There are numerous methods for generating online leads and growing your business online. Before you decide on an approach you should consider these 3 popular myths.

Online Lead Generation Myth #1: There really aren’t any free online lead generation strategies. You’re probably thinking “But Karen, there are lots of ways to generate free leads on the internet like article writing, forum postings, press releases, safelists, blogging, online videos, classified ads, social networking, etc.”

Let me explain. While it is true there are methods for generating online leads that do not cost any money, there are hidden costs most people do not consider.

The hidden costs are time, leverage, effectiveness, and lost opportunity.  When selecting your online marketing strategies, it is crucial to look at more than just the dollar cost of the method. You need to take into account your marketing budget and net profit of each strategy.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. If you start online advertising with solo ads in ezines, it could easily cost you hundreds of dollars a month of advertising. But you could get hundreds of leads or more and lots of sales.

Assume you spend $500 on solo ads in a month and you get 800 opt-ins from those ads. You make 16 sales and you have a profit of $50 per sale. In this scenario you would have a net profit of $300 (16 x 50 = $800 – $500 for ads). You spent about 6 hours researching which ezines to run ads in and writing your solo ad.

Now in scenario 2 you initiate a “free” article marketing campaign. You write 20 articles in a month and submit them to a top article marketing directory, sending readers to an opt-in page. You have no out of pocket costs since you write the article yourself. You get 100 leads and 2 sales with the same $50 profit per sale.

You spent 30 minutes writing each article and 10 minutes submitting it to an article directory. Overall you spent 13 hours on this approach for the month. In this scenario you have a net profit of $100 (2 x $50 = $100 – $0 cost). This scenario is free but you have spent more time and have less net profit at the end of the month.

Now this is a hypothetical example and there are additional factors to consider. In no way should you assume solo ads are better than article marketing. The point is to show you that while some methods have 0 dollar cost, they may cost more in time, produce less profit, and have less residual income.

Bottom line, don’t just look at the initial cost of your online advertising.

Online Lead Generation Myth #2: Relationship businesses can’t be done on the internet.

This is absolutely false. There are many ways to build online relationships. Online video is extremely effective for online relationship building. When done correctly, email can be effective as well. And of course, social networking is growing at an unprecedented pace.

Instead of focusing on the quantity of your online connections, focus on quality and non-spammy marketing approaches. You can have 10,000 friends but if you come across as a spammy marketer you will not get any sales. On the other hand, if you have 100 connections and work to build relationships and add value to those 100 people you could have many sales.

Online Lead Generation Myth #3: It is not possible to generate high quality, low cost leads online. Fortunately, this is not true. There are many ways to build a responsive list of prospects without spending a fortune.

Actively participating in forums focused on your industry or niche is one great way to build a list of hyper responsive prospects. There are many others. It does not have to cost an arm and a leg to generate high-quality online leads.

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Yours In Online Success,