Frequently people want to buy a lead generation tool.  What they do not often understand is that it takes more than one tool to build an effective lead generation strategy.

And it is not the same for everyone.  If you want B2B lead generation you are going to invest in a great CRM that is going to help you follow your sales process from initial lead to final close of the sale.  And that could take years to happen.

On the other hand, you may just want to grow your email list and sell affiliate products to those people.  Getting people on your email list is lead generation as well, but does not require the same tools.  In that case, a simple autoresponder will do and will make you money.

What other tools can you use for lead generation?  You can build a lead generation website and use it to attract people that are doing searches and convert them to leads.

You can do keyword research with a great keyword research tool.

And you could use social media and other tools to attract more people into your pipeline of lead generation and sales.

Then there are many specialty products.  Simple things link WordPress plugins and custom tools and exit scripts that can all contribute to successful lead generation if they are made part of the strategy.

I like to tell people that it is never done.  Even if one site becomes a finely tuned lead generation producer, then it is time to set up another site with a slightly different niche market.  There are a lot of tools you can use that can help but do not feel like you need them all at once.

Please note that the offer mentioned in this may or may not be valid at the time you read it.

Yesterday I bought Traffic Zombie – See the LIVE DEMO to get your 50% off Coupon Code

I’d avoided even looking at it because I hate the name.  But something caught my eye and I thought I would take a look.

It did a very good job of getting me to buy – after all it is a small one time fee and a lifetime membership.

But the question is, does it work?  Like most things, it all depends on if you use it properly.

I just launched a fantastic $1 for 60 day lead generation membership trail offer with it – you should take a look and see how it looks in action.

Personally, I do not like to promote something until I have tried it.  However, I set this up in a way that the visitor can pay full price with a 30 day money back offer or they can get 60 days for one dollar if they do two small things to promote us.  Either way I want there to be no (significant) risk to a buyer’s choice.

Results will take a bit of time to see, I am sure.  However, I like the thing so far and if it produces new clients and new links – how can I go wrong?

You can check out Traffic Zombie and our $1 Offer via Traffic Zombie software and see what you think.

Just read this news article about Google and how their new algorithm is doing more with fresh content.

Our primary product, the lead generation website system depends on fresh content regularly.  It is tough because business owners understand how critical it is but they do not keep doing the thing long term.  I consider it the biggest challenge when it comes to helping people build successful lead generation websites.

Now with the new Google update, it is more critical than ever.  Most likely, even if you do not have top ten ranking, new posts will bounce up temporarily.  That is really great but makes competition for this permanent even more difficult.

I guess the good news for companies that help people with Internet Marketing and Lead Generation Online is that we will never be out of a job because the game is always changing.

Some people set up a 10 page website and they are done.

Other people buy hundreds, even thousands, of domains and websites that they put up and then let get stale.

I know someone that recently let a bunch of domains expire just because he never did figure out what to do with them.

I am guilty as well of not paying attention to all my domains over the years. I saw Brad Sugars speak this week and he talked about Action Coach having over 1,000 websites that they run to generate traffic to their main website.

Even before the seeing Brad Sugars speak I had formulated a plan and was working on improving one site at a time, but it was still very interesting to hear.

For you, consider resurrecting your web assets. Just because they are not doing anything does not mean that they will not do anything. The trick to doing this is to have a “website business plan” for each domain. No, I do not mean you have to write a formal business plan for each domain. Instead, I want you to have a desired outcome for each domain. I have some that are only for linking, others that only generate ad revenue, others that only sell affiliate products and yet others that just sit out there until I have time to do more with them.

Free Business Plan Template for your Website

Don’t over think the business plan – you can jot it down on a napkin if you want, but do not invest time into resurrecting your web assets until you know what you want to accomplish. Use these questions as your free business plan template for reworking your websites.

1. Is the site currently doing anything of value? (Traffic, Page Rank, Getting linked to?)
2. Do you want to invest in the site, sell the site, or let the site age?
3. If you decide to age the site, make sure you have at least some information on it.
4. Does the site currently have income? Can that income be increased with a little attention?
5. Does the site have 1 clear call to action for making money or building your list?
6. Could a product be developed around this website theme?
7. Could investing in an outsourced person have a positive ROI?
8. After making the needed changes, what is the expected outcome of the site in 6 – 12 months?

If you are not able to answer these questions realistically you probably have more to learn about the web or you need to hire someone that can tell you what you should be able to expect from some effort. Too many people have a vague idea of a site making money but no specific plan of attack or realistic expectation.

