Everyone who owns a home business knows the challenge you have to economically get the word out about your services. Even though home businesses usually have lower overhead, they also usually generate smaller profits than their formal small business and corporate cousins. Squeezing money from your bottom line for advertising can cut into your operating expenses and profit and in many cases simply is not a viable option.So what is a home business owner to do? Even the best ideas can fizzle out if no one knows about them. Not advertising costs you money. The key is striking a balance between effective advertising tools and not having to skip grocery shopping for the week in order to pay for it. This is where creativity comes in to play. The home business owner who can use the following ideas to advertise his business and still maintain a healthy profit margin:* Never leave home without a stack of business cards. Business cards cost relatively little; even when professionally printed. Keep your eyes open as you go about your daily business. You will find that you regularly run across public bulletin boards where you can tack up one of your business cards. If you are feeling bold, you may want to approach local businesses that generate traffic that would be interested in your particular services. As long as you are not offering services that would compete with that business, they are often happy to let you leave a stack of your business cards for their customers to help themselves to.* Stock up on promotional gifts. Promotional gifts are an inexpensive way to get your business name circulated in public. Pens, mugs, golf balls or one of hundreds of promotional items which bear your business name and logo will get you noticed by potential clients. Choose promotional gifts that relate to your home business, such as monogrammed water bottles or towels. Says one first-time home buyer: “A refrigerator magnet was how we chose our realtor.” After floundering around in the market on his own for several weeks, a glance at the refrigerator magnet handed out by a local real estate agent prompted the buyer to make a phone call to the number on the magnet, which ultimately led to a home sale for that particular agent.* Become a member of your local Chamber of Commerce. Joining your Chamber of Commerce lends credibility to your business and membership means that your business will be promoted within your city. Membership requirements vary from locale to locale and it is usually well worth your time and money to investigate a Chamber membership. Plus, you may be privy to special deals, such as discounts at other local businesses, Chamber-sponsored networking luncheons, and more.* Take advantage of local trade shows. Many areas host regular host trade shows or other symposiums which feature a specific sector of industry that relates to your home business (i.e. boat shows, auto shows, craft fairs, etc.) and allow public vendors to set up displays selling their wares or services and promoting their businesses. Cost for a booth rental varies from venue to venue and show to show and may seem like a big expenditure but the exposure that you receive will far outweigh the cost.* Familiarize yourself with the many free advertising sites on the Internet. The Internet is rife with free advertising opportunities, and while it is true that some of these sites generate very little web traffic, while others like Craig’s List have gained mainstream popularity. A little bit of web research might reveal some potential goldmines when it comes to free advertising.The best home business opportunities can be made even better with some savvy advertising. And although it does require some time and effort on your part as a home business owner, you never know how your investment might pay off. Like the realtor who made a sale because of a refrigerator magnet, you may very well hit on a similar opportunity because you took the time to do some creative advertising without having to spend a lot of money.

After setting up your home business blog, learning how to generate leads online is one of the first steps to your online MLM success. How would you like to convert more of your home business blog visitors into leads and customers for your MLM business?Your network marketing blog can be supercharged to enhance your lead generation efforts, and move you closer towards finding those prospects who will make your home based business a success.Supercharging your home based business blogThere are certain plugins which will help put your MLM blog on steroids.How valuable an asset would your home business blog be if it allowed you to generate more leads and prospects, for the same amount of effort? How do you think your business would look? Worrying about leads and prospects for your network marketing business is not something that would be on your mind anymore.My top WordPress blog plugins to supercharge your MLM business blog1. Akismet plugin
The internet is full of people trawling around, looking to leave spam comments all over. Spam is taken care of by this little plugin. The more traffic and visitors you get to your home business blog, the more comment spam that will come your way. Your blog will not look professional if you were to allow some of this spam. Imagine having a blog post where you’re showing your visitors how to generate network marketing leads online, and you have a comment talking about generic drugs for example. Every home business blog must absolutely have Akismet. Where your blog does not have spam comments, your readers and visitors are less likely to leave.2. Google XML Sitemaps plugin
This plugin generates an XML sitemap of your entire site, and automatically submits it to the search engines. This XML sitemap is used by Google, to get a picture of your entire site, including its posts and pages. Effectively, this means that your pages and posts are indexed within the major search engines. Ensuring your content is optimized gives you more visitors, since your pages and posts are already indexed.3. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
The Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin creates an html (as opposed to XML) sitemap for your home business site. This sitemap gives users access to all your content and pages, via links. Create good quality posts and articles, and you can potentially keep a visitor on your site for longer, as they navigate the rest of your content. This sitemap generator can be customized to your desire, and so you can determine what pages and posts appear.4. W3 total cache
