7 Tips for Running a Profitable Home Based Business

Running a home based business offers many advantages such as saving money on gas, tax breaks among other benefits.

However, the success of a home based business is pegged on several important aspects.

1.) Website – Invest in a domain name and website for your home business. A website is just like a physical location for your business. It lets people to access your business from around the world.

2.) Target market – Carefully select a market for your products or services. The more targeted the audience the easier it will be to meet their specific needs. Besides, marketing to a very wide customer can be so overwhelming and ineffective.

3.) Goals – Set realistic goals for your home based business. These goals should be based on what you can deliver without outsourcing. Once you determine your actual production capacity, you can always improve on the numbers gradually.

4.) Marketing budget – Keep aside some cash for marketing. Every venture no matter how small requires a marketing budget. Determine the amount of money you are willing to spend on publicity materials such as business cards, flyers, classified ads and so on.

5.) Tracking - Track all your marketing campaigns and keep a log of the techniques that produce the most paying clients. For instance, if your flyers produce more paying customers than classifieds, it will be wise to cut the cost of your classifieds to apply that money toward the flyers.

6.) Search engine optimization (SEO) - SEO helps your website's search engine ranking by associating it to keywords and links that will make the site easier to find online. Online shoppers searching for the products or services that you provide will see your website in the first pages of the website search. This has the potential to bring you more paying customers.

7.) Offline marketing – In addition to online marketing campaigns, use offline marketing to reach potential clients. Attend workshops and other networking events in your neighbourhood with flyers and business cards.

If well managed, a home based business can give you immense profits while at the same time giving you the freedom to be your own boss.

However, you should be advised that running a business from home is not for the faint-hearted! A home business requires you to be very disciplined in terms of time and finance management and this is where many people go fail especially in their first home based business ventures.

by: Peter Abrahams

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8 Home Based Business Ideas For Men

It is not just Moms who are looking for ways to earn from home but many men want to work at home too. The reasons they are looking for home based business ideas for men are varied. This could be because they have either been retrenched, want to replace their jobs with a home business or would like to supplement their income.

In this article we take a look at 8 home based business ideas for men.

1. Get involved in affiliate marketing and make use of the Internet to sell other people's products.

With affiliate marketing you can get paid for getting leads as well as get paid by the click. Another way to make money is by recruiting affiliates in two-tier affiliate programs where you will get paid a commission on the products your recruits sell.

2. Have you thought of consulting? Using your expertise you can teach other people who will pay you for consulting if it helps them accomplish things they need done.

3. Start repairing cars at home. You can build a competitive business working out of your own garage and this can be personally enjoyable as well as very profitable.

4. Get involved in direct sales. It is not only women who get involved with direct sales companies. Men are also selling Amway, Tupperware, Avon, Herbalife and other direct sales products.

5. Start a day care centre for children. A day care business is not just for women. Many stay at home Dads these days are taking care of other people’s children.

6. Start an online network marketing business. There are many to choose from and the Internet makes it much easier to build a business from home. It is not uncommon for men to work with their wives and build their business as a team which is also a good way to do it.

7. Get involved in Joint Ventures. If you are working online look for other Internet marketers and do a joint venture together. You may be able to combine your particular skill or interest with that of another person to build a successful online business.

8. Make money freelance writing on the Internet. Writing ebooks and selling them on ClickBank or Amazon is very popular right now. Writing for other Internet marketers as an article writer or a blog writer can be extremely lucrative.

If you have a flair for writing the big money is in copywriting and you will find courses online to help you with this.

The above are 8 home based business ideas for men. Thanks to the Internet both men and women can now get involved in the same businesses, so some of the above will overlap

by: Cynthia Minnaar

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Find Your Vision, Set Some Goals

As I travel around and speak to potential business owners they seem confused about what to do next. This is a very common thing to feel as you are starting something new and you know what? That is very normal and expected when you are about to do something that you have never done before. Starting a business can be one of the most fulfilling and difficult things that you ever do. It is amazing but it can be confusing. The great thing is that you are not alone and you can get it going at your own pace.

There are a ton of books and articles out there that will help you with your potential business. But something that you can do right now to help you get toward your dream business is gain clarity around what you want and set goals to achieve it.

Here's the deal. There is not a defined set of rules that you can follow that will build your business in a step by step process because every business start up is unique. The best thing that you can do is set your "first goals" that focus on your start up. The truth of the matter is that you can think about starting the business all you want but if you do not have a good vision of what you want to create and start the steps toward achieving it, you will never get it going.

What is your vision for this business? You can go as deep as you like right here and I suggest that you go into great detail. Once you have a clear vision of what you want it is going to be a lot easier to set the goals you need to get you there.

