Network Marketing is a business model that is based on relationships. Prospects and potential customers will be more apt to buy from you or join your MLM team when they feel they like and trust you.

From a MLM business building perspective this is very important.  As such, when you are focused on doing network marketing online, establishing relationships with prospects is equally important.

Creating a strong and positive personal brand will go far in attracting people to you and your business.

1.      What do you want your potential business partners or customers to know about you? What makes you different from all the rest of the distributors in your company? Think about this and then think also how you want to get this message across to them.

2.      Time to get a domain name. There are many places on the Internet where you can buy a domain name and they aren’t expensive. You may want to simply have your name as the URL address but again, you may want to be more creative. Does some keyword research so you will have on hand those most searched for terms regarding your business model or the company you are associated with.

3.      Find a really nice photo of yourself. If you have a professional one, that’s great but isn’t necessary. What is necessary is that the photo makes you look like someone others want to do business with. Using one that you might think is cute but unprofessional may do you more harm than good. Remember, you want to attract business partners and customers to you, not drive them away. If you look like you don’t care what image you are providing, it will be a big turn-off.

4.      Locate some graphics you can use on your blog or website. You might want to get some of the products you sell, or you may want photos of things that might be the ‘WHY’ your prospect might want to join you.  Keep in mind that just about every network marketer using the internet uses graphics of cars, homes, jewellery, and travel destinations to lure the prospect. You don’t necessarily want to be like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the MLM business. What other things are big ‘WHYs’ of your prospects. Consider using graphics that will touch the heart and motivate them to connect with you.

5.      Add value-based content to your blog or website. This means providing information that your visitor will find useful whether or not they buy from you or join your MLM team. This will add to the level of trust visitors have for you. Use appropriate keywords in your content for SEO and generating traffic from the search engines.

6.      Keep in mind that although you are working on creating your own personal brand while promoting your network marketing business, you also represent your company. Make sure you comply with their policies when working online to promote your MLM business. Also, this is where you want to build the credibility of your company and their products. Again, this is part of building trust.

7.      Create a blog or website. Blogs are easier to manage and less expensive but it needs to look professional so take care and if necessary, pay someone to help if you don’t have the skills or the time.

These personal branding tips will help you begin the process of creating your own unique personal brand. Your brand is more than a logo or cool site. It is what it represents which leads to the perception others have of you and your business. Make it well worth your prospect’s visit to your site!

It’s been our experience to notice that a large percentage of network marketers have never even thought about their personal brand.

Most MLM companies have the technology available to allow each distributor, IPC, associate or member to have use of a cloned site. In other words, it is the company website but is linked to the members’ ID number. Although the site may look really professional, it is still the company’s website. Because of this, Google does not see the cloned sites as different from the home website so your personal cloned website will never get indexed by the search engines.

What this means for the network marketer is that if someone enters the company name or products into their search engine, the visitor will be taken to the company site and not those of individual members or distributors. If, however, a distributor were to give their own unique website link to a prospect, then of course they will be taken to the distributor’s page.

So what does this mean regarding network marketing online?

One of the best personal branding tips we can give Internet network marketers is to work on creating your own personal brand. Remember what you have learned in your MLM training.

People buy from people they know, like and trust.  Often the products or company never enter the equation.  If your prospect believes in you, trusts you and feels they know you, you have a greater chance that they will want to join your team.

There are a number of ways to promote your personal brand online.

You can create your own personal blog or website. You then write articles or add content that gets posted on your site as well as adding them to other bookmarking sites such as Ezines or Squidoo.

Choose the correct and best domain name for your site and learn how to create the best personal brand you can. From there, you can link to your company’s linked page. The more traffic you get to your blog or website the more prospects and potential customers you can send to your MLM Company linked page.

It’s great to be part of a really good network marketing company and to be part of a supportive team. This will also help your business grow. But if you want to promote your business online, you have to set yourself apart from the masses. Why should someone sign up with you rather than someone else? What is it about you that will attract new members or customers?

The Internet is the new market place. You’ve also learned about having a warm market vs. a cold market. It is much easier to promote to your warm market. So how do you increase your warm market using the internet? You do this by creating your own Personal Brand.

Ever delete something and put it in the recycle bin but don’t have a clue how to get it back? Well, not to worry. It’s easier than you think. You see, deleting files that end up in your recycle bin only hides them from your view. You can easily recover them, provided you haven’t been a good little computer housekeeper and emptied the bin!

For Windows 7 Users:

• From your computer desktop; click on the Recycle Bin icon.
• Click on the file you wish to restore.
• On the bar at the top of the window click on Restore this item.
• If you want all of the files restored, there’s no need to click on each one. Go to the menu bar again and click on Restore all files.