I recently did a course on creating websites that would generate an average of 50 cents per day. That seems pathetic, but the course was actually really interesting because it advocated spending less than 1 hour setting up the site, plus the $8 on domain name + nominal hosting costs (because you set up a lot of sites) and then the whole thing is mostly automated.

I really liked it because it set specific and realistic goals. Lets say a site is $8 per year domain, + .50 hosting per month + $100 of my time per year. That makes the site cost $114 per year. Now if it brings in $15 per month I will make $180 per year. That is a $66 profit plus I am building an asset. Now if I outsource that hour to someone and the $100 is now $10 – I am pretty happy.

This is a mini business plan for websites using one technique. Easy to understand. Easy to follow the formula and it is even a low risk (some sites perform better than others)

So what is your website business plan? Hopefully you have more than one site and more than one plan.

While I work with many fine, big businesses to help them grow their business using business blogging software to generate online leads, I also find that I end up mentoring a lot of people on creating Internet businesses. The problem is that they do not like what I have to say, which is that it takes time and work.

Here are 10 reasons it takes longer than people think (or hope) for building online income.

1. Google sandbox – while this is unofficial, most SEO people know that the first 6-12 months are much harder on a website with a new domain. It does not get consistent good ranking from Google until it ages. If you just quit your job and started an Internet business, I hope you were planning a year in advance and set up some niche sites.
2. No email list – Sure, there are faster ways to build a list. But starting from zero is just going to be a lot of work, especially if you have not done it before.
3. Selling something they are unfamiliar with – lets face it, no one likes to sell something that they do not understand. If you just started and you are selling a money making opportunity, and you are not making much money yet, how are you going to convince other people?
4. Lots of Internet Marketing courses – If you are buying a lot of Internet Marketing courses and programs you are probably not taking action – just learning more. Make sure to take action asap.
5. Focusing on one site – It is OK to focus on one site – but only if you are well targeted and are going to really make an incredible effort on that site.
6. Not testing – If you are spending money on pay per click or advertising but you are not building your list or making sales to a decent percentage of visitors, you are going to burn through your money with little outcome. Traffic is not the goal – conversion is the goal.
7. Not planning goals in tiers – Your goal cannot be to make $100,000 in 6 months from zero. OK, you can have that goal if you want to, but consider this. I always suggest someone set daily goals and when you are just starting out, learn to make $10 a day. I know that cannot support you, but until you know how to make a little you cannot scale up and make a lot.
8. Pick products that can be sold, not one’s with the highest payout. The places I make the most money besides working with clients are mid-priced products that have incredible quality and are very valuable.
9. Too complex of a plan – remember that people will not find your new website unless you promote it day and night. Keep your plan simple and focus on relentless promotion, value and content.
10. Giving up too quickly. Lastly, people do not make money fast so they think everything is wrong and they jump to the next idea. Unless you focus on a few things and do them well for an extended period, you cannot be successful.

Bonus: Especially when you are just starting, do not build many different business models. There are a lot of ways to make money on the Internet but you cannot do them all. Really master one and then learn a second.

One thing that I really enjoy, but also gives me headaches, is the many different ways that I make money for my business.  I am a firm believer that you have to focus on one very successful way to make money and build that up and automate it.  If you try to do too many things you will probably be failing at most of them.

Then again….

Let’s say you have a successful business or maybe you are just working a day job and want to dabble at night.  What ways are there to make money?

This is not exclusively Internet Income – I am going to mention some things like speaking and books, but the funny thing about those is that my speaking leads usually come via my marketing speaker website.  And my book would have never been so easy and profitable had it not been for print on demand and amazon as my main book store.  So even those areas that are not direct internet money making strategies can still be influenced by them.

Here are some other ways to add revenue to your life or business:

1. Create a membership site – yes, this is one of the ways I make money.
2. Build up a newsletter following and sell products to them.
3. Blogging – Yes, you can make money lots of ways with blogging.
4. Consulting and Development
5. Webinars
6. Affiliate Income
7. Set up an eCommerce Store and sell eBooks, Etc.
8. Set up your own Reseller Program for Web Tools

These are just some of the revenue sources I have.  Some are very small and some do very well for me.  And yes, I do have my main business that is doing very well, but it is not that much more work to add many of these things to my daily effort.  In fact, many of these things not only produce side income for me but they also help sell the main company.

A while back I took a hard look at the value I was bringing to clients.

Understand, I have never felt it was a bad value or I would not have been doing it.  Period.

But there were issues around selling people software that they simply did not use to it’s full potential.  So the product was good but the average outcome was less than ideal.  -  By the way, I think Microsoft suffers from the same thing.  I want less, not more.

