How To Survive The Credit Crunch Economy
Where to Begin Starting Your Home Business
Starting a home business is one of the daunting tasks to undertake. Everyone is probably thinking it’s not worth pursuing now due to credit crunch stories. But wait! Not all businesses are going down in fact a lot more of the businesses are doing just the opposite. Take for instance the global Nielson consumer report published that the Number of Internet Shoppers is Up 40% in Two Years.
Most households now have some form of internet connection. Even mobile phones are just as technically advanced as carrying your own mini laptop.
Here I give some tips on where you can begin to start your own home business. This is especially useful if you have just been made redundant and have got plenty of time at home. Do some research on the skills you already have. Don’t just wait for mercy to come and save you because it is not going to happen. You are the only person who has the power to turn your life around.
As a starting point write down all the things including jobs you enjoy doing. Most of all the things you have knowledge of. Always listen carefully at your friends and family conversations to capture ideas about what people are looking for. This will help direct your focus of possible niche to explore. In internet terms this is called Niche Researching.
1. What is Your Qualification and Experience
The first thing you need to do is to explore deeper at your qualification, experience and knowledge. This will be a starting point. Can aspects of your job be done at home? How about developing a service of your own? Is that something that’s possible? If you are guided by special Practice Boards or Associations, approach them you’ll be surprised to see what they can suggest.
2. Turn Your Hobbies or Interests into a Profitable Job
Surely every one of us has a hobby. Why don’t you turn your hobbies into something you enjoy doing but also earn some money out of it. Just to give an idea: Some people enjoy walking dogs. Could you be someone to help others walk their dogs and you get paid a fee? How about becoming a Wedding Planner? Advertising your local businesses or services either online or using traditional mailing system is another example. These are just a few of so many jobs you can tap into.
Once you have found your possible niche, these are my golden steps I would advise you to take before you can embark on any business program:
3. Set Yourself Goals using SMART key
S: Specific - focus and clearly define the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’ about your business. Write down what you would like to achieve out of this business obviously the main thing will be the money. If you don’t know what your business is, who your potential customers are and what tools and materials you’ll need to run it believe me you will come crashing down. So be very careful when setting your goals. Having some support from your family and other support resources around you can be very reassuring.
M: Measurable - if you can’t measure your goals you can’t manage them. You need to be able to observe progress occur. You need to be able to tick the boxes for each goal you achieve. If you don’t achieve it make a note of what is going wrong and whether you can alter that or not. If it’s about earning a specific figure of money within a certain period then it’s easily seen by the profit you are making and the rate that it’s occurring. These are just basic without using any complicated tools. A: Achievable Setting simple and short tasks can be very beneficial. It will increase your motivation to see quick results and success.
R: Realistic - Remember what I said in the beginning you must write down things you enjoy doing? The same way with the goals, they must be relevant to your business and what you are doing. It’s very easy to look focus of your business. Don’t get distracted and end up with unnecessary tasks that will not contribute anything to your business. T: Timely Establishing a clear time frame to achieve your goals will help you direct your focus. After all this business will be your life changing experience so you’ve got to start something you can complete.
4. Develop a Success Mindset
Most people embark on projects like starting a home business in order to change their lives but within weeks they fail. Successful people think differently. Once you can master the success mindset, all the other concerns like your redundancy, mortgage, credit cards, loans, etc, will automatically resolve. “If you do what you fear the money will follow”.
4. Marketing Your Business
Just like I mentioned in the beginning that Internet is flooded with people looking for all sorts of services and products. It is one of the very fastest and economical ways of marketing your business. Utilising online classified ads can dramatically expose your business’s visibility in your local area. Blogging is just another growing trend.
Blogging: Profit From Free Internet Marketing Tool
Blogging has been around for some years now. But it's just recently that it’s exploded to one of the most popular free ads tool. Not only is it used for advertising. Its main feature is to encourage online socialization. Its user friendly boasting editor allows almost anyone with limited computer skills to use it successfully. Blogging has open doors offloading emotions and share experiences. I have also recently discovered that blogging is one of the best tools to market your online business without breaking your bank.
