If you are in Direct Sales, you may not realize how many sales you are missing by not having a website of your own. Rep websites aren't usually indexed in the search engines, and most can't be personalized completely.

Let me give you an example of why it's so important to have your own website. I searched for "Watkins Vanilla" on Yahoo, Google, and MSN.

- On Yahoo, Watkin's company page was #7 in the listings. Ranked before them were reps with their own website.

- On Google, the company page was #5. Again, reps with their own websites ranked above them.

- MSN was the only place the company website was #1. However, following the company site were several personal websites.

Here's another term I searched: "Tupperware catalog" (which according to Word Tracker is searched over 300 times a day). On Google and MSN, Tupperware's company site wasn't even on the first page of results! On Yahoo it was the first, but of course personal websites followed.

So what does this mean to you? It's simple - there are millions of people searching for YOUR business or items from your business ever day. By having a personal website, you aren't lost in a sea of other rep websites in the search engines. Even the simplest of terms can work their way to the top of search engine results, in many cases giving you more free traffic than you can handle!

Of course, once you get those visitors there it's up to you to turn them into customers. The best way to do this is getting them on your list. More about newsletters next week.

So if you don't have a website already, start making plans now to build your personal website today!