The Three Golden Laws of Home Business

Starting, running, and turning a profit out of a home business does not have to be the tall task that most people make it out to be. While it certainly isn’t easy, it doesn’t have to be overly difficult either. With a little bit of forethought and planning, even the hardest, most complex of things can become relatively simple.

There are three golden laws in running a home business. If followed, these laws will help you create a dynamic home business, one that allows you make a decent living. If ignored, these laws will ensure that your home business does not rise above average operating results.

First, plan all the way to the end. You must have a concrete vision for the business. Where will it be five, ten, twenty years from now? What sort of scale will it have? What will it be doing differently, and what things will remain the same? Try to envision all the obstacles that may come up and prepare plans to meet them. To be sure, you will be unable to foresee all the crises that will occur. But mentally, you must be prepared for them as they come. Circumstances should not catch you completely off-guard; you should have a measure of preparation against ever-changing situations.

Second, work hard – and make your people work hard as well. With your home business, everything will start with you. You must work to become the greatest, most capable individual that you can become. Spare no expense in your education, within reason, as long as such education is helping you prepare for the future. Then, be sure that you work as hard as you can, learning all the ins and outs of the trade of which you are in. A good work ethic is important to success, and you should not neglect it. A corollary to this is that you should hire people who are just as hard-working as you are. Be sure to set targets for both yourself and others, and measure what gets done. Give reward liberally to those who achieve.

Third, utilize the power of personal networks. There is an old adage that says “It is not what you know, but whom you know.” While we may rebel against what this truism may imply, the fact remains that worldly success depends on a high degree to the number and quality of people who are kindly disposed towards you. Your personal network, as well as the networks of the people who work for you, should be utilized to their full potential, in terms of advertising and sales efforts. Treat those in your personal network well, provide the necessary services, and they in turn may promote your business to those in their networks.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

What You Need To Know About Running A Retail Website

Of the many potential home businesses, a retail website is one of the best. Running a retail website isn’t the easiest thing to do in the world – but neither has it to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Whatever the goods and services that you are selling, there are ways and means to make it work just a little bit better. Here are some tips that can help you improve your retailing efforts – and, by extension, your home business.

Create a niche site. If you want to make it big in the retailing business, you should have a site, or a group of sites, that cater to specific customer groups or to specific products. A “supermarket” set-up on a retailing website, wherein everything is thrown together, simply will not work. People can easily get confused in such an environment. Confusion can lead to frustration, and frustration can lead customers to simply give up. A niche site must be focused, targeted, and relatively easy to navigate.

Make your site easy to navigate. Everyday many people are getting on the internet for the first time. Some of these people are going to go on your site. If these people cannot navigate your site, then chances are they will buy something from you. Make it a practice to review the layout of your site from time to time. Is it simple enough? Imagine yourself going around the site for the first time. Is the overall arrangement conducive to persuading people to make purchase?

Advertise, advertise, advertise. You can’t expect anyone to buy from you if they don’t even know that you’re in business. You should advertise in every possible way. Over the internet, this means giving out links and reciprocating people who link their sites to yours. It means writing articles that can extend your visibility. It means getting optimized for the search engines. However, you can also advertise conventionally. For instance, you can post banners and give out flyers and stickers. You can spread your business information by word-of-mouth as well – which is arguably the most effective way, anyway. A shining recommendation from a friend can do more than a thousand stickers.

Sell quality products. The only way to make money in retailing is to keep people buying from you again and again. And the only way to do that is to provide goods and services that are well worth the money. Remember that people must feel satisfied with their purchases, else they probably will never purchase anything from you again. If you have excellent products, people will find their way to you, even if you don’t expend as much effort advertising them.

By applying these basic tips, you should be on your way to creating a great retailing website.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

Taking a Closer Look At Your Profit Angle

Some people engage in a certain home business out of a whim. It is uncommon for people to start a home business simply because they feel that the business is right for them. Unfortunately, in business, gut feel may not be enough to keep you going. More often than not, your gut feel does not really turn into reality. To really stay in business, you need to study your profit angle closely. You need to ask yourself “is this business going to be profitable?”, “how will this business become profitable?”, and “What will it take to make this business profitable?”. If you can honestly answer these questions, you are closer to your dreams of making your home business a success.

Projecting future profit

To be able to make a sound projection of profits, you will need to formulate a sound business plan. In your business plan, you must make a realistic projection. You must be able to identify the expenses that you will most likely incur in the course of your business and then determine how much goods and services you will need to sell to be able to recover your cost and earn some profits. You can do your comparison by making a projected income statement.