For Windows XP Users:

• From your computer desktop; click on the Recycle Bin icon.
• Click on the file you wish to restore.
• On the menu on the left of the window click on Restore this item.
• If you want all of the files restored, there’s no need to click on each one. Go to the menu on the left of the page again and click on Restore all files.

What Happens When You Empty the Recycle Bin?

As soon as you give the instruction to empty the bin, the files are gone from your sight as well as the sight of the operating system. The files still exist on the hard drive and can be overwritten with new files.

When you empty the bin you are essentially releasing those files to the hard drive to be overwritten with new data. There’s no way of knowing the order in which this will happen so it could be immediately or next month or next year.

Are the Files Lost Forever?

This is the good news. The data may be gone from your eyes and that of the operating system, but as they still reside on the hard drive they can be recovered. You see, the only way files are ever gone completely where they can never be found is when new files have been written over them. That’s the only way.

Data Recovery Software
There are many available software programs that will help you recover deleted files. First thing to check when purchasing software is to be sure it’s compatible with your operating system. Some software programs allow you to download their software which will then show you your deleted files. If they show the files you wish to retrieve then you will need to purchase the software before it allows you to “undelete” your files.

If you need to recover files, act quickly!! As mentioned above, you have no idea when they will be overwritten and then they will be gone forever.

A software we have reviewed and have purchased for our own personal use is aptly named “Recover Your Files.” This software will recover data files that have been deleted and emptied from the Windows Recycle Bin or lost due to a format of the hard drive, a virus infection, an unexpected system shutdown, or a software failure. Click the box image below to read more about “Recover Your Files” software. Once you get to the web page, click on the PRODUCTS tab and choose DATA RECOVERY.

Take me back to the Home Page.

The benefit of using outbound links as part of your SEO (search engine optimization) and page rank building strategy is being discussed by marketers around the world. If you understand some aspects of this practice, it is likely that you will see how it can improve your SEO and overall standing in the Internet community.

What Are Outbound Links?

• Links to related websites from your website or blog.
• Links to affiliate sites from within your content or web pages.

What Are Inbound Links?

• Links to your website from other owner’s websites.

Good Links versus Not-So-Good Links

• Good links add value. This value is added to either your site or to that of another.
• Good links are related to the niche or purpose of your blog or website.
• Bad links offer no value to your website. Most links are done only for the purpose of getting back links.
• Bad links come from unrelated sites to your blog or website.

Search engines interpret outbound links by the value they have and how many times visitors click on them. Search engines interpret this type of activity as value.

Who Should You Link To?

• Websites that are related to your site but not necessarily in direct competition. No matter how good you are, you won’t be able to be all things to all people. You won’t have all the answers for every visitor to your site. But, if you recognize that and put yourself in the position of your guest you might still be able to help them. If you know of websites that perhaps offer more in depth information or services, putting a link to that site will help your audience see you as an excellent resource and even an authority.
• Affiliate with websites and products that will benefit your guests. Create links with proper anchor text to these sites. Make sure that the links used in your content use anchor text that will be found on the affiliated website.

Outbound Linking Etiquette

• Use the same keywords found on the site you are linking to as your anchor text. This is good for SEO not just from your site but to the outbound site as well.
• Keep in mind that if you do this incorrectly, it can have a negative effect on the outbound site. The name of the game is to respect others and try to help rather than hinder.
• Only link for value added. Make it a win-win for both you and the other website owner.

A Word of Caution

Don’t overdo it. If all you do is send links out with no thought or reason other than for self promotion, you will be seen as spamming. This will negatively affect any and all your efforts to improve your search engine optimization and page rank with outbound links.

Take some time to either read our other articles within the SEO/Keywords category or CLICK HERE to bookmark them for future reference.

SSL certificates are all about security. This level of security is important if you are running or want to run an ecommerce website or blog.

Whenever you make an online purchase, look at the URL address bar before you enter your credit card details. It should have “https” instead of “http” in front of the URL address. The “S” means the site is secure.

When you make your purchase and enter your credit card information, it is sent into cyberspace over the Internet. When a particular page on a website designed for ecommerce is secure, it means that all the information is encrypted making it very difficult for hackers to grab onto. Always check for the “https” before you enter account or credit card details.

Having a recognized secure site means a great deal to the consumer. It’s to your benefit to have a SSL certificate for your website if accepting credit cards.

How Do You Acquire a SSL Certificate?

