Smart business people are leveraging the power of Internet marketing strategies to attract more qualified customers to their small business. Small Businesses that you would not expect to find on the Internet are now using online marketing to draw in customers like a magnet. Traditional small business marketing methods are expensive and the results are not measurable. Positioning yourself as the expert in your field and providing valuable information to your potential customers will magically attract qualified prospects to you. This article will provide valuable small business marketing ideas to help you develop marketing strategies for your small business.My time is limited, and I have found that using the search engines is a great way to find products and services that meet my needs. The information available on the Internet lets me compare products and services and get reviews from other customers who have purchased the products I am looking for. Last week I purchased a generator for my home through the Internet, and I needed to find a local electrician to install it.   I hate calling people from the yellow pages, so I decided to search the Internet for someone who could help me. I found three different electricians. Electrician A had very good information on their website about some simple electrical jobs and things to watch out for when picking an electrician.   Electricians B and C simply had a “yellow page” website with a phone number and address. Because Electrician A had shared valuable information with me first, I already trusted him more, but I wanted to get three bids to make sure I paid a reasonable amount of money for my job.I sent all three electricians an email asking for a bid on my job. Then I spoke with each of them on the phone to answer their questions and give them directions to my property.Electrician B bid on the job sight unseen. Electrician A and C both made time to come out to my property and look over the job before bidding.Electrician A made a couple of good suggestions that actually saved me money and helped me avoid a costly mistake. Electrician C bid almost twice what the other two electricians did. After getting all of the bids, I chose Electrician A because he took the time to come out and look over my job, and actually helped me save money, even though he did not have the cheapest overall bid. Electrician B, who bid on my job sight unseen, had the lowest bid, but would have actually cost me more money because of the issues that Electrician A had pointed out when he took the time to come out to my property to see the job before bidding on it. Electrician C looked over the same job site as electrician A, but did not give me a lot of confidence when he did not point out the same issues that Electrician A had.  The combination of a website with valuable information to help build my confidence coupled with free advice to help me save money actually won this electrician my business. This is an example of how effective marketing a small business using the Internet coupled with a consultative sales approach can help attract and win customers for your business. Because of their power to attract customers, I have implemented these Internet marketing strategies in my own small business. I have a website that has valuable information available to the prospective customers who search for my services. Because of this useful information, the customers who find me already trust what I have to say. They know something about me before we even speak with each other. This helps filter out the tire kickers and helps me leverage my time to work with only those customers who truly have an interest in my services as a small business Internet marketing coach.By reading this article you’ll learn why it is important to market your small business on the Internet. You will learn small business marketing ideas that will attract more customers to you who are already interested in what you have to offer. You will learn how to gain the trust of these customers allowing you to win more business and make more money.Why it is so important to market your small business on the InternetMore than ever, people start their search for information about products and services on the Internet. In fact, as a business medium, the Internet is growing while many other sectors of the economy are declining. Your customers are looking for you on the Internet…trust me I know this. The question is “are they going to find you when they search?” and if they do, “will they learn enough about you to trust you and contact you to do business?”  Many people no longer think of the yellow pages when they are searching for information about a product or service. The major search engines are the most accessed websites on the Internet. Google has over 91 million searches per day, and Yahoo has over 60 million searches per day, together they represent 151 million searches per day. Now the population of the United States is just over 304 million and the population of the whole world is just over 6 billion (Wikipedia – Jul 2008). One out of every two people in the United States could be searching for something or one out of every 40 people in the world could be doing the same. This is a staggering number of searches every day, which reinforces the fact that people are relying on the Internet to search for and find quality information. You can see why, more than ever before, it is important to have an Internet marketing strategy for your small business.How to attract more customers to you who are already interested in what you offerOk…so now we can agree that your business should be on the Internet, but how can you be sure that your business will be found out of all of the others out there? How can you effectively market your small business on the Internet? Probably not the way you would think. Hype-based or hard selling techniques no longer work. The way to attract customers to you is to offer valuable free information to the people who find you.   