What is it that makes starting our own home business sound so enticing?

It is true that the ‘right’ job is becoming hard to find as corporations merge, downsize and relocate all in the name of profitability.

There is no doubt that we all need to think more creatively about our future livelihoods, but is home business ownership right for you?

According to the ABS, nearly one million Australians work from home. This includes offsite or telecommuting employees, but still amounts for more than 10% of the entire workforce. Of these 76% are aged 35 years or older.

I encourage self-employment as I know the flexibility, independence and other benefits that it can bring. Being your own boss, working around your kids and determining your own hours, income and holidays is an attractive idea. However, I have learned that not everyone should run his or her own business.

Why is it that many people running businesses are not successful, happy or fulfilled while others absolutely love it? I believe it all comes down to planning and having realistic expectations.

For a lot of people starting their own home business is the best decision that they will ever make. They have done their homework, thoroughly researched their concept/product and have organised financial back-up (yes it does take some money at least to make money).

From the time they start their business they are positioned for success. Yet for others, the decision to become self-employed is a complete disaster.

Statistics show that 9 out of every 10 new businesses cease within 10 years. You can increase your chances of success by using an established business model through a franchise or multi level marketing plan.

For many however ‘business ownership’ simply means more work for less pay! The businesses that grow and prosper are professional. They plan and set goals effectively and regularly review these, invest in marketing and growth and work hard!

It takes persistent and consistent activity to achieve your goals and be successful in any business - it’s that simple!

Multi level marketing has proved the perfect vehicle to allow me to be successful in my own home business. I actively promote goal setting (both short and long term) within my team. We then work together to formulate ‘90 Day Plans’ and a ‘Daily Method of Operation’ to ensure that they are undertaking the required level of activity to the get the results they desire.

Regardless of whether you are in network marketing or a more traditional business, the secret to success is planning. Boring, tedious, time-consuming planning.

As they say “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Having said that, planning in the absence of activity will not result in success.

The benefits of working from home are huge but it is not a decision for the faint hearted, weak willed, or very dis-organised.

Before you embark on any business venture you need to do your research, organise your finances, plan your goals and activities, have realistic expectations and stand in front of the mirror and take a good, hard look at yourself. Take stock of your strengths and weaknesses and understand your personality type.

Are you disciplined enough to get up every day and commit to doing whatever it takes to reach your goals? Are you willing to work harder on yourself than you ever will on your business? Are you willing to reinvest short term profits back into your business in order to gain long term rewards?

If you can honestly answer yes to these questions - congratulations you have the makings of a successful home business owner (and I’d love to talk to you!).

If you are not quite sure, I suggest you look for an opportunity that you can start part-time and see if you “have what it takes” while still retaining the income of your current job.

If you answered no to the above questions (or think I’m being too tough), there are benefits to being an employee, I suggest you “Don’t Give Up Your Day Job”!

Are you attracting leads to your business? Or are you still spending time and money chasing opportunity leads to grow your Network Marketing business?

The new generation of network marketers are challenging the traditional methods for growing a Network Marketing business.

It’s not a matter of one way being right or wrong it really is just a matter of using the “advantages” that are available by marketing on the internet and maximizing the power of new Web 2.0 technologies to grow your business fast than ever before.

The World Wide Web is undergoing a change in the way that people interact and network with the growth of Social Network sites. There are thousands of Social Networks springing up all over the web (infact there are over 2000 already!) and this represents a huge opportunity for smart business owners to generate leads for their business for free.

Sites such as Facebook and Myspace are well known, and used, by the Generation Y’s to socialize and share information, images and music etc. But network marketers are now maximizing these sites, and many others, to generate leads for their businesses and explode their downline recruiting.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using internet marketing and social networking in particular to grow your Network Marketing business.

What’s Social Networking?

Basically any site that allows the users to generate content by interacting, sharing information and connecting with other users is a social network site.

This new generation of websites are called Web 2.0 sites or technologies and their growth is phenomenal.

How can you use Social Networking sites to generate leads?

There are so many ways to generate leads for free utilizing Web 2.0 sites that it can be quite daunting when you first start. To describe each method fully, I would need to write a complete book, but I would like to give you an outline of each so that you understand the options you have available and some example websites to start with.

