How many leads do you think you have lost this year?

[bbg]

I have been reflecting on how my business has grown online this past year.
Off the top of my head I know I have lost 1000's of leads, due to
replicated websites being shut down temporarily and other situations out of my control.

[shmerns]

Just curious what you mean by replicated websites being shut down. Could you elaborate? Thanks

[81charduck]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the website given to you by your company (the same as everyone else's in your company) are frequently not operational. It is so very rare that any of my sites (from my company) are down, I doubt I've lost enough leads to worry about. A couple times we were told in advance our site would be down for maintenance, but it was for a very brief period of time and not during normal business hours.

So, if I am understanding you correctly, why is your site being taken "down temporarily" so often?

[badmammajdollar]

Sounds like whatever company you are referencing has a cash flow issue. There is no excuse for a replicated site to be down, other than for maintenance and even that should not happen often. If the site was set up right from the jump there should not be a need for much of that. Sounds like you need to find another company to go with, or maybe see if you can market your product outside of the replicated site.

[dean19693]

Originally Posted by badmammajdollar

Sounds like whatever company you are referencing has a cash flow issue. There is no excuse for a replicated site to be down, other than for maintenance and even that should not happen often. If the site was set up right from the jump there should not be a need for much of that. Sounds like you need to find another company to go with, or maybe see if you can market your product outside of the replicated site.

Well, actually it can be caused by too many visitors at once and exceeding bandwidth. When that happens the business may need to upgrade to a dedicated server. And that takes a few days to put everything back together and move.

So it could mean broke company, or it could mean a company that is growing too fast.

[dean19693]

Originally Posted by bbg

I have been reflecting on how my business has grown online this past year.
Off the top of my head I know I have lost 1000's of leads, due to
replicated websites being shut down temporarily and other situations out of my control.

Build your own website.

You lose leads by having a replicated website period.

If you should decide to stop working with the company, where are your leads left? That's right, they are in the business's database, not yours.

For example: You leave company A and go to Company B. Now you want to promote company B but company A has all your leads!! So, you have to start all over building a list.

Also, any domain auto-responder messages usually goes to spam. On your own email auto-responder, you should have 100% delivery rate.

Anybody that makes any amount of money online has:

Aweber (or other auto-responder)

Hosting

Website

Now, some MLM's won;t allow members to build their own website, personally, I would never join an mlm, but especially an mlm that didn't allow me control over my own business.

[stevenricherd]

Go for a fresh start, create a new website different from replicated ones, and go with that to sale products, it will bring change autonomously and you can estimate the budget of such expenses quite easily.

[Disneynut]

Couldnt agree more with this Dean. I set up my own websites for the company Im working with and use my own email. A separate email from my everyday use email. A lot of companies want you to pay $ for a auto responder, use of their email, their websites, etc. Why pay $ for something when you can get it for free? Most emails (yahoo, aol, gmail, etc) come with an auto responder and its free. Sure you may not get the fancy auto sender emails, and other tools, but so what? Plus, I feel when you create your own website, you are putting your own words, feelings, expressions, thoughts, and it just over all becomes more personel then a company website where people might have seen it a MILLION times. I mean think about it. Would you rather read a generic website that a zillion people have read before? Or would you rather have your future prospects go to the website you put your heart and soul into it, reading how the business works in your own words? And again, theres tons of places where you can set up your website for free or even if you paid a monthly or yearly fee, its generally cheaper then what a company wants to charge. Also any company that wont allow someone create their own website, shouldnt be a company you want to join anyway. Thats just a form of them controlling what you can do. Would you really want to work for a company like that from home? If so, minds well go work for the man outside of home. All part of working from home is freedom, not being controlled.

Originally Posted by dean19693

Build your own website.

You lose leads by having a replicated website period.

If you should decide to stop working with the company, where are your leads left? That's right, they are in the business's database, not yours.

For example: You leave company A and go to Company B. Now you want to promote company B but company A has all your leads!! So, you have to start all over building a list.

Also, any domain auto-responder messages usually goes to spam. On your own email auto-responder, you should have 100% delivery rate.

Anybody that makes any amount of money online has:

Aweber (or other auto-responder)

Hosting

Website

Now, some MLM's won;t allow members to build their own website, personally, I would never join an mlm, but especially an mlm that didn't allow me control over my own business.

[dean19693]

Originally Posted by Disneynut

Couldnt agree more with this Dean. I set up my own websites for the company Im working with and use my own email. A separate email from my everyday use email. A lot of companies want you to pay $ for a auto responder, use of their email, their websites, etc. Why pay $ for something when you can get it for free? Most emails (yahoo, aol, gmail, etc) come with an auto responder and its free. Sure you may not get the fancy auto sender emails, and other tools, but so what? Plus, I feel when you create your own website, you are putting your own words, feelings, expressions, thoughts, and it just over all becomes more personel then a company website where people might have seen it a MILLION times. I mean think about it. Would you rather read a generic website that a zillion people have read before? Or would you rather have your future prospects go to the website you put your heart and soul into it, reading how the business works in your own words? And again, theres tons of places where you can set up your website for free or even if you paid a monthly or yearly fee, its generally cheaper then what a company wants to charge. Also any company that wont allow someone create their own website, shouldnt be a company you want to join anyway. Thats just a form of them controlling what you can do. Would you really want to work for a company like that from home? If so, minds well go work for the man outside of home. All part of working from home is freedom, not being controlled.

Using a built in gmail/yahoo auto-responder should be temporary. And this is because if you want to email your whole list it can be difficult to email them, and when your list grows too big for the built in auto responder, you'll have to request that people move over and opt-in again on your new list, and you end up losing most if not all of your contacts.

A free website is good but you can't get page ranking with a free website, if you don't want page ranking then a free website might fit your needs.

Basically what I'm saying is that a full timer should have their own aweber and hosting.

""Also any company that wont allow someone create their own website, shouldnt be a company you want to join anyway.""

Absolutely right! I couldn't agree more. A company that won't allow members to build their own websites actually restrict a members ability to sell the product or service. But when it comes down to it, the reason that most mlm companies won't allow personal websites is because they want you to have to pay for their system. MLM companies are all about the paper, and they nickle and dime their members to death, which is probably the reason for the 98% drop out rate in that industry.

Plus, I have never found a system that I was totally happy with, so I always build my own. And I build systems not just for myself but for all of my team.

[dean19693]

I'm not trying to bump this thread...I just wanted to ad an additional point about having your own website and professional auto responder:

Decide on if you want to be a leader or not.

If you don't want to be a leader and you only need to make a fraction of money you would make being a leader, because it's the leaders in businesses that make the lions share, then stick with the free stuff.

Another point about free versus paid auto-responder and hosting is a word called
"R-E-S-P-E-C-T" (sing it Aretha!). When I get emails from people promoting their business opportunities, and the emails are coming from a gmail or yahoo email account, I know that person is broke, the same goes for free websites. And nobody wants to join a business with a poor person. :0)

To be a leader you need:

Your own auto-responder (Aweber ect)

Website building software

Hosting

If you don't want to be a leader, chances are you're not going to make any real money. So, you might as well not purchase any tools.