 or email me at suewhite@sccoast.net.