When it comes to budgeting your business online two things comes into play. You will either have time to run your business or you will have money. Most new business owners are getting in to this market to generate great income so these new owners are looking for free to low cost marketing methods. You will have to know which methods are going to give you the best conversions, and the best and fastest way to make sales.

Budgeting your business online does not mean you sign up for every email that comes into your inbox with the best way to generate leads. Make sure you opportunity has the resources needed for you to plug in to their methods that they have already tried and tested to be effective. Your time will be needed when generating these leads and should be exhausted on money making activities, not seeing if something works.

Your opportunity should have an office that has all the training on how to generate prospects while budgeting your business online. The stats should be clearly stated of visits to leads, leads to purchase, and purchases to members. That is what is called conversions. If you know this method and what it takes to get to those conversions, how could you not be generating the leads you need to take your business to the next level?

There are so many ways to run your business budgeting online. There are opportunities online that show you exactly how to do this and have proven results. Some of the free to low cost marketing methods are classifieds, videos, press releases, blogging, social sites, and so on and so on. I’ll just name a few. So many top earners in this business have started out using these same methods until they created a snow ball affect, and that’s when you can jump into marketing methods that you can leverage money for time.

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doesn’t he though? I always tell my business writing skills and presentation skills students that they won’t go wrong if they assume their readers/listeners are intelligent adults paying attention because they want to add to their knowledge. Communicate under that premise, and you will gain respect.

Serial copycat abusers of our mother tongue are anathema to that audience. As I noted a few months ago, mindlessly inserting “going forward” and “due diligence” and “most unique” risks irritating your readers and listeners, which changes the context in which they evaluate your thinking. Remember: That’s you on that email or memo, and if you’re dealing with a new contact, remember this as well: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That is the essence of effective business communications — reaching and impressing a busy audience.

So, to the third installment of the Language Hall of Shame:

o Low-hanging fruit – When this one pops up I’m tempted to make eye contact with someone else in the room and share a knowing grin. But let’s try to be serious. Here’s the day-to-day “business world” interpretation of low-hanging fruit: When faced with a challenge, you do the easy stuff first. So how about instead: “Let’s confront this problem one step at a time…”? I recall attending a planning meeting where “low-hanging fruit” entered the discussion early and was repeated eight times by four or five other adults. Apparently, all it takes is one brief utterance to turn otherwise bright people into language lemmings.

o Defining moment – I take that to mean the one crucial stage or decision that lets us know whether we’re facing success or failure. If so, then by its very definition, the phrase must be used sparingly. Yet it sounds so precise that we overuse it because we feel authoritative and insightful. But how many “defining moments” can there be? Pile up too many of them, and they lose their impact while you look shallow and unimaginative.

o Rgds and tks – Whoa, you must be one extremely busy and important executive if you can’t find the time to write out “regards” and “thanks.” And lest I forget that, tks for reminding me of your stature every time you send an email. Maybe, as the poet William Wordsworth said, the child really is “father of the Man,” and we should start aping the shorthand that our brilliant offspring use when they “text” each other.

While I’m at it, a word about the etiquette of writing emails: Why are we no longer starting them with a proper salutation, such as “Hi, Bob” or or “Good Morning?” When you pick up a phone for a business call or run into someone at work, don’t you usually start with a “Hi, Bob” or a “How are you?” What is there about email that gives us permission to be abrupt, even rude?

You’ve probably heard the saying “the more things change the more they stay the same”. I entered the game (network marketing) just as the internet was ramping up, about the same time you didn’t need to be a bodybuilder to hold a cell phone to your ear (remember the bricks of past years?). We were essentially told to write that proverbial names list (you’ve heard it – by 21 you know 2000 people… ) and start calling – did that ever work?

Not knowing much about the industry we simply used the products we purchased monthly and attended every training we could. We were lucky, we benefited from the products our company of choice produced so personal consumption was never an issue.

Like so many people we got no’s pretty well everywhere we turned but with sheer persistence eventually found and trained some great people and our business took off.

Fast forward 10 years it’s time to bring our MLM business online – why you may ask. Simple, while the essence of network marketing is the same, marketing methods evolve and change over time. One of the hallmarks of the 21st century is “You Inc”, or personal branding.

Thanks to the internet I’ve developed what I call a hybrid model, using the best offline MLM business strategies with online strategies. This means real approaches where I can send people to a web based presentation or do a one on one presentation if local, and attraction marketing through social media and content marketing to extend my reach.

Online is definitely a learned skill which for me at least has and is taking time but is absolutely worth it. “Brand you” will get you so far offline, and we have built teams in numerous countries just to prove the point, but online you’re only limited by your belief in yourself and the effort you put in.

Key lessons from my journey so far:

• Pick the right guru (s) to follow
• Throw some money at quality training, it speeds up the learning curve enormously
• Invest in personal growth on a daily basis. Network marketing / internet marketing is often called a personal growth course wrapped in a compensation plan – your income grows as you grow
• Have an advertising budget
• Find your voice – don’t give your voice to someone else. Sure you can outsource your content (assuming content marketing is part of your strategy) to oDesk and the like, but rolling up your sleeves and creating your own content gives you authenticity
• Be patient – it takes time but it does take
• Have a daily plan of action – social marketing can drain your time. Never forget it’s only part of the answer, you still need to daily prospect
• Find a company to align yourself with that supports online marketing as part of the mix
• Don’t be afraid to look outside your company for the training you need
• Persistence – stick with it. Seriously, if there is one skill that trumps all others this has to be it