As a Marketing Speaker, I get a strong feel from the audience on what they want, and that is usually less as well.  Just tell me the couple of most important things – not a long list of things I will never do.

That is why we built our Lead Generation Product.

It is simpler than anything else I have ever built.  And it is more valuable.  It generates massive leads for clients that use the system.  And since the whole thing is automated, there is nearly nothing to do.  You only need to either write short articles or pay someone to write short articles.  Then leads find you and request information from you.

I often get hired as an SEO Speaker but most people do not want the details – they want to know how to get the maximum results for the minimum effort.

That is why I now do Web marketing workshops around using SEO, Social Media and Lead Generation Strategies to build your own lead generation engine.  You need to contact me if you are interested as we customize it to your industry and goals.

It is high, high value and I have never felt better about what I have to offer.  You should take advantage of it before your competition does.

Inbound Marketing is the strategic creation of content to increase targeted visitors to an offer on the web.

It can include video, articles and any other kind of content that someone can create to help them be found and encourage people to take action.

Inbound Marketing is simple for people that have been doing Internet Marketing in the past, but can seem like a lot of voodoo to someone that has only ever had up a basic webpage.  Let me spell out how to do Inbound Marketing in a simple, step by step plan.

1. Have a great call to action.  When someone lands on your website, they are not necessarily going to call you or buy your product.  Create a good call to action – maybe with a free give away – that will collect information and turn your visitor into a lead.  For example, I offer a free lead generation course.
2. If you know your call to action is good, then you need to start building bridges from the big Internet world into your call to action.  This is a critical step:  Identify the problem your product solves and think about what people are searching on to create content that will rank high and attract attention.  Do keyword research to find those words that are not too difficult to get but have good traffic.
3. Create a business blog and hire someone to do blog writing if you cannot do it.  This is going to be your inbound marketing engine that will generate a steady flow of leads for you.  Make sure your business blog software is designed for automatic seo and is 100% ROI focused.
4. Create Content Often – The search engines love fresh, relevant content.  If you set it up and forget it, you will not be very likely to have an Inbound Marketing success.  The trick is to keep building and growing your effort, which is why business blogging is the best Inbound Marketing technique today.
5. Know your sales funnel – Leads are just where you start.  Make sure you know how your online lead generation feeds into the sales process and do not drop the ball on leads that are coming in daily once things get going.

Find Out More: Inbound Marketing with Business Blogs

Ultimately, there is more than one way to measure Inbound Marketing results.

Inbound marketing is the intentional creation of information/content to draw targeted people into your information portal.  It may be a blog or a website.

So measurement #1 is increased traffic.

But effective Inbound Marketing draws in targeted traffic, not just general traffic.  So how many people are taking advantage of your call to action?  If it is a low number, your Inbound Marketing may not be targeted very well or your call to action may not be attractive to the market.  One way to know this is by looking at the search engine keywords people are using to find your site.  If the keywords are good and seem to be the right target, then your call to action needs improved.  If you are not getting good keywords, your content is not targeted or optimized.

Measurement #2 is leads from that call to action.

Measurement #3 is actual sales.  This may take longer to track, but is your Inbound Marketing effort generating sales results?

Your Inbound Marketing strategy may have some other outcomes you want to target and measure as well, such as growing lists.

When I say grow a list, I mean a lot of things.  Email list, twitter followers, faceBook friends and RSS subscribers are all different kinds of lists that you can grow with Inbound Marketing.

If you assign a value to each of these things, you can then estimate the ROI on your Inbound Marketing – be sure to include the time you spend writing.

I am putting together a list of links of basic internet marketing tools for a presentation and I thought I would share them here.

Two Things You Must Have

Most things are free – these are not but they are necessary:

>>> BlueHost – Set up 50 blogs in a few clicks for less than $9 per month.

>>> aWeber – Every business needs to be building their list every day.  I wish I would have started a list sooner.

Blogging Solutions

• Host Your Own Blog – Better Option
• Blogger
• WordPress

Lead Generation Engine

• Buzzoodle Lead Generation – Great Business ROI

Social Networks

• LinkedIN – Go ahead and link to me
• Twitter – Follow me and I will follow you
• FaceBook

Social Bookmarks

• Digg
• Delicious
• Social Marker

Reporting and Research

• Google Analytics
• Google Keyword Research

Publishing

• My Article Network
• Squidoo
• eZineArticles
• Gather
• Hubpages

I know there is a lot more that is not on this list, but I am trying to think of what somone new to Internet Marketing may need to promote their business.  Feel free to add your own additions in the comments.