This is an excellent caching plugin, and if used just right, it will speed up your network marketing blog by a large magnitude. Google, in its ranking algorithm, uses page load times as one its factors to determine how well your site ranks.Google loves a fast-loading blog, and your MLM blog readers will appreciate the site speed too. We’ve all visited sites and blogs which take a very long time to load……how long did it take before you left that site?Used in combination with Amazon’s S3 and CDN services, W3 total cache will boost your network marketing blog speed by unbelievable factors.With a fast-to-load blog, your MLM blog readers are more likely to stay longer on your blog and read your articles and posts. You of course have to have very good quality content on your MLM blog.5. Sexy Bookmarks plugin
With this plugin, readers can easily share your content. Giving access to over sixty social media platforms, this plugin allows your blog readers to share your content easily. This plugin gives your blog articles a wider viewership, as your readers get to share your amazing articles and posts with their friends and contacts on their social media profiles.This is good as it helps you attract more visitors and hence generate more home based business leads from your visitors’ friends on their social media profiles.6. SEO All-In-One-Pack
For the basic on-page SEO factors, this is the plugin that you want to have, unless you have a theme such as thesis.If you wish to attract the best network marketing leads, ranking for relevant search terms on the search engines should be one of your major goals. Taking care of your on-page SEO factors goes a long way in helping you rank well on the search engines for your relevant terms. With good search engine rankings for your chosen terms, you get to attract more visitors to your MLM blog, and hence potentially generate better quality home business leads and prospects.With the Thesis theme, SEO is in-built into the framework, and so the All-In-One-SEO plugin becomes unnecessary. If you have thesis, a lot of your SEO headaches are handled by the theme.7. SEOPressor plugin
Imagine having a top-paid Search Engine Optimization consultant working beside you as you are creating your blog posts and article; if you have this plugin, you don’t have to imagine.This plugin helps you by advising you on what to do with your target keywords:
a) This plugin tells you the most optimal place to put your main search term
b) It tells you whether your keyword density is too low or too high
c) This plugin highlights your main keyword terms, by italicizing it, bolding it, and underlining it, which of course is important for search engine rankings.Even experienced search engine optimization professionals use SEOPressor to improve their SEO rankings for their target keywords. Attracting more visitors when you have high rankings for your search terms is thus achievable, and you also get to generate more leads for your MLM business.Even if you already have an established MLM blog, SEOPressor can help you improve the articles on your blog, thus attain higher SEO rankings for your target keywords.8. Yoast Breadcrumbs pluginThis little plugin is useful as it gives stickiness to your home business blog, by letting your readers know where they are, and how they can navigate your blog.The links within Yoast Breadcrumbs are also useful to the search engines as they follow them, and get an indication as to your site structure. This helps you attain higher search engine rankings.9. FB LikeThe FB Like plugin lets your readers like your blog post, and this filters through to their Facebook profile. This link to your blog post is visible to your MLM reader’s friends and contacts on Facebook, and this is good for attracting new readers and possibly leads.10. FB Share Button plugin
This button has the recognizable Facebook background, and you have undoubtedly seen it before. When a reader or blog visitor uses this plugin to share your blog article on their Facebook profile, their comment, together with a link to your article, is posted on their Facebook profile. This gives your blog post visibility and a wider audience to view your content. If your content is very good, then you can potentially generate a lot more multi-level marketing leads for your home business.11. Thank me later plugin
This plugin lets you send your blog readers (who comment), a message, after they have left a comment on your blog. You can use this to connect with your commenters on a deeper level, or remind them to connect with you on the social media profiles, or subscribe to your feed. It adds that human friendly element to you. Network Marketing is about building relationships, so this plugin is handy to have.12. Google Analyticator plugin
With this plugin, you can view Google analytics data within your WordPress blog, which is very important to you. Google analyticator allows you to view useful metrics about your home business blog:
a) Where do your blog visitors come from
b) It shows you the keywords used by visitors to get to your MLM blog
c) Which pages do they seem to like more than othersThis information can help you optimize your MLM blog content, in order to attract more visitors. When you know which content your home business prospects and visitors seem to like, you can optimize your blog content to target more of the relevant keywords.13. Tweetmeme Retweet button
The Tweetmeme Retweet plugin allows your home business blog readers to share your blog post with their twitter followers. This plugin includes a live counter, showing the number of times your blog post has been retweeted. If your blog article is good, the article will be retweeted a lot, inviting a lot of readers and potential MLM leads.14. Statpress
Using Statpress, you can easily check which are the preferred posts by your blog visitors, in real-time. Statpress allows you to view what your blog readers are doing on your network marketing blog, in real-time. It tells you the human visitors, the spiders, etc.15. Popup Domination plugin
While having a web form in your MLM blog side bar can help you greatly in generating leads online, a popup webform will undoubtedly increase your autoresponder sign-ups, and help build your network marketing list of leads and prospects.With this plugin, your online lead generation efforts are given a boost. If you’ve had a look at some of the top marketers’ blogs, then you’ve probably seen the nice popup email opt-in forms. That’s Popup Domination in action.Using this plugin saves you the hassle of having to design your popup web form.This plugin works well with the major autoresponder services, and has been producing amazing results for some of the well-known marketers around.If you want to increase your subscribers and opt-ins for your network marketing blog, then Popup Domination is a must have.By using the plugins above, your MLM blog is more likely to get a boost in traffic, rankings and leads.