Starting and Running a Home Based Business

By: Darrell Knox

The allure of a home based business is very strong these days with uncertain economic times and the pressures of working long hours for less pay. More and more people are exploring the home based business world to see if it is right for them.

More women are seeking home based businesses as the corporate life and pay just don't seem to justify the time away from home and children anymore. Men tired of working for others and also loosing their entire lives with their families to a job that requires more than 40 hours a week just to survive, are learning more and more about the internet and working at home.

There are many ways today to start a home based business. The internet offers the easiest, least expensive way to start a home based business ever. Never before have people been able to start up an entire, legitimate business just by signing up for a hosting account and selling information or other products from their web site.

Even the least internet savvy person can start an online home based business even if all they know how to do is retrieve and send email. In fact, one you know how easy it is, you will be amazed that you hadn't started sooner.

Any home based business is hard work. But ask yourself this question: Will your current job pay you more for working harder? In most cases the answer will be no. Your current employer will not only happily pay you the same amount whether you work hard or not, they will profit from the work you do because they own the business you work for.

The key to true wealth is to own the business, not work for it. A home based business owner is the top dog in their small company. That means any windfalls a new product or service you create or resell belong to you! That also means all the overhead and other expenses belong to you too. With the power of a home based business comes the responsibility too.

This is why you should thoroughly research a home based business opportunity to make sure you have all the bases covered and you are approaching working for yourself in a responsible manner.

Below are a couple of home based businesses that are very profitable and hot right now:

Virtual Assistant: A person that hires their time out to busy executives to complete various tasks like appointment setting and other things busy power brokers don't have time to do. Executives like doing this because they can hire a virtual assistant for short-term projects and not have to pay for insurance or any overhead since the VA is a private contractor.

Information Sales: This is what I do and I love it. I am an affiliate for several top-selling products that people want and buy everyday. My job is to promote my website and recommend products to my visitors. With a little training and guidance from people I have met online, this kind of home base business is a snap and can be very profitable.

Author Resource:-> Darrell Knox is a writer and entrepreneur with 15 years of home business and marketing experience.Website: http://cgi.tripod.com/lazaraus26/cgi-bin/index.pl

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Help for the Home Based Business

By: Hans Hasselfors

Wouldn't it be great to get some good, affordable, reliable help, even though you work out of your home? But finding workers and figuring out where to meet or when to bring them into your home office can pose some difficult juggling, personal and security issues.

A popular solution is outsourcing. When you outsource, you can hire experienced people and let them use their creative talents while you focus on other tasks. Another benefit is that the workers you hire may be more up to date on the latest information and technology in their specific fields and can be assets to your clients, as well, offering improved quality service.

OUTSOURCE

Here are the basics to outsourcing:

Focus:

Focus on outsourcing some of the major tasks of your workload. First, sit down for a breather and look around your 'To Do' lists and office area. What CAN you outsource? Which work seems to pile up the most?

For example, maybe you can't seem to find time to update your website each month. Maybe your newsletter is STILL not getting out regularly. Or perhaps your direct mail campaign is not quite as direct as it should be; i.e. it is sitting directly in the same pile it was three months ago.

Then write out one-page project description for these major tasks. Focus on WHAT exactly you'd want done, WHEN and HOW the end product should turned in to you.

Take Action:

Then look for service providers. For example, with the sample tasks above, find people who can help with Internet websites, newsletter creation and sending out direct mail campaigns. Call round and surf the Internet and ask other home based business operators which companies they recommend. Check forum posts; inquire for advice and suggestions. Shop around for comparisons.

Then set up trial periods and test a couple. Remember, no one is perfect. See who you can communicate with pretty easily and who's flexible to work as a team player. Check out the quality (and quantity) of their work. Then choose a candidate. Remember, this decision is not carved in stone. And you can always hire the other person as a back up or second helper down the road. So be kind to all who test, make decisions and keep your business moving forward.

ROI:

Make the most out of your investment and get a great return by investing in your time wisely, too. Outsourcing will hopefully free up more time for you to focus on the work you like and allow more time for marketing and advertising, to increase sales and projects. Don't forget to brush up on your skills and keep up with the industry now, too. Read the latest ezines in your field and take a brush up course or workshop to improve your skills.

Network and seek out joint venture opportunities.

Outsourcing is a great way to help small businesses grow larger while still remaining at home. So reach out and give it a try!

Author Resource:-> Hans Hasselfors is a successful home business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and make your living online. Become a member of The Online Home Business Team:

http://www.online-home-business-team.com

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How to Generate Network Marketing or MLM Leads

By: Brian Baldwin

If there's one thing you need in order to succeed with MLM/Network Marketing its leads. Without leads, you'll never make much money regardless of your company, the pay plan, your upline or anything else. You're also going to need a lot of leads since there's no way you'll sign every one to be an agent. How many you'll need depends on several factors such as your skill and your business. Not to mention; if you have a lot of leads, you won't have to feel like you have to sign every one. It's a lot easier to say No to having someone that doesn't match what you're looking for if you have 20-30 people waiting on your call. There are other factors involved in succeeding, but if you have leads and use them, that's a large hurdle passed.