Certificates can be obtained from a number of websites. The costs vary from free to $4500.00. Correspondingly, you don’t get much for free and protection is far greater with more reputable dealers.

When you apply for a certificate, there is a verification procedure which is the purpose of the SSL in the first place. The certifying website has to do its due diligence to check the validity of the website and its owners.

There are millions of websites and I hate to tell you but some are frauds and are set up just to get your money one way or another. This is why the issuing companies run a complete and thorough check on you, your business and your website.

When you have a certificate issued, the consumer knows that you have been through a verification process. This gives them some reassurance when purchasing goods or services from you.

Be Leary of the Free Sites

The free sites you may find to issue your SSL certificate may only confirm your email address or they may verify the owner’s name. Not much of a verification process, you think?

Also, not every issuer has a warranty. This is coverage in the case of an error in verification. If they issue a SSL certificate to a fraudulent website and damages are incurred by a customer as a result, this warranty is for protection should that occur.

If you aren’t ready to have your own SSL certificate, using payment accepting services such as PayPal may be all you need at the present time. But if you are planning on having a fairly large ecommerce website, it is best practice to have in the place the added security. This is what having a SSL certificate can provide.

Page rank is a ranking system first developed by Larry Page for Google. Since that time, webmasters and developers have spent a lot of time trying to improve their page rank with Google. The implication is that the better your page ranks the more Google and other search engines like you. The ranking system goes from PR0-PR10. Google, of course, has a PR10.

Page rank is how Google rates the popularity of your website or blog. If other sites link to your site, it’s assumed that you have a good site. Each time someone links to your site, it’s seen as a vote in favor. The problem lies with the fact that everyone is focused on this one aspect of building a popular and valuable site. Owners of sites with a high page rank are frequently asked for links to lesser ranked sites with the hope of improving public relations to the lesser ranked ones.

Whereas this has been the case in the past, many webmasters are changing their minds as to the importance of page rank. What is important, of course, is good SEO which will help your page rank anyway. The method many use to achieve this is by obtaining back links.

Google has recently made the decision not to show the true page ranks of websites for this very reason. It’s interesting to note too that just because a site has a PR0 doesn’t mean they have no rank at all. Every site that is created with integrity and provides value will have some rank; just not enough at the time to reach the level of PR1.

Steps to Improve PR (page rank)

• Buy a domain name that suits your business or purpose of the website. If you sell widgets it might be a good idea to have widgets somewhere in the domain name you choose. Although this is a good idea, it isn’t everything so don’t worry if all the good ones seem to have been taken already. Be unique!
• Link back to your main page (Home) from every page on your website. This is because each page will be indexed by the spider bots. As time goes on, these pages will end up with PR and because each one links back to your Home page, they will contribute to the ranking of the main page.
• Use keywords to your advantage by having niche and topic oriented keywords throughout every page and piece of content you have on your site. This will require a bit of homework and keyword research. Don’t overdo it though. Having your pages “stuffed” with keywords can be interpreted as spamming. A good tool to use is called live-keyword-analysis.com. Here you can enter the keywords you are using for a piece of content and then paste the text in the window. It will calculate the percentage of each keyword in the text. It’s a good idea to keep it below 3%. If you have it at about 2% then you are doing well.
• Title tags: This is really important for you to understand. You want to have the best keyword for the page in the title tags as this makes it easier for Google and other search engines to find your content and match it with the keyword search.
• Tag your photos. We’ve heard various discussions on this subject. Some folks aren’t sure if the bots scan for tags in graphics and photos or not. But, when in doubt, do it any way…can’t hurt and might help. These are called ‘ALT’ tags. Some photo hosting sites allow you to tag the photos so take advantage of it and use appropriate keywords as tags.
• Create back links. Some people choose to buy back links from high PR websites and if this is something you can afford or seems right for you, do it. Otherwise, visit other sites related in some ways to yours and leave relevant and valuable comments. In your comment signature, be sure to have a link back to your site. Don’t leave the link as part of your comment as that too is seen as spamming.
• Link to other sites from within yours. Not only is it good karma, but when you link to other sites, you are seen as more attractive to visitors on your site.

If you need more help with SEO it might be a good idea to get advice from some of the specialists. This is what they do for a living and if you want to improve your page rank, this might be one way to accomplish it.

CLICK HERE to read articles on having to do with search engine optimization.

Internet marketers use keywords to help with the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of their websites and blogs. They learn how to conduct keyword searches for those specific words that will bring traffic to their sites.

Most people use a single keyword to see what shows up in the search. Have you ever thought about asking a question instead? Put yourself in the mind of your prospect. Think about how the typical Internet surfer might look for something. Would they type in ‘Volkswagen’ or would they type in ‘Where can I buy a Volkswagen in Detroit?’