They will find you because you will use the same words that people are searching for when describing your products or services. This is called search engine optimization (SEO) and all it means is that when you write the content for your website or blog, you use the words that people are typing into the search engines so that they can find you when they search. If you are using a replicated website, it is very likely that it has not been optimized to be found by the search engines. Search engines hate replicated websites.Your small business marketing strategy should include writing articles about topics that are interesting to your customers. To do this, you have to figure out who your target customer is, and what they are interested in. This is probably the hardest part of your small business marketing strategy. This is the essence of attraction marketing and is how you will build an audience for your information, which in turn will draw customers to you like magic. Then it is just a matter of placing your content all over the Internet so that it is found when your customers search. If you are a local business, there are ways to localize your content, so that customers in your geographic area can find you first before you competitors when they search.How the value you provide helps you gain the trust of your customersOnce your customer types in the search words at the search engine and your content comes up, you have started building trust and credibility in their minds. The more valuable the content you offer for free, the more trust you will build. The more frequently your content comes up, the more credibility you will gain. Securing the trust of your customers is the hardest step in making the sale. Using these small business Internet marketing strategies does this hard step for you, so that when your customers come to you, they are ready to learn what you have to offer. If the valuable free content that you offer is perceived to be more valuable than that of your competitors, you will differentiate yourself in the eyes of your prospective customer. If your content comes up first on the search engines, you are guaranteed that your customer will see what you have to offer. If what you offer is of value, you have just won a customer.You too can leverage these ideas for marketing your small business on the Internet There are many tools that you can leverage today for your small business marketing strategies. Some of these include websites, blogs, articles, images, Google maps, videos, etc.  In addition to these, there are many social media options to help build your reputation with your customers. These include such things as Face book, MySpace, Squidoo, and Twitter.For example, my small business has a website which I use as the hub of my business activities. I have written articles, such as the one you are reading, which are found by the search engines when my target customers type in certain search words. My articles then link back to my website for my customers to find more information about my services. In addition to my articles, I have Squidoo lenses, and a Face book page which also link back to my website. My offline marketing also has the link to my website. Again, the target of all of my marketing is to drive prospective customers to my website where they can prequalify themselves by learning more about my business and requesting more information if they are interested. Notice, I am not chasing customers, nor am I wasting my money on the yellow pages. Instead, I am attracting customers to me through the valuable information that I provide. You can easily implement these same marketing strategies for your small business also.If winning more business and making more money is important to you…If all of this information is a bit overwhelming to you, or you just don’t know how to get started, I suggest that you find someone who can guide you through developing and implementing the Internet marketing strategies for your small business. Find someone who can show you the ropes and teach you what you need to know to be self-sufficient.Don’t just sign up with anyone who claims to build or host websites, though. Not everyone knows the secret of attraction marketing like I have described for you here. Find someone who understands these concepts and has demonstrated their ability to apply them the way that I have demonstrated it to you when you found this article. When you do find someone, the more they know the more costly their time will be.  Look for someone who knows just a little more than you but who isn’t so good at it they charge you a fortune. They can show you how to set up your small business marketing strategies on the Internet, or if you don’t have the time to do it, they can do it for you. Now you know how to easily win more business and make more money. Leveraging an Internet marketing strategy will help you with the hardest part of establishing any business relationship. It will help you gain the trust of your potential customers before you have even spoken with them yet. You will be able to attract more customers to you, and the ones you attract are already interested in what you have to offer. After that, all you have to do is offer great service and close the sale. These great small business marketing ideas can give you a leg up on your competitors, and help you grow your small business.   Now you know why it is so important for you develop an Internet marketing strategy for your small business. As a customer, I have found that small businesses who provide valuable information to me when I am searching for products or services are much more likely to get my initial inquiry about their products or services.  Businesses who are not on the Internet or who have a replicated brochure website are usually not in the running at all. In fact, I usually forget to even look in the yellow pages. My first stop to search is now the search engines like Google or yahoo. I have implemented these small business marketing strategies in my own consulting business. Now I have customers calling me, instead of me trying to chase them or spending thousands of dollars on ads that don’t bring in anyone. Give me a call or shoot me an email and I’d be happy to spend 20 minutes on a free consultation with you to get you started on the right track.