So what is your vision?

Knowing your vision, what are three things that you can do to get you toward starting your business?

It would be really easy if we could just look into the future and see what to do. But the closest thing that you can do to looking into the future is to create a vision of what you want the future to be and set goals that are moving you toward it. Remember, the deeper you dive into your vision, the more clarity that you will gain. This will help you set the right goals to move you forward.

Do this throughout your business start-up and never stop doing it! You can transform your business and your life by gaining a clear vision of the future and setting goals that move you toward them.

Tyler Martin
http://www.tylercmartin.com
coaching@tylercmartin.com
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How to Cut Your Costs and Increase Your Sales

  When a mid-year review of your bottom line reveals you must cut costs and increase sales right now or face losses this fiscal year, what do you do to salvage your year? On paper, the choices look easy. You must either sell more or decrease the cost of sales.

  Selling more can be tough when the economy is challenging, yet there are always people ready to buy if the pricing and timing are right. You can achieve increase sales volume by selling a few more big-ticket items or lots more lower-priced items. If you keep in mind that your real objective is to increase profits, not just the dollar amount or number of items sold, you can offer incentives in the form of price cuts or discounts to move more product and reduce warehousing costs. Depending on your product, you can pursue the economics of selling fewer at a higher price, which can still produce more revenue in some cases.
  
  When you are in a sales crunch, you should remove underperforming products in your line. If a product isn't selling well, that usually means that it has been replaced by something else and demand is low. Selling requires more efforts. In a time when you need to have your effort count, you are wasting time that you should redirect to better performing products when you are selling yesterday's product.

  Your alternative to selling more is reducing the cost of sales. Decreasing staff or cutting commissions are morale-busters. A better idea is to reduce the cost of sales calls, perhaps through more use of online meetings and video conferences. For small customers, you might have your sales force do more work by phone.
    
  Even though your company may value small customers, you might get more quick return by focusing on big fish - the customer who buys more or who buys more big-ticket items. If you offer incentives or early commitments or buy or set up stocking programs, you may successfully increase your sales, reduce your cost of sales, and increase your profits.

  For both the customers you handle by phone and the ones you deal with face-to-face, you should try to increase the amount of sales, perhaps through upsells. The candy-and-batteries-at-checkout approach can work well with all types of product sales.

  When times are tough for your company, you need to come up with creative ways to keep customers coming back for more so you can increase sales while cutting costs.

  Tracey Fieber invites you to her free webinar "WHERE are they?!" 5 No-Fail Steps to Finding the RIGHT Support Staff For Your Growing, High-Demand Business & How to Bring Out Their Very Best Day After Day!"

  For your complimentary No-Fail 1-on-1 Strategy Session, go to http://www.JustAskTracey.com or sign up for her free newsletter at http://TraceyFieber.com
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Getting Your Business To Grow - Lead Generation



When your business depends upon getting new leads regularly, there are some options that are open to you which can help you to achieve it. In today's technologically advanced climate, there are many businesses that tend to focus on electronic means of contacting potential customers, such as through social media or email marketing. Although these can be effective, you should never overlook the possibility of direct mail and using those lists in order to increase the success of your business substantially. Here are some of the benefits that will be seen when you use this type of marketing and mail your list physically instead of automatically.

Perhaps one of the most important things that need to be considered when choosing direct mail over email marketing is that the majority of people look at their mail that they get in their mailboxes every day. Of course, some people are going to toss some of the information without looking at it but a vast majority of those individuals are going to sort through it without delay. This gets your message in front of those individuals easily and, compared to email marketing, the response can be substantially higher.

Another benefit to using direct mail is that you can specifically target groups of people that have an interest in what you are offering. It is important for you to consider this, not only when using direct mail but when purchasing the list of individuals that you will be mailing. The more focused the list is, the more likely it is going to be that you are going to see results from that list.

Have you thought about the customization that is possible when mailing people instead of using electronic means of contacting them? When most people gather email lists, they are only going to gather the most basic information from the potential customer. When you have a mailing list, you not only have the physical address but you often have their name and perhaps some other information as well. You can use this information in order to customize the mailing which will, in turn, increase the response. This is also something that should be considered when you are gathering a list or purchasing it from the company that generates leads.

Finally, you can measure the results of mailing those individuals in order to see if any changes need to be made to the mailing. Of course, you would always want to consider changing the copy and testing in order to increase the response. Some of the ways that you can track the response of a direct-mail campaign include sending out coupons with specific information that either needs to be filled out on your website or to be mailed back to your company. This can assist you in doing a split test as well, allowing you to easily see which is going to be more effective so that you can make those changes and send the future mailings to a larger list to increase the response.
 
by: Frank Ricard

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