Five Keys to Networking Success

Networking, whether through business associations or other means, is the most prevalent and cost effective way for small and home businesses to attract new and repeat sales. Networking and "word of mouth" advertising together are 7 times more likely to bring in business than all forms of traditional advertising and direct mail combined.

ow does it work? More importantly, how can you make it work for your business? Here are five tips to get you started.

1. Select a few key associations or organizations and participate actively. Go to meetings as often as possible and work on one or two committees. Your goal: to be the first person everyone remembers and suggests when others ask, "Do you know anyone who…."

2. Get to events early and plan to stay late. You can't meet and talk to people while a meeting is in progress. Be sure you circulate, too. If you spend too much time with any one person, you can't meet others. You also prevent the person you've attached yourself to from circulating, and they may resent it. If walking away from a person or group makes you feel awkward, have a few exit strategies ready to use. "Excuse me, I really need another cup of coffee this morning" works well for early morning meetings.

3. Greet people you've met in the past. Ask how projects they are working on are going, mention news articles you've seen about them, and congratulate them on any recent successes they've had. Sales grow out of relationships, and this is a good way to establish relationships with key contacts and prospects. Be sincere, though. If you're not, you'll be written off as an opportunist.

4. Follow up on leads. All the leads in the world are worthless if you don't follow up on them. Make that phone call or send the information you promised. Then, at the next meeting you attend, ask if your contact got what you sent.

5. Be generous about sharing business tips, referrals and leads with noncompetitors. You'll be remembered for your help, and may get business or referrals as a result later on. (You win in another way, too. Helping others become successful is as rewarding as being successful yourself.)

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About the author
Janet Attard is the founder of the award-winning Business Know-How small business web site and information resource. Janet is also the author of The Home Office And Small Business Answer Book and of Business Know-How: An Operational Guide For Home-Based and Micro-Sized Businesses with Limited Budgets.

20 Reasons To Have Your Own Website

20 Reasons To Have Your Own Website

Thanks to John Wilson, SFI Team Leader and President's Club member

1. Improves your credibility as an Internet marketer and as an SFI Team Leader.

2. Gives you the freedom to present and emphasize the information you want the way you want to.

3. You can send e-mail using your chosen domain name.

4. Makes your training information and tips easily available to your affiliates.

5. Allows you to set up a blog on your site. (CPanel hosting make it a 5-minute task using Fantastico on CPanel to auto-install a WordPress blog on your Website). Posting to your blog on a regular basis will improve your site's exposure on the search engines—very beneficial.

6. You can create a forum where your SFI team members can find and help one another...and you could help them all. You could even make a private forum for your SFI Team Members only.

7. Adding your own content on a regular and continued basis also will likely get you noticed by the search engines. You can use articles your affiliates submit, providing exposure for them, along with a link back to their SFI Gateway or personal Website.

8. You can setup a page to attractively frame your favorite SFI Gateway(s).

9. Allows you to offer more training options for your team with ebooks, software, and special reports in downloadable form.

10. You can host a site for your "technology challenged" affiliates. It could be as simple as just another page within your main Website. For instance, you could create "mysfiwebsite.com/XXXXXXXX," where XXXXXXXX is affiliate's SFI ID. You could also use the affiliate's name or company name.

11. Providing an RSS feed from your site can let you deliver your sales or training messages without needing someone's e-mail address, thereby expanding your reach to prospective customers. If you need to become familiar with RSS, try this free RSS reader: http://rssreader.com.

12. Setting up a form on your Web page allows you to collect visitors' names and e-mail addresses. Set the form to post the information to your Autoresponder or a database on your site. Check with your Web host for instructions on setting this up.

13. You can setup a page for exchanging relevant links to other Websites. This could help you improve your search engine rankings, which would then increase the traffic arriving at your site.

14. With your own Website, you could then join Traffic Swarm and other traffic exchanges for some free traffic.

15. You can install your own autoresponder on your Webserver to automate your e-mail followup tasks. Even better, by hosting the autoresponder yourself, you won't have to pay monthly fees for a separate autoresponder service.

16. By copy/pasting some code, you can setup a Webpage to redirect to another page, letting you "hide" long, awkward links with affiliate numbers that' are often rejected by many search engines and advertising places. For example: http://moreinfo247.com/xxxxxxx/free could become http://mydomain.com/sfi/.