Auctions are those events where properties or goods are sold to the highest bidder. Auctions are mostly public events, where bidders make a series of bids and purchase a particular item for a high price. During auctions, bidders decide the price of an item rather than the seller. It depends on bidders to decide the amount they would want to pay for a specific item. During an auction, a bid is a proof of a legal binding. Bidders agree to pay the amount that they have bid. In a high profile auction, bidders may have to pay a deposit in escrow accounts or give a proof that they can pay for those items.

Types of Auctions:

Different types of auctions take place around the world. Below mentioned are some types of auctions:

1. English auction:
This is a basic type of auction. In this type, people can see the item and then start bidding. Bidders slowly raise the value of their bid until everyone gives up. The highest bidder is the winner. An auctioneer manages an auction, keeps records of the on going bid and decides the winner. Sometimes, the seller will quote a minimum amount for an item to the auctioneer, below which the auctioneer cannot sell that item.

2. Dutch auction:
In this type, the auctioneer sets a particular price and then gradually lowers the price. People in public will start bidding and later decide which prices are suitable for the item. A seller may use this type of auction to sell large quantities of same products to the public. For instance, a seller may want to sell a large amount of hay and will thus, decide to sell this hay to people for the same amount, once a reasonable price is decided.

3. Silent auction:
In this type, the bidders in public will present their bids in a sealed format. These sealed bids open at the same time and bidder with the highest bid wins. There could be a modification in this type of auction. The bidders are allotted a specific period to bid. They can roam in a room displaying the items, and write their bids on an associated sheet of paper. The bidders are allowed to see bids of other bidders and can choose a higher price for an item. At the end of the allotted time, bidder with the highest bid is the winner.

Examples of Auctions:

Auctions can be of two types either public or private. Sellers may trade any kind of items in both types of auctions. Some areas where auctions take place are:

1. Antique auction: An antique auction consists of a trade opportunity as well as provides entertainment.

2. Collectable auction: In a collectable auction, the seller may put up collectables like coins, vintage cars, luxury, stamps, real estate, and luxury for sale.

3. Wine auction: In wine auction, bidders can bid for rare wine, which may not be available in retail wine shops.

4. Horse auction: Bidders can bid for young horses of the best breed.

5. Livestock auction: In livestock auction, bidders can buy pigs, sheep, cattle, and other livestock.

The other examples of auctions may not be public. These auctions are for bidders from corporate levels. Some examples of private auctions are:

1. Timber auction
2. Spectrum auction
3. Electricity auction
4. Debit auction
5. Environmental auction
6. Auto auction
7. Electronic market auction
8. Sales of business auction

Bidders in an auction need to examine the items displayed and decide an appropriate price for an item. Thus, auctions help buyers in getting the best deals and in gaining better profits for sellers.