Now, if you have no idea how to make a projected income statement or a projected financial statement for that matter, don’t start fretting about it. Making a project income or financial statement is not exactly rocket science. It is just a projection of how much money you need to earn in order to be able to pay for your business expenses and at the same time earn enough money as profit. If you are not familiar with accounting methods and processes, do some research on how these things are done. Of course, you can formulate your own methods of computing things but then your methods of computing might not really be the right way to do things. Besides, it is always easier to follow an established method of computing for profit making up something of your own.

If you do not have any spare time to learn how to make a projected financial statement, you can buy a simplified computer accounting program that will allow you to create projected financial statements. The good thing about these types of simplified computer accounting programs is that you only need to input some values into the questionnaire and the program will run on its own. If you want to change your projections, you simply change the values in the questionnaire and the program will automatically adjust the figures in your projected financial statement. Most programs will allow you to change the figures as many times as you would like. This means that by spending a few dollars on a computer program, you get the work done in just a fraction of the time it would have required you to perform it had you done things manually.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

Passing Your Home Business On To Your Kids

There is something that is part of a home business that you might not have thought of, and that is where you are going with your business in the future. Remember, although you are around right now to run your home business, like any business, you should be hoping you are going to continue to be successful, and you are going to continue to move forword in whatever you are doing. If this is the case, you should be thinking about the future of your business and what you plan on doing with it. Remember you might want to pass it on later on.

Passing On A Business

When it comes to whether or not you want to pass your home business on to your children, you have to think about it in the same way that you would think about passing on a regular business to your kids. There are several things you have to think about, and you have to make sure your family knows what you want to do.

Interest

First of all, you want to make sure that your family is interested. You don’t want to expect your children to take over your business if they aren’t interested in it, or if they have no idea what it is all about. If your kids don’t seem like they are interested, you might be better off selling your business before your retire so that you know your business is in the right hands. Remember, when you sell your business, you want to make your children happy and you want to keep your business running. If you don’t think your kids are going to be happy running the business, it might not be the best thing to do.

Responsibility

Another thing you should keep in mind is that you have worked hard to get your business where it is, and you are going to want to be sure that it gets passed on to someone who is going to be responsible with it. This is one of the most important things that you have to think about when you are considering whether or not to give your kids your home business. Remember if they have shown interest, and you think they are going to handle your home business in a responsible way, this might be something you can consider doing.

In the end you have to remember that you are the one who has built up your home business, and this means that you are the one who has a say in what happens to it when you are finished being in charge. Make sure you have made your intentions clear, and make sure you feel good about what is going to happen to your business later on down the road.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

Managing Your Home Business So It Doesn’t Manage You

The Problem of Time Management

If you already manage a home business, then you are also probably aware of how it can consume most of your time. Most likely, this happens against your will. After all, there are probably many things that you want to do with your time, such as spending time with your spouse and your children, going out with your friends, listening to music, reading some books, or what not. And yet, the task of managing your home business seems to take up all of your time. What can you possibly do?

What was described in the first paragraph is a classic example of a time management dilemma. Millions of people, not just home business owners, feel that they are not in complete control of their time. This tends to make people miserable, since most people want to feel in control of their lives. After all, what is your life but a measurement of your time? As long as you are unable to spend your time in a manner that you wish, you will never be truly happy, no matter how much money you earn or how many accolades you receive.

Managing Your Time Properly

Setting your priorities is the cardinal rule of time management. In life there is probably nothing more important than setting your priorities, since they will set the stage for just how much time you will spend on each area of your life. You must clarify in your mind exactly what you want in life, and be determine to spend more time on those things that you feel are most important.

In the immortal words of Goethe, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” If your home business is the most important to you, then it is only right that you use most of your time on it. But if it isn’t, you should begin to scale back on the time you spend on it. You can either get someone else to do the job for you, or scale back on the amount of work you are already doing. Remember, you own your home business; it doesn’t own you.

Time management gurus tell us that most people don’t really work all the time that they work. This means they may be putting in 8 hours at work, but they’re not really working for all of those 8 hours. They may spend an hour here chatting with officemates, another hour there for lunch, and another utterly distracted. This causes work to pile up and problems to surface at a later time.

To avoid this, work all the time you work. While you should definitely take breaks whenever you need them, make sure you are not kidding yourself and taking more time than you need to. By focusing on the task at hand, you will get it done quicker and with less effort, freeing up more time for the other things you want to do.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

Keeping Up Appearances At Your Home Business

When you work form home, it is very easy to simply get out of bed and go to your work in your pajamas and not worry about what you look like. After all , if all of your clients are in different locations, and you aren’t seeing anyone, what is the harm in being lazy and not dressing up for work?

