In other articles, I've mentioned how superior the leads that you generate, from either PPC advertising or establishing your own website, are. But PPC advertising can get expensive, and requires it's own learning curve if you want to get a reasonable return (in terms of signups to your program). What are the alternatives?

Should you set up your own home business site? That is certainly one way, but if you're just starting out in online marketing, you won't have much credibility. And the content you write will reflect this. Of course, you could get others to write your content, through services like Elance, but you'll need to know a bit about your topic to ensure that the writers are providing you with pertinent and useful material. Plus, this exercise can get expensive if you're paying for good quality articles (it's easy to get bad articles cheap, however! - But would you want them on your website?)

This is where the value of niches comes in. Niche marketing is something that is more often associated with online endeavors other than network marketing, however, the same principles apply.

The principle behind niche marketing is that with a smaller, defined interest group, it is easier to achieve good rankings in the natural search results, provided you follow a few tried and true search engine optimization practices. On another level, if you have a smaller, defined niche, you are going to be able to present information in a way that makes sense to them - to their needs, and desires. It's a common business practice to define your target market. You can't be everything to all people, and you certainly can't sell everything to all people. This is just as true online as it is offline.

Thinking creatively, and outside of the home business market, what are the options for your network marketing opportunity?

First of all, what products does your business opportunity sell? This is a great place to start thinking of topics for your website. Not only will you potentially make retail sales, but from that base of interested customers, you can find people who want their own home business. As well as having information pages on topics relating to those products, you can mention your business opportunity on your 'About Me' page. Or even write articles on how those products have helped you - weaving this in with other information about those products. You want to be careful that you don't appear 'salesy', however.

The beauty of this method for generating leads is that you can express your enthusiasm in a way where people's innate opposition to advertising isn't up. And maybe you won't convert everyone into a business prospect, but they may become lifetime customers on autoship. Or join your membership site if your opportunity is related to information products.

So, if your business is about mortgages, tax, health, personal development, or even space exploration, this would be the starting point to generate ideas for a content driven website. A website that will bring you a steady supply of leads (and customers), without costing a lot of money to set up and maintain.

And, as a side benefit, you'll also have the opportunity to make money with contextual advertising programs.