If you’re one of the many people looking to find a business to work from home then you should consider if it’s right for you. No doubt if you are looking into this type of revenue generation, then you’re probably tired of working long hours for little pay, building someone else’s dreams. Have you ever heard that whoever owns the business owns the dream? Well I believe that’s true and if you spend most of your time working to build someone else’s dreams then I hope you understand that you don’t have a shot in the dark of making it big financially in this country! It will never happen! Most people are so busy making a living that they forget to live a life and before they know it they’re older, their kids are grown and they don’t have much to show for the “40/40″ plan, working 40 hours a week for forty years of their lives. We live in the richest country in the world, so why do so many people scrape by? If you want to be successful in life, find out where 98% of the people are going and go the other way. Almost all successful people have built assets rather than work for a paycheck. They’ve owned their own businesses and built pipelines. So the question isn’t whether a home based business is right for you, but rather can you build a successful home based business. The answer is an undoubted YES YOU CAN. But how, you may ask? First you need to decide what kind of business you’d like to operate. With so many different businesses to choose from, how do you know what’s right for you? To answer this question, you must see the difference between a traditional “brick and mortar” type small business, a franchise, and a non-traditional, e-commerce type business usually referred to as MLM (multi-level marketing or Network Marketing).First off, with traditional small businesses, there are four factors to consider: time… money… knowledge… risk.Time: To show a profit, you’d have to be open for business for long hours every day, including weekends. Usually, a 70-90 hour work week is very realistic in this type of business model. As the owner, you’d have to be there that long, or at least hire a manager that you could trust to run most of your day to day operations and pay that person enough to stay reliable.Money: As an owner, your overhead in this business model is fairly substantial. You have leased space for your business, insurance, paid electric/utilities, heat and water. Then you have inventory and computer and software to manage it. Usually a cash register, and you must register with a bank as a merchant to process Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover Card payments. Not to mention any other equipment needed to maintain the business.Knowledge: How to run a small business is not taught in college. If a person does not have a relative under whose tutelage he/she can learn, they must be self-taught… in the school of Hard Knocks. Most small business beginners are shocked to find that filling out paperwork takes the equivalent of one day per week. If they don’t know basic bookkeeping, they hire an Accountant. If they need advice on business structure, whether and how to use a Corporation, a Limited Partnership, or a Limited Liability Company (LLC), they hire an attorney.In either case, they exchange money which they need for knowledge which they also need. This is a wise trade, since a small mistake made early can compound to a big problem later, but it is costly. Not to mention the sole proprietor cannot approach the competitor down the street for guidance on how best to organize his/her store. So like a person entering a dark room, they must feel their way carefully or they will trip over what they can’t see. Even with care, ignorance is not bliss and can cost the owner dearly… maybe cost the enterprise to fail. Take a look at this article ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/01/retailers-close-stores-24-7/1873745/ ).Risk: The new businessman has “tied up” in the venture several thousands of dollars which they cannot afford to lose. Also, hundreds or even thousands of hours of their lives invested as well… which in time can never be recaptured. Look at what happened to Hostess, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread.As you can see, the traditional small business venture can run upwards of tens of thousands of dollars with more “work” involved than having a job. You simply bought yourself a job with the business.Franchising, on the other hand, is that you plug into an already proven system. People think you are “buying a franchise”, but actually you invest your assets in a system to utilize the brand name operating system, and ongoing support. Think of one of the largest franchises of our time, McDonald’s. People who buy a McDonald’s franchise buy into the system already in place of producing Big Mac’s and Filet o Fish without having to “reinvent the wheel”. All you have to do is follow the “system” and your franchise will be successful, so they say. But the desire to “be my own boss” is not fully satisfied by a franchise. Franchisees cannot think of themselves as an independent owner. If they do they will be tempted to try to change the system. Does Mickey D’s sell hot dogs at all? Of course not! The home office does not permit anyone to “tinker” with their formula. The franchisee owns the assets of their own franchise, but is licensed only to run someone else’s business system. The desire to become a franchisee is grounded on belief that they can be more successful using someone else’s brand, and operating according to their methods, than they would be if they opened up their own independent business and competed against them. The problems with most franchises like McDonald’s, is that: it costs substantially more than a small business, there are royalty fees (usually 5-10% gross profit), loss of personal control… need to quit your full time job and be “locked in” to suppliers chosen by the franchisor, the inability to will your business to your family, a one-sided contract drafted