Being the owner of an internet home based business, can start out with some serious problems if you do not plan it carefully. You may encounter various obstacles such as your family, phone calls, household chores, television, neighbors and many more. Everybody wants a piece of you and if you are available at home people and things will take time from you if you are not careful. You should keep in mind the reason or goal why you’ve decided to put up your own internet home based business. You may have various reasons- more profitable than your ordinary day job, the flexibility and convenience it offers, or to avoid a cruel colleague.Here are some useful tips that can keep your internet home based business going:First remember The Why! Why are you doing this. Take some time and write down all the reasons you want to start your own internet home based business. Then you put this in writing and hang it on your wall above your desk. Take a look at it every day; get into the feeling of how it’s going to be when you reach your goal. Never forget this. Feel the passion, you know what they say, all good things were built with passion. Passion put the man on the moon and passion will take you to your goal.When you work for yourself, your salary is directly related to your productivity. So, it would be very ideal to stay determined and being able to accomplish a lot of stuff in a short period of time. Also make sure you do the things that will put money in the bank. Reading and answering emails wont. Every night before write down all the tasks you want to accomplish the following day. Decide exactly what you want to do. You need to know how to manage your time well. You have to separate your working period from leisure. And it is very important that you plan your leisure time as well. Basically, it’s like working in an office, only this time you are at the comfort of your own home.You have to keep on reminding yourself why you stick with your own internet home based business. You have to keep in mind the goals and the reasons behind this internet home based business. This mind setting can be a big factor for you to continue carrying out your job at home successfully. If you are not capable of doing this, you’re going to be less productive and then most likely, you’re going nowhere.Since you are working at home, you may have some family members with you. So, you have to know how to schedule your activities. You need to know when to play around with your kids (if you have any) and when to work. You need to target a specific number of hours to be focused solely for your internet home based business. As much as possible you have to let your family members and even neighbors understand that you have a job because sometimes, they’re unaware of it. You have to tell them and stand firm that you need to cover certain number of hours for your work.The success of your internet home based business depends entirely on you and your performance.
Home-Based Business – Part Two in a Series – Choosing A Home-Based Business – What Are Your Options?
The concept of a Home Based Business has been around since the dawn of time and they are now more popular than ever before.
This is mainly because of:
1. people want more control over their income
2. the possibility of lower overheads/business costs
3. freedom of choice with regard to lifestyle.
There are many different types of Home Based Business and we will discuss a few of them here.
When you’re operating a Home Based Business you’re basically going to do one of two things: sell a product or sell a service (if you’re smart you will combine both into one business!)
Sell a Product
Product – your choices are to make/source your own or sell someone else’s product. This could be anything from food, clothing, flowers, gifts, games, toys, art, plants, or craft, to name just a few.
You could make your own products – many successful businesses started out as a simple cottage industry at home. Visit local markets, search online, read local newspapers and/or industry magazines for ideas.
Or you can source the products either locally or from overseas. Attend a trade show for your industry, read industry magazines. It is probably easier to become a distributor than to import a product yourself, but again it depends on your experience in the field.
Sell a Service
Service – use an existing skill you have, or learn something new. Think carefully if you enjoy this activity, is your skill level sufficient, can you expand your knowledge or skill level. Is there another skill you can add that will make you more valuable to your customers?
Service can include anything you can do for someone else and is only limited by your imagination. Some examples are, gardening, accounting, consulting in many different areas, business coach, personal training, house cleaning, computer technician, interior decorator, architect, pet minding/walking – the list is endless and don’t be put off by the fact that someone else may already be doing it – you could do it better or simply be better at finding customers or provide superior customer service. So, where could this all go wrong?
Now, the Hard Part
One of the biggest problems with starting your own product or service home based business from scratch is that you also need to be good at all the other aspects of the business – you are effectively a “one man band” (of course you can outsource – but this can be expensive for a fledgling business). The main thing you need to be able to do is MARKET your business – you could be the world’s best accountant but if no-one knows you exist it will do you no good at all! So marketing, sales, administration, bookkeeping are just some of the skills you will need.
So, consider this when looking at starting this type of business as you can have the perfect business up and running and find yourself with no customers. This is where many small businesses fail. Now, you may also be good at these tasks or have the money to outsource – just make sure you include it in your Business Plan and Budget.
So, What’s An Easier Option For A “One Man Band” Business?
There are many other business models that you can consider that will offer much more support to you.
Franchising – this is a good way to buy a ready made business that comes complete with instructions! You will usually have great support from the franchisor in regards to setup, advertising and management. The downside is that Franchises are usually VERY expensive to invest in – a McDonalds license for example will set you back over a million dollars! Yes, there are cheaper franchises around, but really anything less than $100,000 is probably not going to generate a huge income.
Direct Selling Organisations
Direct Selling is a method where products are sold outside of a traditional retail setting. The three main types of Direct Selling are Party Plan, Network Marketing and Door-to-Door Sales.
Most Direct Selling Organisations have one thing in common – they are Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) businesses. They will have different compensation and marketing plans, different reward structures and methods of operation, each will have one main focus, but they will all have common aspects of their business models.
DSO’s will all generally require you to “join” the company, some will have a minimum amount of product you need to purchase over a period of time, most will require you to recruit or sponsor people into your business, for some this will even be a minimum requirement, and for some there will be an ongoing membership fee.
They all differ in the way their compensation plan works and you need to study this carefully. There will be things such as, product commissions on products you sell and also sales from your team, bonuses for achieving certain sales or recruiting targets, incentives which may include national or international sales conferences (either paid or not). Beware of what you are paying for, firstly in joining fees, product purchases (initial and ongoing) and other equipment needed to run the business plus rewards for your team and/or customers that may come out of your pocket!
It can be very hard to make money in a traditional MLM company: many people drop out without having made any money or even having lost money (or end up with a whole lot of the company’s product)!
(You will find a more detailed breakdown of Direct Selling Organisations in the next section of this series.)
So, do your research, look closely at different types of business. Think about your skills and maybe more importantly, what you enjoy doing. Write a list of businesses that you think may interest you, then write a list of pro’s and con’s for each type and see what you come up with. You make just find the beginnings of your success right there on that page!
Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation
Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.
If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.
Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.
For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.
No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.
There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.