Be Professional

There is no harm in your business, per say, if you simply go to work dressed in whatever you feel like, but the harm is going to lie in the long term affects that you are going to see on yourself if you don’t’ dress for work. Now, you don’t’ have to be wearing a fancy suit or a glamorous outfit, but even if you are working at home all day, part of what you need to be doing is getting dressed for work.

If you are working at home in whatever you wore to bed, you are sending yourself the message that it is okay to be lazy and that it is okay to simply slack off and not do what you should be doing. You are also sending a message, if even to yourself, that you are not professional and should not be treated as such. If you do this for a long period of time, your business is going to start to feel like just something else you do at home, and you are going to lose site of the fact that you are actually running a business.

There are some things that you can do to make sure that you always stay professional and that you keep this in your head at all times, which will make your business run much more smoothly.

First of all, be sure that you dress for work each day. It doesn’t have to be as fancy as if you worked in an office building, but you should be able to feel like you are at work, and you should wear something other than the clothes you would wear if you were simply at home.

Also, you should set hours for yourself to be at work. Working from home is something that can be great, but it can also turn into something that means you have to be at work all of the time. If you set yourself business hours, and stick to them, you are more likely to treat your business as a business, and not as something that is taking over your life. Something else that you have to be sure to always do is to answer the phone and emails in a professional manner, so that whoever you are communicating with will know that you are taking yourself, and your home business, very seriously.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

How To Start Your Own Scrapbook Making Business

Making scrapbooks is one of the biggest industries in the country today. According to studies, the scrapbook industry earns about $3 billion each year and this figure keeps on growing. Since scrapbook making can be done in the comforts of your home, this can be a very lucrative home business for creative people. The good thing about the scrapbook making business is that it does not really require a huge amount of capital. If you are creative and you know how to make use of whatever materials that are available, you can already create good scrapbooks.

Learning the Art of Scrapbook Making

Starting out a home-based scrapbook making business is easy especially if you are naturally creative and artistic. However, to make sure that you are on top of everything, before you start your own scrapbook making business, you must first learn all that you need to know about this hobby. First, you must know the different techniques of scrapbook making. Read books and magazines about this business. You may also enroll in one of those scrapbook making classes. Practice what you have learned and then improvise. Always remember that scrapbook making is an art. Be creative. Always remember that the more unique your scrapbooks are, the more clients you will have.

Getting Supplies

If you want to engage in the scrapbook making business, you must know where to get good materials. Locate a good supplier of paper and trinkets in your locality and make sure that you have enough supply of good materials all the time. If you are planning to do a lot of scrapbooks, buy your materials in bulk and get a discount. On the other hand, if you have no time to run around town and shop for papers and trinkets, you can just go online and take a look at sites that are selling scrapbook materials. The good thing about buying your supplies online is that you get to save a lot of time and effort. Just make sure that you order your scrapbook making supplies form reputable online stores or else you will soon find yourself with some materials which are substandard or worst, your credit card could get high jacked and you lose a lot of money.

Marketing Your Product

The best way to market your product is to create samples and present them to your friends and relatives. You can start by asking close family members friends if they want to have keepsakes. You may also display your designs during family gatherings and special occasions so people will have some ideas of what you can do. If your designs are really good, a lot of people will be calling you about their scrapbooks sooner than you can imagine.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

How To Start Your Own Home Based Meals To Go Business

If you are one of those people who love to cook, you might want to explore the possibilities of selling meals to go in your community. A lot of people are not really eating right these days. In most cases, families thrive on processed and instant foods because everyone is too busy to prepare a healthy meal. By offering home cooked meals to go, you will be able to help others eat more healthy foods and at the same time earn some money to contribute to the family coffers. If your neighbors and friends love your cooking, you will most likely have a lot of people knocking on your door and asking for a decent meal.

Getting Organized

If you happen to live in an apartment building where everyone leaves the place in a hurry everyday, you might want to offer some breakfast, lunch or dinner to go. However, before you do so, you better check with the building administrator to see if these things are allowed or you may get into trouble. There are many apartment buildings that do not really allow these things because this could be a source of fire hazards. On the other hand, if you have your own house, offering meals to go will not be much of a problem. In most cases, after complying with government regulations, you can start your home business immediately.