I don’t know about you, but I’d search with the question and not the single word.

Let’s experiment. If I do a search for Volkswagen, the number of returned results is 114 million. But if I type in ‘Where can I buy a Volkswagen in Detroit?’ the search results are much less at 3 million.

Admittedly, these are still huge page results but you can see the difference when a specific question is asked. It narrows my search down dramatically.

Let’s try another. Type in ‘Baby sitter.’ Results = 18.5 million. But when I type in ‘Where can I find a baby sitter in Cleveland Ohio’, the search results drop to 108,000.

As the end user, asking a specific question will yield more specific results. This will narrow the search and help you find what you’re looking for faster. It makes the process much more efficient.

How can you use this in improving the SEO of your website?

Put yourself in the minds of your potential visitors. What questions can you anticipate? If you were to search for the products or services you offer, what questions would you ask?

Now that you have those questions in your mind, consider having content on your site that addresses those questions.

If you are a baby sitter in Cleveland and have a blog or website, think about having an article about ‘How to find a babysitter in Cleveland’. Do you think this would be a great way for search engines to match the search to you?

Other questions that a person might ask is ‘What to look for in a baby sitter?’ or ‘How can I tell if a baby sitter is qualified?’

Instead of only having individual keywords throughout your content, anticipate the needs of your target market. Think about the questions they would put in their Google search and how you can provide that answer. Use the questions as titles to your posts or content.

When you are in a position to provide answers or solutions, you have a better chance at being in the search results. This will definitely help your SEO.

CLICK HERE to check out our other articles having to do with Search Engine Optimization.

Craigslist is a website created back in 1995 by a man named Craig Newmark. It is a community-based classified advertisement site. Ads are placed according to community locations such as Los Angeles or San Francisco as examples.

In most instances, placing ads are free and can include jobs, houses for sale or rent, cars, or books. You can sell just about anything plus you can list an event and join in forums.

A Little Tidbit of Gossip

About the only thing you will no longer find on Craigslist is “adult” or erotic material. After a controversy over claims that the ads were promoting prostitution, this classified section was officially closed on September 4, 2010.

It has become one of the most popular websites in the world. It has over 20 billion…yes, that’s BILLION page views every month.

The main source of income for the site is said to be paid ads for specific major city locations. Ads placed in most other areas are free.

Craigslist has three board members; the owner, Newmark, CEO, Jim Buckmaster and surprisingly, eBay. eBay reportedly owns 25% whereas Newmark still has the largest stake in the company.

How to Use Craigslist

It’s a good idea to read the Terms of Use for this or any other site you want to use to buy or sell. Every site should explain what the limitations are of their responsibility for its use. Read any disclaimers and be sure that you agree with them before placing your ad or making a purchase.

Sellers:

• Don’t place your ad until you are ready to sell. It’s very possible that you will begin getting calls immediately so if you are going to be away for a few days…this isn’t the time to post the ad.
• Make sure you are easy to contact. Use either an email address that you check often or your cell phone.
• Don’t put your address or home phone number in the ads themselves.
• The buyer should come to you or a safe meeting place that you both agree upon.
• If possible, meet in a public place. It’s unfortunate but the truth is some people may want to check out your house and what you have. You could open yourself up to robberies.
• When you meet them, don’t go alone.
• If the item for sale is too large to transport, again, have someone with you and keep the item away from the rest of the house if possible.
• Only accept cash. Checks can bounce and it’s doubtful you’ll be able to collect once the deal has been done.
• Expect people to want to barter. Know what the minimum you are willing to accept for a product.

Buyers:

Craigslist is popular for good reason. You have a good chance of selling your products through them as well as finding items to buy. Be careful and protect your private information before using this site or others like it.

If you are going to operate a blog or website, deciding on a web host might present a bit of a challenge for you.

There are free hosting services and paid services. Free services are good if you aren’t running a business website. Free web hosting services often cone with a few catches. One is advertising. Of course, it costs the hosting company money to operate and if they offer their service to you for free, they have to cover their costs and make a profit. So, if you use their free services, they might advertise on your blog or website.

