Dec 6, 2010 @ 6:23

“You have to spend money to make money.”

As a home business entrepreneur you hear that a lot, you have to invest in your business if you want to be successful. That means spending money, right?

Yes…and no.

Investing in your business ventures is a given, nothing in equals nothing out.

Your investment isn’t only money, you need to invest your time as well. Money and Time, you have to invest both. The beauty of this system is you can make up for the lack of one with the other.

You don’t have any money? Spend some time. Don’t have any time? Break out the check book.

What if you don’t have either? No money or time? You’re up the creek without a paddle, and mistaken. If you have the time to read this, you have the time to promote your business.

Article Marketing

Can you talk? Yes? Then you can write short articles. I don’t mean articles like you see in Forbes or Business Week. Take an hour and write 500 words about something you believe in, your business.

Can’t come up with 500 words your first time out? Most article directories will accept 300 word articles.

Here are five Article directories to help you get started:

1. EzineArticles.com
2. GoArticles.com
3. IdeaMarketers.com
4. Isnare.com
5. ArticleDashboard.com

For the best results submit your articles in that order.

Blogging

Are you blogging yet? These days you can set up a blog in only a few minutes to half an hour. customizing the theme to your taste can take a bit longer, but the Twenty Ten Theme that comes with WordPress is a great place to start.

Want Google to love your blog, and send you lots of visitors? 100 Posts seems to be the magic number for Google Love.

And get this, 150 to 200 words per post is all Google needs to start loving your blog.

Alright, blogging isn’t totally free, it’s a time and money method. To be most effective you need to own your blog, free blogging platforms have some weird rules that they can change on a whim.

You can get hosting for about ten bucks a month and have as many blogs as you care to run. Don’t have and extra ten dollars a month? Bring your lunch to work twice a month and you can save it up for your hosting.

Don’t have the time to learn how to build a blog? Get free instructions Here.

Funded Proposals

We covered a completely free method with article marketing. Then we looked at blogging, a bit of money and a bit more time.

How about getting paid to build your business? A funded proposal can do that.  A funded proposal is  a low-cost, high value gateway product that generates leads for your business.

Yes, people will actually pay you to become your lead, how cool is that?

Magnetic Sponsoring is probably the most well know funded proposal, for forty dollars you get the premier book on attraction marketing. You also get the right to sell it to anyone else for a fifty percent commission.

Most people who get your funded proposal won’t join your business, but that’s okay, they’re helping to fund your business and in return you’re showing them how they can build theirs. A nice bit of Karma.

So, if your business budget is tight try these three tactics and before long your business could be booming.

Mike