Don't Settle For Less

When you have a home business, the amount you earn depends entirely upon your efforts. You won't be slaving away to fill somebody else's bank account in return for a minute share of the profits you have helped to earn. Every penny of profit you generate from your home business is yours. If that's not an incentive to give a home business your very best shot, I don't know what is.

Sadly, many people who have their own small business at home settle for less than they could be earning and, in some cases, they settle for much less even though they are capable of earning extra income from their home business. These people find a way to make money at home, manage to generate some extra income and then just cruise instead of looking for more ways to make money.

When I was browsing through some forum posts about working from home recently, I was struck by two posts about making money working at home. The posts were both made by stay-at-home mothers and, although each was running a different type of home business, their situations were quite similar. The striking thing they had in common was that they were each earning about $120 per month and were not looking for ways to increase their income.

One lady who worked as an Avon rep said that she enjoyed her work and it took up very little of her time. All her extra income went into the family's vacation fund. OK, every little helps but an extra $120 a month does not really make a big difference to a family's finances. With a little extra effort, this lady could easily double her income from working from home.

One way of getting more income would be to start a completely different home business and run it alongside the Avon business. This is perfectly feasible because the Avon business only takes up a few hours each month. The other way of easily getting extra income would be for the Avon lady to offer additional products to her existing customer base.

The type of product would, of course, need to be geared to suit the type of people who make up the existing customer base. They obviously like cosmetics, so the occasional offer of upmarket perfume of luxury skin treatments could be warmly welcomed. Perhaps they would be interested in lingerie or books or environmentally safe cleaning products. If they are mothers of young childen, they could be offered items for children (eg clothing, books, educational materials or toys). These additional offers could be made by the introduction of catalogues or by way of direct sales parties (as long as you don't host these events too often).

The trick to succeeding with this is to avoid earning a reputation for being a marketing pest. Additional lines should be gradually introduced in such a way that the existing customers feel they are being offered an extra service rather than being asked to buy things. They should be made to feel that they are getting a chance to buy instead of feeling they are having something sold to them (this might sound like the same thing but there is a subtle difference).

If a person buys something from you and is satisfied with it, they become your "warm market" who will be happy to make future purchases if you offer them something they need.

Don't settle for less when you could be getting more.


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Starting From Nowhere Part 4 - Knowing Your Customer

Niche Marketing - Who Is Your Customer?

To talk about niche marketing makes it sound very high-tech but the phrase "niche marketing" is about avoiding the temptation to be all things to all people. Trying to market everything to the whole world is much harder than trying to sell one item to one person. Actually it's not just harder, it is downright impossible.

Different types of people have completely distinct interests. Think about pet owners. Forget for a moment, the people who create a mini-zoo at home because they just love keeping pets. A niche marketer would not try to target "all pets", it is just too wide to be successful. There are definitely "dog people" and "cat people" in the pet owning world but you would not be best advised to try to market to both types at once.

Having identified dogs as a niche you will need to dig deeper and look at possible narrower niches, for instance: puppies, guard dogs, miniature dogs, one particular breed of dog, dog toys, dog shampoo, worming treatments, dog insurance, dog travel baskets, dog leashes, dog collars, flea powders, dog training, poop-scoopers, dog breeding, dog psychology, dog feeding, weight loss diets for dogs, curing doggy flatulence, dog chews, dog beds, furniture protectors, dog hair resistant car seat covers, dog clothing, dog wardrobes, etc. You can see how this works, so I'm sure you don't need me to provide a list for cats.

It makes no difference whether you are a website owner or a shop-keeper, you must find your niche and market it to the right section of society. Think about niches as if they were shops. If you were trying to sell high-priced designer garments, you would be more successful if you were to market them through an exclusive boutique than if you had them on show in a shop alongside low-cost, low-quality attire. The consumers who will be interested in the two types of product are two entirely different sets of people and by trying to cater to both, you will attract neither.

Your customers must be able to see at a glance exactly what you are selling, otherwise they will move on to a store where the message is clear. The products you display should identify you as an expert in a particular field: eg you are either an expert at haute couture or at bargain basement clothing. You cannot establish credibility if you try to pass yourself off as an expert at too many diverse things and, if you lack credibility as a marketer, people won't come back to make further purchases.

Think about buying gifts. It is much harder to choose a gift for someone you hardly know. You don't know what they like, what they hate or if they are allergic to anything. The best you can do is go for the blandest possible item and hope not to offend. The chances of you hitting on something they will really want are so remote as to be non-existent.

Now think about buying a gift for your partner or a close friend or relative you have known for years. You know exactly what their tastes are and you can, almost without thinking, pick out a gift they will accept with pleasure.

Your niche marketing should be like giving a gift to someone you know well, it might be your partner, your brother, your girlfriend or even yourself; it doesn't matter as long as you know who you are marketing to and offer them something you know they will want.