This article aims to give you a few ideas on how to generate those leads and make it as simple as possible. I don't really like the term "Lead" since they're really just people like you and me who are looking for a better life; but we'll use the term for this article since that's a commonly excepted term and to prevent confusion.

Let's go over a few ways you can generate MLM leads.

Call everyone you know and ask for referrals.
Tell them about the great business you have and how they can benefit from either being a customer or agent. If you've chosen wisely and believe in your company, you won't see a problem with this. If you aren't sure you have a great business, maybe you should keep looking. A great way to decide if you have a good company is to ask yourself if you'd sign up your best friend or valued member of your family. Or ask yourself if you'd use the product if there was no pay plan involved. If the answer is No, maybe you should keep looking.

Build lead capture pages and get them listed high on search engines.
This will generate leads that are interested in your company. However, anyone who has worked at getting a site listed high will tell you this is time consuming and far from easy and it's not an overnight job either. You could spend months working on your site and never break the top 100.

You can advertise your lead capture page on Pay Per Click (PPC) search engines.
The largest sites are Google and Yahoo. These are the ads that show up at the top or on the right when you search. This is the fastest way and depending on the key words you're bidding on could be cheap or very expensive (some keywords cost over 100 bucks) and there's no guarantee you'll get a single lead. It only guarantees that someone will see your page. If you're going to go this route, do yourself a favor and either get trained on how to do it or start slow or both. You can easily blow hundreds or thousands of dollars before you know it.

You can print flyers and post them on bulletin boards around town and put them on doors and cars.
If you figure a 1-2% success rate, you'll get 1-2 leads per hundred flyers and then depending on your closing rate, you can figure out how many flyers you'll need to hand out consistently to reach your goals. Also figure in printing costs. Even if you're printing these at home, you'll have to pay for ink/toner and the wear and tear on your printer, not to mention the time and gas it takes to drive around and post the flyers. You should also get permission from property owners/managers if you're going to put them on doors or cars since some people will throw them on the ground. One other thing to be wary about is car alarms.

You can spam the world with one of those "e-mail 16 million people for 29.95" spam messages you get every week.
Do us both a favor and don't. The best you can hope for is to not get blacklisted or in trouble with the feds. The odds are that you'll be visited by the feds and/or have your ISP shut you down. The way these are collected is by sending a little robot spider to crawl the web and collect e-mail addresses from forums, news groups, blogs, web sites and anywhere else they can find them. These are just bad news and may get you kicked out of your company since they could be black listed because you didn't follow this advice. An easy way to tell if they are real leads or harvested is the price. If they're unbelievably cheap or don't include i.p. address, they are probably harvested.

Cold Calling
This is just as it sounds. You pick up the phone book and start calling. This is the cheapest way to generate leads and if you have a thick skin may work for you. The thing to remember is that those people may be on the Do Not Call List and it may get you in trouble. The best thing to do is research the legal requirements before attempting this. The direct link is https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov I've never done cold calling so I'm not sure if they charge you to be a member or not.

You can buy leads from a company that generates leads for you. But even these aren't created equal. Some companies sell the same lead to 5, 10 or more people; even people in the same company as you and sell them for weeks, months or longer. You could end up with a lead that is 5 months old and been called by 10 or more people and is just plain tired of talking to people or has already joined a company and is quite happy with it. Some are also overpriced and use shady tactics to get people to sign up such as contest sites.

Or you could join a lead Co-Op that only sells the lead to you and generates it after you order meaning they are about 1-3 days old and only sold once. You want to make sure the company is reputable, been around for awhile and truly cares about their customers/members. They should offer multiple lead packages, training on how to effectively contact those leads, multiple autoresponders to make contacting them for follow-up (the fortune is in the follow-up) and training them easier and a presentation to explain what network marketing/MLM actually is in case the person has never heard of the concept or your company doesn't offer a recruiting site. It would also help if the company has a pay plan so that as you refer your new downline to the great leads you use, you can create an extra income stream (or at least get them for free) and so can your downline. One such Lead Co-Op is http://www.bestmlmleads.biz

The thing to remember is that regardless of how the lead was generated these people asked for information on starting a home based business and you should make it your responsibility to get them the information as soon as possible. Unless you didn't take my advice and used a spam CD; then you're on your own.

Another thing to think about when choosing a method is will it be duplicatable to your downline and get consistent results? But that's a subject covered in a previous article.

Author Resource:-> Brian Baldwin is a Professional Networker with href="http://www.agentswanted.net">Cognigen specializing in href="http://www.southerntechservices.com">Telecommunications, Travel,

Internet Services, and more. He currently lives in Reno/Sparks

Nevada.

For a Complete List of Articles, visit the Library at href="http://www.brianbaldwin.com">www.BrianBaldwin.com

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