Note that these are only some of the free internet marketing options available to you and most overlap in terms of maximizing your positioning in the “natural search” results for search engines.

Your free “Social” Internet marketing options include:

Content Sharing: Example sites: Squidoo, Hubpages - Where you simply post information to share with others. You could be posting information about a single idea or event (such as an upcoming training) or simply sharing information about yourself or your company. These are narrative style posts that are designed to create interest and enhance your positioning on search engines.

Article Posting: Example site: Ezine Articles, Idea Marketers - Taking content sharing a step further, you become an Author and create articles (much like this one) designed to educate and inform. You then can ‘post’ these articles to various sites on the internet so that they can be viewed and shared with e-Zine (electronic magazine) publishers.

While article posting may increase your search engine ranking, the intention behind article posting is to give good information in your content so that online publishers will use your articles in their e-zines and extend your marketing reach to their readers. This gives you an opportunity to speak to a highly targeted group and positions you as an expert in your field.

Book Marking: Example site: Digg, del.icio.us - Services that allow you to “flag” or “book mark” individual pages on the internet that interest you. This allows you to form a network of all of the places on the internet where you have content and link them to each other. Great for improving your search engine traffic and also allows your web visitors to access all of the information you have posted online.

Fantastic to cross promote with other marketers and to ‘give back’ to other authors that you believe are offering valuable information.

Social Sites: Example sites: Face Book, MySpace, Direct Matches, Yuwie, Wowzza - These are networking or social gathering sites for internet users. Much like offline networking clubs, users set up a personal profile and then introduce themselves to other members.

Online the networking is done by requesting other users to become your “friend” and view your profile. You can then exchange information and, depending upon the site, interact through groups with users with similar interests.

Blogging: Example sites: Square Space, Blogger - A Blog in it’s basic form is simply an online journal. A place where you can share your knowledge, thoughts, feelings, opinions etc with the online community.

Many people keep personal blogs to let family and friends know what they are up to, others post blogs to rally support for their organisations or causes while business owners can use blogs to share updated information with their customer and to advertise their business.

To be successful a blog needs to be “updated”, or have posts added to it frequently - most popular blogs have daily (or more frequent) postings.

Blog entries tend to be shorter and more relaxed in nature than article postings and often include pictures and/or videos. All online network marketing campaigns should include a blog as part of your overall marketing strategy.

Video Sharing: Example site: YouTube - The social media that is exploding beyond all belief. This technology allows you to create a video and upload this to the Web for other users to view. Video sharing has already made superstars out of previously unknown musical artists by the “viral effect” created when users share the videos with their friends and networks.

For the network marketers video sharing is powerful as you can create a video, upload it, then link this to your other social marketing such as blogs, networking sites, content sharing lens etc, etc.

Plus many more…The opportunities appear endless but is important for you to know that the emphasis in social network marketing is to provide good information.

If you approach these methods only with the idea of “selling”, either your product or your opportunity, then you will quickly find that you run out of “friends” that are willing to hear your message. Exactly like word of mouth advertising in the offline market.

So where do you start? I suggest you focus on one method at a time and get your first listing “up” as quickly as possible. If you spend too much time trying to make your first article perfect then you will probably never actually post anything at all.

If you are new to the internet or social marketing, then I suggest that you follow a step by step program that shows you exactly where to start.

Two resources that I use and recommend are Ann Sieg’s “The Renegade Network Marketer” and Mike Dillard’s “Magnetic Sponsoring”. Both of these systems teach you not only how to generate leads for free, but how to “monetize” the process so that you can actually generate revenue through the process.

This helps to overcome another obstacle for many Network Marketers of not having enough cash flow to build their business. Two things every Network Marketer needs - more leads and greater cash flow! The perfect combination.

Remembering of course that anything you do in building your Network Marketing business needs to be duplicatable by your team.

The exact system that you chose, or the methods that you use, are less important than the mind shift you need to do in order to recognize the value of this new marketing system and then get into action to implement this into your business.

So put down that phone, stop cold calling leads and start your Social Marketing campaign today.

You will be amazed by the opportunities that are available to you if you spend the time and energy in learning to maximize Social Inter-Net-work Marketing.