by franchisor that may not fully protect your territory and interests. However, a franchise allows for: opening more quickly, developing a profitable customer base faster, has less risk, national advertising presence, built-in name recognition, strong support system that can be called upon for advice, readily identifiable trade name and goodwill associated with it, centralized, and collective buying power.Now that you understand the differences between the two, what we need is a home based business that can adapt the best of both worlds: a way to generate full-time income with part-time work, a system that produces residual income that keeps coming in although one’s advancing age eventually prevents putting in much, if any, time.More and more companies are entering forms of innovative cooperation with outside marketers. Reducing their own in house personnel has prompted them to enter strategic business alliances or joint ventures in which two or more business entities help each other. Since the 80′s, three powerful trends have converged.First, threatened by corporate layoffs, highly capable men and women are looking for ways to diversify their income. Quite a few have asked themselves, “why go back to a corporation, even if I can find one to hire me, and risk being cut by the same layoff axe in a couple of years? Why not become an Independent Contractor?”Second, not everyone laid off was “dead wood”. When companies cut their ranks by tens of thousands, they also cut thousands who were productive. They need to hang on to the productivity of the people they did not keep. So they started scrambling to find Independent Contractors to reach their marketThird, since the early 90′s, the introduction of the personal computer and soon after, the internet have allowed small, part-time businesses with few or no employees to compete on a level playing field with anyone in the world. Some of the smartest businessmen in the world have found a unique way to harness these trends to their advantage.This is where MLM and e-commerce come in. Successful business models that harness the power of the internet and e-commerce along with the concept of independent contractors has made MLM companies a major power house in business today. Companies like Avon, Mary Kay, Herbalife, Amway, Melaleuca, Primerica, Pampered Chef, Ambit Energy, and many others have all realized the top 20 reasons for non-traditional business.1) Low investment- usually less than $500 to start, depending on the Home Based Business opportunity..2) No Boss-the independent contractor determines how much money to make and how hard they want to work.3) Ability to work from home- daily commute consists of walking to your coffee pot on your kitchen counter. (That’s why it’s called Home Based Business!)4) Fewer, more flexible hours- people are just too busy now a days!5) Time-compounding through duplication- what you do and teach others to do the same adds to your business exponentially. Would you rather have 100% of your own efforts or 1% of 100 people’s efforts?6) Minimal legal liability- no person in a “downline” can create vicarious liability for the sponsor.7) No special licenses or training to join- unlike a realtor or insurance agent.8) No discrimination-8) No discrimination-a Network Marketing type of Home Based Business rewards a person for movement of product and sponsoring others to do the same, regardless of sex, race, creed, or religion.9) Tax Benefits- ability to claim home office deductions, utilities, gas and mileage, and business conferences, even while on vacation as deductions.10) No employees- one works with, but not for the parent company.11) No risk- startup costs are trivial compared to traditional small businesses and franchises.12) No accounts receivable and collection headache- “cash and carry” type business.13) Inexpensive, usually free training- upline mentor has vested interest in helping downline grow so the mentor will provide any and all training to help their downline. Like a good parent guiding their child teaching them what and what not to do.14) Early Income-possibility to recoup initial investment in first month in business.15) Unlimited income potential- Network Marketing has no floor. You could make nothing at all. It is because of no floor that it has no ceiling either. The sky’s the limit!16) Inelastic Demand- a good Network Marketing company offers products or services that are top-quality, which people want, need and can afford, and have to buy again. Repeat business.17) No regulatory Problems- the Parent Company takes care of all of the regulators and taxing authorities so the individual marketer is freed up to be creative.18) Insulated against disaster- no single location; rather, it connects the country and the world with small individual participant-outlets.19) Time flexibility of training/support system-time cost super small compared to medical school, business school, or even law school. You are in business for yourself but never by yourself.20) Willable to one’s children- Network Marketing business can be transferred to one’s heirs usually estate-tax free. It’s the transfer of cash flow not assets that allows your heirs to keep the wealth.Now that you see the many benefits of Network Marketing compared to traditional business, it is clear that this concept is by far the simplest and fastest form of generating extra income, regardless of what your mother-in-law, or brother-in-law think they know. So, again the question is, is this right for you? Only you can answer that, however, if it is right for you, how do you get exposure for your new MLM business? Very simply put, you need powerful training at little or no cost that will flood your inbox with potential customers and business partners in the easiest way possible. For a step-by step guide on developing this plan and maximizing your income from your MLM opportunity,click here to access a free training series.. “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” – Demosthenes