17. You can provide helpful FAQs for your team members, providing a simple page in which to direct your new affiliates for questions.

18. Adding audio, video, and other multimedia content can improve the attractiveness and effectiveness of your offer.

19. Creating and maintaining your own Website allows you to learn more about and become more comfortable with today's technology. As you grow more confident with running your own site and online business, you can pass this valuable knowledge on to others.

20. As you learn more about setting up an online business and Website, you can then sell your skills in the form of content for others' sites.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Great Domainia - Get your own domain name at a great price!

VeryVIP SiteBuilder - A complete, powerful Web publishing platform and online business solution!

Clickbucks For Profit

Clickbucks For Profit

Designed to complement SFI's main income-generating Retail and T-NET programs, Clickbucks is an extremely easy program ideal for many SFI Affiliates, both in the U.S. and overseas.

How the Clickbucks Program works:

Simply advertise your Clickbucks Gateway Website to generate new affiliates. You'll earn $2 per Full Access Affiliate (an affiliate who has confirmed their SFI registration), plus $1 in CV and 0.5 SVP per. Generate just 20 Clickbucks affiliates in a month, and you'll earn EA status!

That said, be sure you understand that affiliates you generate via the ClickBucks program do NOT enter your downline. Instead, all ClickBucks-generated affiliates flow into Eagle Co-op and are equally and randomly dispersed to Eagle Co-op participants. Additionally, ClickBucks affiliates will not be considered as a retail sale for you. However, the $1 of CV generated for each of your ClickBucks affiliates will go in under your SFI ID and YOU will earn the SVP.

Put simply, , if you participate in the ClickBucks program, you get paid upfront, but you give up all sponsorship benefits. Please make sure you carefully consider this before participating in ClickBucks.

For banners you can use for the ClickBucks Program, click HERE. Your URL for the ClickBucks Gateway is:

http://www.quickinfo247.com/8051555/CB

Although SFI will not send you e-mail notifications on ClickBucks-generated affiliates, you can keep track of your progress by accessing your online ClickBucks report at:

https://www.sfimg.com/MyAccount/ClickBucks.sfi

This report will provide you with complete data and status on all Clickbucks affiliates generated for the previous 120 days. It also includes keycodes, double opt-in percentages, EA upgrade percentages, and opt-out percentages.

Why participate in Clickbucks?

Although SFI doesn't encourage the Clickbucks Program per se as a way to build your business, we do recognize that there are many affiliates around the world where immediate income is more important than building a long-term, network marketing organization—at least in the short term.

ClickBucks was created to accommodate these members of the SFI family. In this way, new people can generate some cash flow while they "get their feet wet" and learn how to build a network marketing business. Then, they can then make the transition to building a T-Net network.

There's also no reason why an affiliate can't promote a ClickBucks Gateway AND any of our other standard Gateways simultaneously, with some leads going into the affiliate's group and some going into ClickBucks for upfront cash.

Additionally, ClickBucks can be an excellent means for our international affiliates to earn extra cash. By simply referring prospects to the ClickBucks Gateway, you can earn great commissions without shipping, credit card, or payment issues of any kind. You can also earn EA status by generating just 20 affiliates a month!

These points aside, what if you're a Team Leader? Do you really want hundreds of affiliates in your group participating in ClickBucks? Maybe...maybe not!

For each affiliate your affiliates generate, there's one dollar in CV going into your organization. That could become significant CV flowing into your payline.

Also keep in mind that if a lot of your T-Net members use Eagle Co-op, then a lot of the affiliates being generated WILL actually wind up under you.

Finally, and this may be the most significant reason, ClickBucks can be the thing that get currently inactive affiliates active. There are many, many SFI affiliates who have the resources to generate hundreds of times more affiliates than they do now...but for some reason they have not become fully engaged yet. If the allure of ClickBucks gets those affiliates to finally get in the game and start fully using their resources, they will be more engaged and more likely to get seriously active with SFI.

Clickbucks rules & restrictions

To prevent fraud, participation in ClickBucks is highly monitored, and several rules and restrictions will be strictly enforced.

Please go to the ClickBucks Policy page for details:

https://www.sfimg.com/Reference/ClickBucksPolicy.sfi