I do not usually mix non profit and business.  However, I have been involved with Coleman Professional Services for five years now and the time has come to give this a shot.

Between now and Dec. 25th, I am going to match donations that are given to Coleman through their Web Form up to the first $100 if you put Buzzoodle in the “This gift is in honor of…” field.

If you would have sent me a card or something, just go make the donation there instead of $5 or more.  It really does help people that need it.

Coleman Professional Services helps people all over Northeast Ohio with Behavioral Health.  I have had a chance to meet many of the people involved with the organization   This is not your average non profit, by the way.  They are very professional and really work hard to keep administrative costs down.  I believe around 90% of your donation goes to helping people directly.

I get hundreds of visitors per day to this website and I hope a few of you each day can spare $5 to help me meet this challenge.  Click Here to Give.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday season.

What is the difference between buying leads and building your own lead generation website?

A lot.  However, this does not have to be a decision.  If you are buying leads from a lead generation company and making a positive ROI on the purchases, then you should never stop buying leads from them.  It is all about if you are getting quality leads and if you are successfully converting leads to customers.

However,  just because that works does not mean you should not build your own lead generation website for your company.

The good thing about building your own lead generation website is that you can generate free leads that are exclusively yours.  Again, this should not mean that you turn off your other lead generation efforts.  The disadvantage of building your lead generation website is that it takes time to get going, it takes some regular effort of writing some articles and getting links, and it requires some time and expertise to set up.

The Buzzoodle lead generation system does make it faster, easier and more effective because it has video on how to set things up and publishing tools to help you improve your publishing, linking and social media integration that will increase your inbound marketing effectiveness.

The good news is that generating leads on the web is not difficult.  But it does take a few months to get set up and to start seeing results – and most people give up before it kicks in.  That said, it is not going to usually produce large numbers of leads a day usually.  When executed properly, online lead generation can produce highly targeted leads that are likely to buy your product, but how many depends on your market and your competition.

Because of the low cost of building a lead generation site, every business serious about growth should have its own lead generation website, but they should also consider other lead generation strategies as well.

I keep one eye on Chris Brogan.  Often I just skim his stuff and do not worry too much about it.  I think he does a great job, but often it is a little light on specifics for someone with more experience.

However, I really must say that this article interested me.  How to Grow.

I can see him going through the same growth issues as an owner and as a person as I am.  Yes, he is executing better and is more well known, but the patterns he is following and building and discovering are the success patterns that every entrepreneur should follow.

He discovered in 2009 how important moving the needle was.  It is the same year I started talking about measurable lead generation instead of the importance of blogging.

And in 2010 he is discovering the importance of building systems where other people own the system, and he is just out promoting.  This is a direction I have gone this year as well, by building more automation and less hands on consulting.  In fact, now my consulting is more along the lines of helping people build the systems, not about technology as much.

The big take away in the Chris Brogan article is not to become exactly like him, but to learn from him sharing how he is improving his life and his businesses.  I hope you find it as useful and interesting as I did.

This is a review of the book, Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes by Allan Cole, Raena Jackson Armitage, Brandon Jones and Jeffrey Way.

I am happy to write about anything related to WordPress because it is one of those tools that is fundamental to your online success.  Since it is free software, you can just play around with it and over time learn to build your own themes.  However, you can greatly increase the speed of your WordPress theme development with Wicked WordPress Themes.

This book is great for someone that is comfortable hacking a bit at the web. You know, the kind of people that are not intimidated when it comes to modifying a bit of php or updating a style sheet.

The advantage of this book for those people is that it quickly guides you through how WordPress works and how the site architecture is laid out. Trust me, I learned this the old fashion way – years of experimenting – and this book will help you hit the ground running.

The reason you want to learn this skill is worth mentioning. Even though WordPress is a blog platform, it is commonly used for websites as well and the skill to be able to build or modify a WordPress theme is in high demand. I have referred many graphic designers to WordPress and told them to learn it if they want to have a great marketable skill.

The advantages of Wicked WordPress Themes is that it has some code examples, but not too much. It has lots of pictures, so you see what they are talking about. And it is written in a very easy to follow format. If you are a little more advanced, you can skip ahead. If you are a beginner, start at the beginning.

