How To Use Funded Proposals To Grow Your Home Based Business

The use of funded proposals is nothing new. Large companies have been using them to recoup advertisement costs for quite some time. But the use of funded proposals is a rarely used technique that you, the home based business entrepreneur can greatly benefit from.

The single most important aspect of running a profitable business is knowing exactly what it costs you to acquire new buying customers. If you do not know what it costs you, per buying customer, you need to learn that NOW.

For example: If it cost you $20.00 in your PPC campaign to acquire 1 buying customer for your primary product, and you only profit $18.00 from the sale; you can see where it could be very difficult to make any money.

Once you know what your magic number is, "your break even point", then you will know how much you need to make from each proposal. More on this in a little bit.

Simply put a funded proposal is anything that you can offer for sale, other than your primary product, to a potential client or customer that offsets, or helps to offset the expense of getting your prospect to your website or lead capture page. The bottom line is you are offering something of interest/need and value for sale, usually this product is much cheaper than the primary product.

This could really be any type of product or e-product, But to be effective it must be something that is relevant to the article or add that got them there in the first place.

For example: If you are trying to build a home based business you could offer a "How To" business building oriented E-book, paper back book, how-to video, dvd. cd, training course, software and instructional email series. The most commonly used form of funded proposals however, is a simple E-book.

For a funded proposal to work the products offered need to tailor made for a specific group of people. This is true with any product. In this case we are using home based businesses. So the product being offered is needed by all of those who already own or are researching a home based business.

An e-book is the most popular because it is electronic in nature, easy to transfer, easy to create and easy to edit when and if the need arises. Plus it appeals to a very large audience.

As stated above the funded proposal is used to offset the cost of acquiring new, buying customers. Often times when done correctly you can make a healthy profit just from your funded proposal, all the while building your list which converts to a lucrative residual income with your HBB (home based business).

Lets say you have a home based business, a network marketing business. You have products galore, they're good ones too. So good in fact that every single person on the planet would want them.

What's even better is the comp plan is so innovative, forward thinking and lucrative that you can think of no reason why anyone would not want to make that kind of money.

Problems start to arise when you start promoting your new products and business. You quickly discover that there are at least 40,000 other people who feel the very same way about their products and biz plan.

To make matters a bit worse you also realize that you are not the only person promoting your MLM business. You have discovered that you have a lot of competition, and it's brutal.

Determining Your Cost To Acquire New Customers

During the course of promoting your new products and business via a ppc campaign you discover that it takes 50 prospects to get just one buying customer. That is a 2% conversion rate and to be truthful that is also a very high conversion rate.

If it costs you just 1 dollar per prospect that means you would have spent 50 dollars per sale, or $50 per buying customer. If you receive a $20 profit from a $100.00 sale, your checking account went negative $30. This is not a good scenario.

This is the case for far too many entrepreneurs. This is one reason why so many don't make it online in the HBB industry. This method is just not profitable, in the short term.

Now take into account that you need to make an additional $30 just to break even, you can see where a funded proposal can play a huge role in keeping you afloat while you build your business.

Your job now becomes a little more involved, but preparing a funded proposal is not difficult. You need to get your own funded proposal up and running quickly, or you could see your hopes and dreams vanish before you even get started. The question now becomes, where do you find a funded proposal and how do you use it?

Your best bet is to create your own. Yea, it will take quit a bit of work , but having your very own proposal puts you in the drivers seat.

Funded Proposals Keep Money In You Pocket

You take "your" informative How-To-E-book, CD, DVD, whatever and begin to offer or sell it to a larger group of people who might want or need your newly created product. Now, I know that this sounds like it wouldn't work, because you are still selling something to the prospect, but it does. This is how.

Send people to your website or blog page that has Lead Capture Capabilities that offers an informational book or How-To-E-Book rather than just the product your company produces.

Take a short yet informative How-To E-book and sell it for 5 - 20 bucks. People are much more willing to part with $5 - $20 rather than $100.00. At $5.00 each you only have to sell 6 of these electronic books to hit the break even mark.

These prospects are now on your personal email list. If you sold a book about Internet Marketing, you know they are very interested in Internet Marketing, You can then email them more information about Internet Marketing and about the benefits of your product. Every now then promote your product or service either as a working example or flat out just offer it for sale..

At least you have the same interest. Now you now have a chance to get to know more about them by asking them what concerns them most about the topic. But more importantly they will come to know and trust you. If you offer good advice.

Your prospects will automatically put in an auto responder when they fill out the Lead Capture Page. You will then be able to give them more information over time.

This is also the place where after just a couple of business tips emails you can offer your service or products. For that matter you can even pitch your biz-op to them.But I find it is often better to get them to use the product first, if they like it they are more apt to join your team.

It is important to remember that the prospect who purchased the book will come to trust you only if you give them value. This process usually leads to a higher conversions to sales when you offer them your products, service or promote your Home Based Business to them.

All you have to do is give them what they want

They want to:

• Learn how to sell online
• Learn about a specific type of system
• Learn how to manage a successful PPC campaign
• Learn how to write good sales copy
• Learn how to create a good Lead Capture Page
• Learn how to build a website
• Learn about free resources
• Learn about blogging
• Learn about keywords and keyword research

If you want to promote a product or product line that you sell you can offer an E-book that demonstrate to the prospect why they need your product. Be sure to tell then how they will benefit from your products.

This list is much much longer but I think you get the point.

This simple yet effective method can be the difference between unbelievable success or complete failure.

Expand The Reach Of Your Funded Proposal

To make your efforts even more successful you should strongly consider writing some articles that promote the strengths of your e-book. You can then submit your articles to the article directories for other website owners to place on their sites for content. In the bio box you place a link to your website or Lead Capture Page for your funded proposal.

Anyone that comes from this source of traffic is free. That means that for every sale you make in this fashion it is 100% profit, and your bottom dollar begins to grow.

The leads that are generated though this process become your new prospects for your product or business.

When it comes to funded proposals you are in luck as you have a couple of options to choose from.

1. You can use many affiliate programs as your funded proposal.
2. You can create your own product and be in control of every aspect. This is your best and most profitable option. But your sales funnel will need to be effective.

There are many affiliate programs out there. Simply go to Click Bank. Set up your account and do some research to find some programs that fit your like and the needs of your potential audience.

You should also feel confident and comfortable about the product your intend to promote. It is always a good idea to only promote products that you have actually used. You can write about them better and promote them better when you have used them.

Funded proposals help me accomplish 3 things.

1. Build a list, to which I can contact and promote other similar products.
2. Opens the door for my primary product to people who I now know are interested in it.
3. But most importantly it puts money back in my pocket, which offsets the expenses of building my downline.

Another type of proposal is to offer a free e-book that will help you build a list. But, it is not a "funded" proposal. Many free e-books or reports are long copy sales letter of a sort.

A free e-book often pre-sells a product or products and compels the reader to buy. Often times people who promote free e-books have a much higher conversion rate on the particular product the e-book is about.

© Sterling Carter 2010-2011