Home Business

Say the word “marketing” to any group of people, and you’ll see reactions akin to eating a sour lemon. People tend to think of marketing as some sleazy, hard sell gimmick or game that lures the unsuspecting into purchasing something they neither want nor need. But that isn’t necessarily marketing (and it certainly isn’t good marketing). Marketing is simply letting everyone know about you and your business in order to attract clients. And because you will be doing the marketing, and representing your home business, your marketing will have your personal imprint. Here’s the most important thing to know: Next to the actual service you offer, marketing is the most important thing to do. If you don’t market, you won’t have to worry about bookkeeping (well, not much, because not much money will be coming in). You won’t have to worry about expanding, organizing your office, or filing. Without marketing, your home business is nothing more than a well-kept secret.

Work From Home Business need list:

- Business plan

- Calendar

- Rolodex, address book, or contact manager (however you keep track of people you know and their contact information)

Understanding Real Home Based Business Marketing

We’re going to start at the end for this home business section. Here’s the maxim you need to remember: You should be marketing full time or as close to full time as possible. Whenever you are not working on a project for a client, you should be marketing. Whenever you have nothing scheduled on your calendar, you should be marketing. When you have a quiet afternoon, you should be marketing. Marketing should take up a full work week until you get your first client. For the first one to three years of your business, you might spend 50% or more of your time marketing. After three years, that might drop to 35%. No matter how busy you are, you should still spend at least 20% of your time marketing. If that sounds like a lot, let’s consider the marketing cycle. Using the preceding definition, (“letting everyone know about you and your work at home business in order to attract clients”), let’s run through the typical marketing cycle in the next post.

2. Asset: Marketable Skills

+ Give yourself extra credit for up to five skills.
√ If you have two to four skills, you pass this question nicely.
– If you have fewer than two skills, you fail this question.

If you have more than five skills listed in your description of the services or products you provide in your business, you probably should whittle them down to no more than four skills (or just those skills that can be marketed seamlessly). You’re allowed to go back and rethink the skills you would use in your business. You can undermine your credibility by offering services or products based on too many different types of skills.

So how do you know whether your skills can be “marketed seamlessly”? Let’s say that you want to start a work at home business as a marketing consultant. You have a background in sales that provides credibility to your advice in this area. But you have also been tinkering with computers, and you’d like to offer tech support, too.

Most people won’t go to the same source for assistance with both technical support and marketing expertise. These seem like unrelated skill sets, and potential customers might assume that if you’ve developed worthwhile expertise in one, you probably haven’t had the time and energy to develop
equally professional skills in the other. Marketing this combination would be a challenge, as well. It would be difficult to seamlessly transition from discussing your marketing services to discussing your technical support services.

However, let’s say that you are starting a marketing consulting business, based on the same sales background. You have also had experience with television production and video editing. So, you would also like to offer television production services, and plan to sell these services to many of your clients.

After all, many clients who are revamping their marketing plans (and seeking your advice as a consultant) might also choose to use your company to produce a television advertisement.

How To Improve:

• If you don’t have at least two marketable skills that are directly applicable to your home business, you need to gain the necessary training or experience to obtain them.
• If you have too many skills, and they don’t mesh nicely, prioritize them.

Which services would you most like to offer in your home business? In the preceding example, the business owner would probably need to choose between marketing and technical support—perhaps growing the business in to a “one stop” service center.

If the decision is tough, work through the business plan and budget for each separate business.

Admit it. The world is currently facing one of the biggest recessions it has had over the years. More and more people are feeling the burdens that recession has on their lives—and their wallets. Fortunately for some people, the economic crisis does not affect them one bit. These are those people who work at home.

But don’t get me wrong. Not all people who work at home turn out successful in what they do. But surely most of them will get to lessen their financial problems.

With today’s economic crisis, now is the best time to get into the exciting world of working at home. More and more companies and business establishments have opted to put up telecommuting programs as a means to cut their overhead expenses by a considerably large percentage. With the economic instability that everybody is experiencing, getting into the work-at-home business will just be your wisest decision ever made.

Yes, working at home has its financial perks. It gets you to save a lot by not having the need to pay skyrocketing taxes, buy flashy and expensive working clothes, or spend hundreds of dollars for gasoline or fare just to go to your workplace, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’d get rich overnight with it. There are still a lot of things that need to be considered to get closer to being wealthy with working at home.

Free yourself from linear working relationships. A classic example of this setup is when you sell a person something and get paid, and you find another person to sell to and you get paid, and so on and so forth. This was practically what you were trying get away from in the first place. The income you get here is short-lived and sometimes even unstable. Most people with linear income will normally have to work longer hours to earn more.

Find work-at-home opportunities that will give you passive or residual income. In short, find work or opportunities that pay you for something you did—not something you have. These kinds of jobs will get you earning whether you don’t toil so hard. These are the kinds of jobs that smart and wealthy people do.

So what you may ask can you do to get passive or residual income?

The Internet holds a lot of these opportunities for people to get this kind of income. And if you have been searching for these jobs for months or years already, then you aren’t probably looking at the right places.

If you’re a passionate writer, get into freelance writing jobs where you get paid royalties for your works. Work at home and do affiliate marketing. There are affiliate programs that pay lifetime commissions.

While almost everybody is getting depressed about the bleak financial situation that the country (in fact, the whole world) is at, take this as an opportunity for you to assess your chances of being successful while working at home.