What is blogging? Blogging is a fun and systematic way of recording and sharing your thoughts and ideas online. A Blog can be shared with the whole web or can be limited to those you choose to. Not everyone likes to share everything with people they do not know. Family Blogs are one example of restricted blogs and families all over the world spheres can share easily and faster. The greatest thing about this tool is that it cost nothing to set up or to host it. Of course if you prefer not to use the free hosting you certainly have a choice to use your own private host (paid hosting).
Blogging can dramatically enhance your internet business recognition to increase the visibility of your online selling products and services. Why don’t you have a look at the following ways that can help get that recognition through blogging:
1. Communicate any new changes about your business or website. This will keep your customers well informed and foremost will help you build a highly reputable credibility.
2. Transparency of your business mission can be easily shared from one resource location. Blogging easily allow you to store older content systematically in periodic dates, months and years. Surely this must make it easy for your customers to navigate to information they are need without having the frustration to search the whole web.
3. Appraise other services or products related to your business. Appraising other people’s work raises your business profile and other associates will appreciate you.
4. Adding links to your Blog will increase traffic thereby ranking higher on search engines. Content rich articles in an area of expertise related to your business quickly rank your site higher. Join Affiliate. They can earn you an extra income just by promoting other businesses, products or services.
5. Gain feedback from your customers and listen to their views. It’s a good way of knowing what they need and how you can improve the functionality of your business.
What a better way to start off advertising your business freely and getting known through socialising!
What are you waiting for, start blogging for free. The ones I use and which I have found them easy to navigate and edit are: Blogger.com, WordPress.com, and LiveJournal.com Otherwise you can easily get a software to load to your site.
Is It Really Difficult to Find Illegitimate Online Business Proposals
Be warned! Be very cautious if you are planning to undertake an online business. Online scams, freud and spams exist and prey on some of. None the less there are just as many legitimate online business opportunities to explore. There are various legitimate ways to make money on the internet so don’t let this opportunity pass you by, because of lingering doubts. Do a sensible research and avoid making quick decisions. You want to make sure you are making the right decisions when choosing your business.
List of Legitimate Online Businesses to Help You choose From
There are thousands of online businesses you can choose from. Before you start your business project I would strongly advise you take a look at each category carefully to determine if it matches your needs. Below is a list of most popular online business people succeed in:
Affiliate Marketing
This is an online business where you promote and market other people’s products and services. You don’t need to have special marketing skills to be an affiliate marketer. However being good at convincing and persuading potential customers to buy or use those products and services would be a bonus. There are also different types of affiliates programs to choose from. Typically, you earn a pre‐determined percentage of money based on the sales you make. In some cases you earn money by people clicking on your website that drives traffic to the affiliate websites. Be sure to check out the company’s affiliate process.
Selling Services
This is where you offer some type of service to potential clients. Basically the businesses would be looking for people to provide services they cannot provide themselves (out-sourcing). Usually one requires having some skills in specific service they choose to provide. Resources like elance.com, will give an idea of what services are on demand.
Selling Products
These could be either physical or digital products. eBay is a popular online auction website that you can use to sell literally anything as well as using drop ship method. The ability to market your items will be the most important skill to have. Digital products are a much growing trend. People are even downloading music rather than buying a physical CD. Selling eBooks is another market. Some people would prefer to have books and other information on screen they can take it anywhere with them. It’s just a convenient way to minimize carrying load and save space.
Membership Sites
People purchase memberships to gain access to collective and valuable information that is otherwise not readily available. As a site owner you will be responsible for providing consistent content that is new and updated.
Blogging
Blogging is now an excellent marketing tool while earning money using variety of ways. The most popular way is Google Adsense – placing ads to your site and earn from clicks received. Another way is to conduct Product Reviews. Some companies will pay to review their product using your site to gain popularity. Promoting products of your own using your blog will drive a good traffic to your selling site increasing your potential revenues.