The key is to not let the whole thing intimidate you. Set up a test site and just start going through the steps and learning to modify themes. You will have the book, Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes to thank for your new, hot skillset.

I am a huge advocate of multiple lines of online income.

I started putting together a list of ways people could make online income and the list got fairly long – and feel free to add ones I forgot to the comments area.

1. Article and Blog Writing
2. Affiliate Marketing
3. Google Adsense and similar Ad networks
4. EBay
5. Consulting
6. Web Hosting
7. Website Design
8. Selling Themes for WordPress
9. Membership Websites
10. eBooks
11. Selling Video Training
12. Publish a Book (Kindle anyone?)
13. Joint Venture Broker
14. Social Media Manager
15. Virtual Assistant
16. Craigslist
17. Linking Services along with SEO
18. Webinars
19. Copywriting
20. Sales Page Designer
21. Niche Market Researching

The list goes on and on.  I think the key is to build a system for each one and then you can do multiple income sources at the same time.  If you build a measurable, repeatable system it will be much easier.

A few years ago I strictly sold higher end solutions.  No PHP, no open source and no free tools.

I come from a big corporate background and using enterprise tools was the only way to go.

And while there is some use for it still, you really have to get out of this mentality if you are still thinking this way.  For example, there are enterprise blogging systems, but are they really necessary?  Every SEO expert I talk to says WordPress beats any enterprise blogging system – and it is a free, open source blogging platform.

Now you may still want to use a system like our lead generation blogging system to help your WordPress site perform better, but you are still on an Open Source Blogging system you own.

Then there was that whole .Net thing.  I never did think there were big advantages.  Once we switched to .Net everything took longer, things were harder to update and at times we could not debug easily.  I was sold on why it was better but it never seemed better to me, although my programmers liked it.  Now I do everything exclusive PHP.

About 9 months ago a client called me and wanted me to set up Oracle for him.  I was at the library with my daughter, but I asked him what we was trying to do with it.

He needed a simple time keeping system that could be accessed from remote locations.

I pointed him to Google Docs and saved him tens of thousands of dollars – and he loves the solution.

The idea of Enterprise software has changed.  I prefer multiple tools good at specific things instead of complex packages that try to do everything.

I prefer open source.

I prefer things that can plug into other things and leverage the specialty of the initial software.

And I prefer our WordPress integrated publishing and lead generation software to any Enterprise Blog Software you could buy.

What are the best practices for blog lead generation?

I hope you do not question whether a blog can generate leads or not.  It can and does every day.

However, it is not the fact that it is a blog that makes it a lead generator.  It is because it is the perfect tool to develop a content marketing strategy to attract buyers and generate leads.

The first thing you need to do it to decide what your blog lead generation strategy is.  There are two very different strategies, and you can pursue both, but you should do so on two different blogs.

#1 is developing your expert status. This is when you build relationships with your readers and write interesting things frequently.  This is hard and takes time, but the payoff can be big.  People like Chris Brogan have leveraged a blog into a speaking career, author and more.  However, this is a bit of a crap shoot and I do not like to encourage this approach unless someone understands it will probably take years and will take a very steady effort over that time.

#2 is utilizing WordPress as an SEO and lead generation tool.  In this approach, you set up a blog targeting niche keywords and work the system to rank well in search for those words.  When people land on the blog from search engines they get the article and also see your clear call to action and some will become leads for you.

The good thing about #2 is that you can expect faster results normally and you do not have the pressure of writing extremely unique articles several times a week.  This is especially important for people that want leads in areas that are not so flashy.  For example, if you have a steak restaurant or a roofing company, do you really want to become an industry expert or do you just want some targeted, local leads?  Obviously the second option is the best for those kinds of businesses.

The problem with many marketers and Internet consultants is they think one size fits all.  They keep beating the drum of relationships and expert status, when all someone really wants is 10 more inbound leads per month that are worth $200,000 per month in new sales and cost $100 to generate and took about an hour of their time in the month.  (example)

The social media consultants that are selling relationships need to start taking their own advice and listening to business owners.  Most want results, not fluff.  Blog lead generation works if you understand what your goal is up front and focus on it.

