Home Based Business
Blogging Your Way to Sales
What is a blog and how can it help your home based business?
Put simply, a blog is a website where you post journal entries that are displayed in reverse chronological order. You can include links to products you're promoting in your blog to help your home based business. The most recent blog shows up first. Visitors to the blog can often post comments. Blogs topics can range from personal diaries to entertainment to commercial use. Just about anything can be – and is – the subject of a blog. The blogs can be searched by subject, key words and name of the blogger. The name blog is a combination of web log.
LiveJournal, blogger.com, and myspace.com are just a few of the free sites where you can quickly and easily set up your blog. It's a good idea to install a counter when you set the blog up so you'll know how many visitors have come to your blog. http://www.statcounter.com/ is free and can be set up without a lot of techie knowledge.
Keep posts to about 500 words and post on a regular basis. Regular posting is one way to build up the number of your visitors. If they enjoy your blog, or find it useful, they'll come back and you don't want to disappoint them by having stale posts. Fresh posts are the way to increase sales for your home based business.
People like to read other people's comments on a blog and nobody likes to be the first to comment. There is a way around that besides posting your own comments under anonymous. You can hire posters to comment for the rate of about 10 cents a comment. The comments won't be long or pithy but at least your blog won't be naked.
How to get visitors to your blog
Include your blog url in your signature for your email, your posts on discussion lists and forums. When you've made a post in your blog that is particularly relevant to a discussion list, inform the list members that you've made the post, include the link and why they want to read your blog.
You can also hold a contest awarding a prize to people who post comments during a designated period of time. You can hold a contest at your blog that captures visitors email addresses. To enter the contest the visitor provides their name and email address. A random drawing awards the prize when the contest is over.
You could also have a free report or a newsletter subscription sign up at your blog as well.
Visiting other blogs will help increase traffic and boost your home based business
Most of the blog sites have a search capacity. You can find other people's blogs that are similar but not competitive with yours. Say you want sales leads for herbal remedy cures. Search for herbs, herbal, natural cures, and gardening for example. Visit the blogs and bookmark them. Leave a comment – not a sales pitch – on the blog with an invitation for the blogger and other posters to visit your blog.
Blogging on an active basis can increase your sales leads for your home based business and you can have some fun doing it at the same time.
| 
