Mike Dillard's Instructions Are kind of Cloudy

I was probably one of the very first people to purchase Building on a Budget by Mike Dillard. About an hour before the public launch was live, I was clicking "refresh" until the order page appeared (about 15 minutes of clicking was all it took). I plunked down my $34 (that included shipping) and waited about a day an a half for the packet to arrive.

The book came via priority mail, and I was really surprised at how fast it got here. It took a LOT longer when I ordered Mike's flagship book, Magnetic Sponsoring. So eager was I, that I started to read it on the way BACK from the mailbox.

So I've read this book a couple of times now. Highlighted it, written in it, and really asked a lot of questions in the margins - I do that to help me thing about the message of the book I'm reading.

In an article I wrote about Building on a Budget, I mentioned that this book is not truly for the beginner. It assumes a lot of concepts that a newbie wouldn't know. So, for our purposes, I'm going to start at the beginning and take it chapter by chapter.

Yes, I chickened out from posting on craig's list last night. Sue me.

I got overwhelmed by all the crappy posts and realized that the better performing posts were not at all what I was prepared to put up myself, based on what Mike recommended.

So, I'm going to take a different approach, and start at the VERY beginning.

Truly, most of what you'll find in the book, you can also find in the pages of the community site - and membership is free.

But I bought the book, so I'm going to take it page by page.

Mike's writing style is very informal - not the kind of book you'd find on the New York Times Bestseller List. To that end, the spell checker was a little off, too. Nevertheless, Mike promises "to reveal the top 5 ways to build your home business for less than $500, and show you how to execute each method in step-by-step detail."

Further, Mike pushes the idea of encouraging your downline to buy the book and use it themselves. (I think I would have put that at the end of the book, myself, but whatever).

Mike's "Jumla Juice" case study is fictional, but the process is the same, regardless of your company.

The goal: create 20 new leads every day for the jumla juice company. I however will be using one of my own companies (or both, we'll see). Links to all my subject pages will be posted on my blog for your review, along with upgrades and tweaks as I go along.


So here's what's up with Chapter 1:
We need to create "a place to send that traffic and a way to turn out visitors into leads"

So we need to create a capture page, but Mike's book doesn't tell us how to do that. Instead, Mike tells us we need to buy MLM Traffic Formula - which currently retails for about $1000, which takes us clear out of our budget.

So let's create a home brew capture page, shall we?
A good capture page must have a form for your prospect to enter their data. We can use Jack's Formmail script to create a basic capture page and compose a basic web layout to put it on.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?
Where are we going to host this page once we've created it?

OY-VEY! We need a domain name and a web host, too! Ack!

See what I mean? Mike didn't start at the very beginning.

So task one: secure a domain and host.

I found a free domain registrar and host that offers great support and it's provided by one of the largest computer companies in the world.

Who is it?

You'll have to buy my book to find out. Home Party Solution reveals tons of free resources to build your network marketing business using the Internet.