I am a big fan of building membership sites.

Some people think of them as only tools to create reoccurring revenue, but they can also be used for other things.

For example, access to a membership site can be a free upgrade or bonus when someone purchases something.

Or it can be a way to train sales people, affiliates or virtual assistants.

WordPress is a great free tool, but it is not the best for managing membership sites.  Unless you buy the WordPress Membership Software plugin called Wishlist Member.

I have use this for years in a variety of ways to increase sales and create products that generate monthly profits for my business.

Now we also build custom applications such as our lead generation membership site, but in the past we used Wishlist Member to quickly build sites that are very effective for us.

The only reason our latest membership site does not use the Wishlist Membership Software is because it has many lead generation tools in it that make it very powerful, but require more than what WordPress alone can do.

But if you are just setting up a site for training or monthly release of digital products, Wishlist Member is for you.

Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs get side tracked by shiny things.

I like to focus on income generating activity.  For me, a business is building income generating systems that are profitable and have long term value.

But I like shiny things too.

Alot!

So to keep myself on task, I have a daily goal sheet that tracks my income each day through various channels.  When I started this I doubled my income immediately (the first month).

Do I still like to get off track and watch launch videos and play with new software?  More than you know – but only after I pass my goal for the day.

The thing is just a nice income tracking spreadsheet I made.  But it really focuses on daily success to meet monthly goals.  I like short term when it comes to income.  I have also created a video for you on how to use it to increase your income by tracking your behavior.

It is just one of the bonuses when you try our lead generation system risk free.

I got the idea from a sales manager that had simple sheets like this he used to track the activity of each sales person.  He said he knew how good they would be in the first month based on the sheet he used, and it was never wrong.

You may wonder why not use a CRM for this.  Well, a CRM is good for B2B sales, but not things like tracking behavior that can generate leads.  Things like posting on your blog, doing a seminar, standing on the street corner with a sandwich board stating that the world is coming to an end….  (not something I do but it might work for you)

The point is the income generating sheet defines those activities and revenue streams that are germane to income generation and sets clear daily goals that are important to you.  And it is dead simple to keep updated.

You can go out and build your own.  It is not hard.  Or you can download mine as a shortcut to increasing your income.  Just find a way to track your income generating behavior and you will be very happy.

Internet Marketing is as diverse as traditional marketing.  So you will not find one piece of Internet Marketing Software that does everything you need for all things on the web.  It is just not practical or possible.

Internet Marketing also changes all the time, so to maintain it would be a nightmare.  Plus, new interesting techniques come out all the time that make older stuff less appealing.  On top of that, because Internet Marketing is reliant on things like search engine rank, and since the search engine companies change their products every week, you can imagine that it is darn near impossible to build one piece of software that would do everything.

Now there are some high end content management systems that try.  Hubspot is a company like that.  It is a nice system and very comprehensive.  But when you move into their system you are getting married with them because your marketing system and website is built on their platform.

I was building platforms like this in 1997 (without twitter and such, of course) and the one thing I found was they grow and grow until they become difficult to support or obsolete.

So a couple of years ago I went back to the drawing board to build a system that had the best interest of the customers in mind.  It was a bit challenging to come up with the perfect solution, but what we decided to do is build a central system that would provide training, content writing, SEO and reporting that interfaced with WordPress.  The reason is simple.  WordPress is not going to become obsolete because thousands of people are working on it and it is some of the most popular software in the world.

Also, people keep adding free and premium plugins to it all the time.

Plus it gets good search ranking with only some minor tweaks.

Plus it is very flexible.  You can start with our lead generation theme and customize it to your liking.

Now the one disadvantage of this is that it is not one piece of Internet Marketing Software that you can learn and use to do everything.  However, it is agile marketing that any serious Internet Marketing Professional will appreciate and want to use daily.  And you will never outgrow it or find the marketplace has left it behind because it is just an important piece of the puzzle and you can still integrate anything else you want.

To see some of the features visit our lead generation page.