Things to consider when choosing a web host:

• Do you oppose having advertising on your site? If not, then the “free” option might be the best fit for you.
• How much bandwidth do you need? The more content you put on your site, whether it is text or videos and photos, the more bandwidth you may require.
  Paid programs offer packages with varying amount of bandwidth limits and you can always upgrade if you feel you need more. The more you pay the greater the amount of bandwidth. What happens when you go over your bandwidth limit? You may receive a bill for the excess usage or like may service providers; they will slow down the data transfer so you’ll notice a slower speed when downloading pages.
• How big is your site going to be? Is it going to be a few pages or hundreds of pages?
• Is the web hosting service reliable? How much downtime does it have? The service needs to have an ‘uptime’ of at least 99.5%. Every hosting service will need downtime to update and upgrade its service. It’s called maintenance. Expect this. However, this should be kept at a minimum because you need to trust that your site will be up and visible to Internet traffic at all times. Also, they will or should always notify you of the scheduled downtime for maintenance or upgrades.
• How much disk space to you need? Unless you have a really big website with lots of pages, it’s unlikely you’ll need more than 5MB of disk space when starting out. Of course you can upgrade as the need arises but you certainly won’t need a huge amount initially.
• Support: Is technical support provided and if so, what is the availability and what is the cost? Support might be limited with free web hosts. Some may be available by phone, live chat or just with a ticket system. This is where you have to go to their online support desk and submit a help ticket. Think about the kind of support you might need and include this in determining the web hosting service for you.
• cPanel: This is control central for your website. This area lets you control and manage certain things on your website. Here you should be able to add or change email addresses, do email forwarding, change or update passwords to name a few.
• Does this service allow you to host multiple domains? Let’s say that your business is growing and you want to add more domain names, or subdomains. Will they support this and if so is there an additional cost?
• Servers: What kind of server do they offer? Many will use Windows but other choices include Linux , Apache and many more. If you don’t know anything about the different servers, then Windows is the most widely used.
• Cost: Cheaper isn’t always better. Check the terms of use and refund policy. See how easy it is to cancel and get your money back if you pay in advance. Affordability is important but it’s well worth the price for a reliable service with good technical and customer support.

When you are first starting out with a website or blog, you might not need all the bells and whistles but you should consider growth and will this web hosting company allow for that. Read reviews and talk to friends who already have experience with web hosting services.

We realize that there are many different sites that will host blogs or websites, Hostgator being a well known name. We are big on customer support and service and the ability to talk to someone who takes a personal interest in us. That is why we chose Renegade Tech Consulting for all our hosting, domain registration and tech support. Pricing is competitive if not always better and the owner, Daryl, takes pride in customer satisfaction.

To host a blog or website choose Renegade Tech Consulting….

You now have your own blog up and running. You want people to see it, like what they see and leave really nice comments. This will bring links to your blog and build credibility…you hope.

Since blogs are now used a great deal for ecommerce, owners have become savvier. They understand that if they make blog comments, they can leave a link to their own site, creating back links. Google seems to love the back links! This of course, improves SEO and may improve page rank.

Here’s the kicker. Not only have you become savvier, but spammers have too. They’ll run around adding comments all over the place. Often they copy and paste the same thing on every site. They have no real interest in what you have to say, they only want back links.

Spammers Don’t Have Much to Say

Posts will often say “great post” or “nice post” and add absolutely no value at all. Perhaps some of these folks are newbies to leaving comments and not aware of the etiquette. This can be forgiven. But you might find the majority are just run of the mill spammers.

If you are legitimate, then you will want your blog comments to count. If you aren’t, then all you are doing is spamming. Chances are that your comments will be deleted so you gain nothing and you’ve wasted the blog owners’ time.

Now, as a proud blog owner who wants those good comments and the links, you’ll want to moderate the comments to your blog. If you feel that a comment is spam, delete it. If you see it repeated again and again, report them as spam.

How Can You Tell if a Comment is Spam?

• “Nice post” and similar comments may not be spam but it is possible. Click on the link of the person’s blog and see where it goes. If you feel the site is legitimate or relevant, then approve it. If not…hit the delete button!
• Does it look like they read your post? If so, and you’ve also checked their site, approve it.
• Is the post crammed with keywords? If so, more likely than not it was added by a spam bot. Delete it!

Although moderating comments can be time consuming, you don’t want to have spammy sites linked to your blog. It can have a negative effect on your blog. A good rule of thumb you can follow; “When in doubt delete it!”

If you are using a WordPress blog; they have a plugin that could help you out. It’s called the ‘Conditional Captcha Plugin’. What this plugin does is it adds a step in the commenting process for your blog but only if a comment has been identified as spam. If the Askimet default WordPress plugin filters a comment and suspects it’s spam, it will send the author to a captcha page. If they fill out the form correctly then the comment gets in the queue for moderation. If not, it goes no further than the trash bin.

Taking the time and learning how to moderate the comments left on your blog is a valuable strategy for improving and protecting your blog.