Organizing things for your food to go business is not really that difficult especially if you have a computer with internet connection in your home. You can start by asking the people in the building for their email or instant messaging address. You can send your menu for the day to these addresses and ask them to send you a message as to what they will have for breakfast, lunch or dinner. For your neighbors who do not have internet connection, you can just put a cork board outside your door where you can post your menu for the day. You may also provide for some paper and a box where your clients can write their order and then drop them in the box. Furthermore, having a business phone is a must. Some of your clients may want to call you to place or cancel their orders. Never rely on your home phone for this purpose. Always bear in mind that the home phone should only be used for personal transactions and the business phone should dedicated solely for entertaining clients.

Set a specific time and place where your clients can pick up their food. Make sure that you are ready and waiting a few minutes before your clients starts arriving so you will not have difficulties getting things in order.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

How To Start Your Own Dog Care Home Business

Do you love dogs? If you happen to love dogs, you might want to start a dog care home business. A lot of dog owners don’t have time to groom or walk their dogs and they will often rely on pet care businesses to do the job for them. Considering the number of dog owners in the country today, you will not really run-out of clients who will ask to groom and walk their dogs.

Setting up a dog bath

The first thing that you will need is a place where you can bath and groom dogs. If you live in a house with a big lawn, you may want to set up a place where you can bath dogs. Never attempt to bath dogs, especially the big once inside your house. Dogs love to wiggle around and shake their hair during baths thus creating a huge mess. Playful and rowdy big dogs are adorable but when they start running around your house in their wet coats, things will not really look very funny at all so keep them out of the house. There is no point of wasting a lot of energy cleaning after a wet dog.

When setting up a dog bath, a tub or a huge basin, a garden hose, some dog soap, shampoo, a brush and some cotton towels. You don’t really need something elaborate when bathing dogs. Certainly not those pet washers that torture the poor things. Some experts believe that using pet washers where you simply put the dog inside a box and turn on the water cause emotional trauma on the dogs and should not be used at all. Well, who wouldn’t be traumatized if they were put inside a closed box with water gushing all over the place? If you want to bath dogs, forget about the pet washer and do things the old fashioned way. Dogs love it when you brush their coat and massage them. Besides, bathing a dog the old fashioned way could be a lot of fun for you too.

Setting up a grooming area

For grooming dogs, select a quite area inside the house. Of course you can set-up a grooming area outside of the house if you want to but grooming a dog inside the house is lot better. First, most dogs are less playful when they are inside the house than when they are in the yard, second, there are less distractions inside the house and third, it would be easier on your part to store all your grooming stuff. For grooming dogs, you will need the following materials; a table, towels, cotton, mineral oil, eye ointment, nails clippers and a brush. You can easily get all these stuff at your favorite pet shop.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.

How To Start A Pet Based Home Business

Are you one of those people who love animals? If you are one of those people who love animals, you might want to set up your own pet based home business. The good thing about selling products for pets is that you get to have some fun by doing the things that you really want to do and at the same time earn some good money. Besides, if you have kids in the house, they will probably have as much fun as you do. Kids and pets belong together so you will not really have any problems asking your kids to help out in your home business. Getting your children to help in your home business is a great way of teaching them how to be responsible.

Setting Up Your Business

Setting up a pet-based home business is not really difficult. You don’t need to have a big space to keep all your stuff. If you open an online store where you can sell your products, you will only need to keep a few things in your house. You can just run to your supplier any time you need something. Since you will not need to keep a huge amount of inventory of pet products, you will not need a lot of money as capital investment. A few hundred dollars for your computer with internet connection and your initial inventory will be enough. For your web hosting, you can just use one of those free sites for a start to save on cost. There is really no point of wasting too much money on web hosting when you can have something for free. Besides, those sites that are offering their services for free are not really that bad.

Selecting Your Products

There are lots of pet based products that you can choose from. If you want to specialize on organic products for pets, you might want to take a look into organically grown food for dogs as well as toys that are made of biodegradable and organic substances. The good thing about selling these types of products is that you get to help save the planet at the same time. Besides, according to experts, organic products for animals are a lot safer because they do not contain any harmful chemical additives. Healthy pets make great companions.

When planning to sell organic pet products, you should first locate a good supplier of these products. Find a supplier of organic products near you so you can just simply to go their place whenever you need something for your store. Always make sure you have a steady supply of the products that you sell on your site, otherwise you will have many disgruntled clients on your hands. Having disgruntled clients is not really a pretty thing so make sure you give good service.

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About the Author:
Sheila enjoys working part-time from home. She also enjoys sponsoring and mentoring others, and helping them find success with their work from home base business. Click here to contact Sheila and learn how you can start a work at home-base business.