Since we’re one of the world’s smallest companies (Mark, Kevin and our programmer Zach), we’re always looking for low-cost tools we can use to run our small business more effectively.

You see, I work at home, out of an office in our detached garage. It’s a great setup, because I’m close to the family, but I can avoid some of the “day-to-day” distractions of having a home office. One of the problems this creates is which phone number to give to clients. I have a home number, an office # and a mobile phone number.

As a Herbalife Independent Distributor, you probably have a similar problem. In addition, it’s always good to have a separate phone number for your business so you’re not listing a home or mobile number on your business cards.

That’s why I was really excited when I learned about Google Voice. This is another great free tool from Google. It allows you to create a new local phone number which can ring multiple phones at once. For example, you can create a new phone number which rings both your home and office # at the same time. That way, your customers can reach you wherever you’re at, and it even comes with free voicemail and the ability to screen your incoming calls.

Google Voice is currently available by requesting an invitation, which usually takes about a week. Learn more here:

http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Are you looking to boost local traffic to your HNN website? What if there was a great new way to get local search traffic to your HNN website – without spending a penny?

Local search results in Google.

Local search results in Google. Click for larger image.

One of the great things about the Herbal Nutrition Network is that we provide visibility for distributors who are using our services. The locate map on our homepage is designed to send local traffic directly to your HNN website. And since Google is the most popular search engine, you can now increase the likelihood that someone will find you by adding your business information to Google’s new Local Business Center. The local business center is a free service that will allow you to customize the way your business listing appears in Google. You’re able to customize the way your listing appears – you can even link the listing directly to your HNN website and add current promotions and coupons to the listing!

As search engines continue to increase their emphasis on local search results, we only expect to see more localized results from search engines in the future.  Above is a screenshot of a search for “herbalife” in Google on 8/17/2009. The local result appeared automatically about halfway down the page. I did not specify a city name, I just searched for “herbalife”. If you search for “herbalife, Wichita, KS”, you’ll also see local results – but higher up on the page.

This is a relatively new feature from Google, so you can expect to see the listings change from day to day, but we think this is a fantastic opportunity to position your Herbalife distributorship for local growth.

You can read more about the Google Local Business Center here, or you can add your HNN website to the Local Business Center here. As you add your listing, don’t forget to add your complete HNN address to the listing, including your username.

Example: http://herbal-nutrition.net/mark

Also, if you don’t want your home phone number in the listing, check out Google Voice. This is another free tool from Google that allows you to create a new local phone number for free. The Google Voice number will ring the phone number(s) of your choice and even comes with free voicemail.

Posted in Marketing, News

Believe it or not, when we first launched in 1999, we actually mailed out monthly statements to all of our distributors. We’ve come a long way since then, first using PayPal, then later adding a full-blown merchant account. One of the bad things about our old merchant account was that it didn’t support automatic billing. So, for about the last 9 years, we’ve been stuck with a “prepaid hosting” model which required our members to manually log in and extend their hosting every few months.

From a business point of view, this is a really bad idea because it forces your clients to go to a lot of extra effort to keep their website active.We appreciate all of the distributors who have faithfully supported us through the years, and are pleased to announce that we’ve finally completed a new “automatic billing” feature. It was brought online on Aug 12, and should make your HNN website even easier to use.

We’ve also added a new $9.95/month billing option, which will make it easier for new distributors to get started with HNN without paying for several months up front. So, we’re also more affordable than ever!

Here are a few things you should be aware of. If you’re an existing HNN member, your automatic billing profile will be created the next time you extend your HNN hosting. However, if your “due date” is in the future, your card won’t actually be charged until the “due date” on your account. For example, if you set this up on the 15th, but your site isn’t actually “due” until the 30th, your first payment – and then all subsequent payments – will come out on the 30th of every month.

If you’d prefer to pay in full a year at a time, you can request that we just bill you once per year (you can save over 15% by prepaying for a year, also).

Our referral rewards program will also automagically calculate your discount and adjust your monthly billing. For example, if you refer another distributor to HNN, you can save $2 per month for a Premium HNN referral (they need to join, and then pay for their website before you can get your discount).  The referrals will be calculated automatically on the first of every month, so one month you’ll be charged $9.95, and then by referring another distributor, your next month’s hosting will only be $7.95 and your card will be charged the correct amount automatically. Pretty neat, huh?

Also, all of our prices are posted in US Dollars, so please be aware of that if you’re one of our friends outside of the USA.

Here are our current rates, effective 8-12-09.

Monthly hosting – $9.95/ month
Yearly hosting – $99.95 / year

All new accounts are subject to a one-time $5.00 setup fee.

You can create or edit your automatic billing profile from the Herbal Nutrition Network member’s area.

Welcome to the HNN blog, where the webmasters of HNN will be sharing news and information about HNN with the members of HNN.

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be telling you more about HNN, how we got started, and where we’re going. You see, we’re a small company, founded by two former school teachers a little over 10 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot about “internet marketing” and “running your own business” over the years. We think it’s important that we do more to help Herbalife Independent Distributors learn how to get the most out of their HNN website, especially during a recession.

HNN is the best value in web hosting for Herbalife Independent Distributors, but unless you know exactly how to get the most out of your HNN website, it won’t do you any good. One long-time HNN distributor once compared her HNN website to a sports car sitting in the garage – lots of potential, but unsure how to really use it.

We hope to help correct that! Stay tuned!

-Mark