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Starting From Nowhere Part 2 - Choosing The Best Home Business

Choosing The Best Home Business - A Question In Two Parts

Deciding whether starting a home business would be the right thing for you is bound to be tricky if you have never run a business before. The decision is really in two parts: you have to decide whether running a home-based business is the right thing for you and also what type of business would be best.

Finding the solution to the second part of the question will usually automatically answer the first part. Answering one question will usually give the solution to both. I'll explain how that works in a moment, but first lets look at the two parts of the question separately.

Many people shy away from the idea of running a home business. They need to make an income and they want to work from home but the minute you refer to this as a home-based business, they will back off. The talk of being self-employed, sole trader, or business owner seems to bring out the inner mouse in some people. I have to admit that I showed definite mouse-tendencies when working at home was what I wanted: I wanted a job I could do working at home, I had no ambitions to have my own business and the idea seemed very complicated and scary.

Look around at the people you know who are working from home. Examples of the ones I can think of myself right away are: the man who does the Kleeneze round, the lady who sells cosmetics from a catalogue, the lady who minds a couple of kids while their parents are at work, the man who cares for my neighbours' garden, the lady who painted the outside of my house, the home tutor,the window-cleaner.

If I were to sit and think about this, I would come up with many more examples including most of the repair men I have ever called out because they all seem to work under franchises. It’s only when you start thinking about working at home for yourself that you realise how many other people are already doing that very thing successfully. Then the penny drops! Of course, these people who are working at home are each running a home-based business.

The sort of things that scare most people about starting a home business are not knowing where to start and worry about what is involved in dealing with things like paying taxes and getting permits and licences. My big worry was about dealing with paying tax as a self-employed person. As I had previously worked as a bookkeeper for a small business, I fully sympathise with anyone who gets an attack of this kind of self-doubt. The trick is to recognise this stumbling block for the irrational fear it is and then use it as a step up.

It is better to start with the second part of our double question and try to think what type of home business would be best for you. The way to do that is to think about what you would like to do day and day out for years to come. Do you have a passion in life and a desire to devote more time to it? Do you have a hobby that could be the basis for your own business? Do you currently have a job that you could do as a self-employed person? Once you know what sort of thing you would like to be doing, the decision as to whether a home business would be right for you will be pretty much answered.

After making that giant leap, the next step is to find your niche, and we'll look at that in the next instalment.

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Starting From Nowhere Part 1- Is a Home Business Right For You?

Is a Home Business Right For You? See If You Have The Five Essentials

Is a home business right for you? To put it another way, are you right for a home business? This can be a tough question to answer because most of us have never had any sort of business before, so we can hardly be expected to know whether we could run one successfully or what would be the best home business to work at.

There is no single, foolproof test to tell you whether a home business would be right for you because the variety of home-based business opportunities is so vast. There are, however, five character traits that every business owner needs in order for the business to succeed. The vital traits are patience, persistence, self-belief, the ability to remain focused, and determination. Let's have a brief look at each of these traits one by one.

Patience is required because starting a home business will require you to keep working diligently even though months might go by before you manage to turn a profit. It is highly unlikely that your business will be an overnight success. It is far more likely that you will have to keep working with nothing to show for your efforts while you are building your business.

Persistence is vital because you will have to motivate yourself when things don't go to plan. You can't give up when something doesn't work out, you have to keep trying different ways to make it work. How many times can you bear hear the answer "no"? Suppose you give up after getting a "no" answer ten times and number eleven would have been a "yes". You can never give up: you must be able to keep persisting until you get "yes".

Self-belief is essential because you will be surrounded by people (often well meaning folk) who will tell you starting a home-based businesses is a big risk and that 95% of home businesses fail. You have to believe that you are one of the 5% who will succeed in running a business from home even if there is no sign of success during the early days.

The ability to remain focused will ensure that you work steadily towards your goals and don't procrastinate when you have difficult tasks to complete or get sidetracked by external distractions.

You must be utterly determined to succeed. If you start your home business with a wishy-washy, have-a-try-and-see-how-it-goes attitude, take it from me, you won't be successful. You need the attitude of an athlete who is going to win a big race.

Do you have what it takes to run your own home business? If you can see all these five traits in your own character the prognosis is good but there are other considerations to be taken into account. We'll look at those in Part 2 of this series of articles.




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Choosing Your Best Home Business Idea - Take Two Steps Forward And One Back

Finding their best home business idea is something many people find extremely difficult. This is not surprising: for most people it is a choice they only make once in a lifetime. If you have never owned your own business, how can you know what would be right for you? Will you be capable of starting up a home based business, let alone running one successfully? Will you be happy as a business proprietor? Your mind will be full of doubts and questions both big and small, right down to where to get advice about paying taxes and the best place to go to buy office supplies. To choosing the best home business idea for you will be easier if you... Read full article

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