Tag Archives | starting a home business

Exploring The Possibility of Starting a Home Business

By Lowell on July 3, 2015 in Blog

There are many things to consider in determining whether starting a home business is feasible for you. Some things may seem obvious, others not so much. The first thing to do is discover the right mindset.

You want to keep an open mind – open to all possibilities, which is the opposite of being skeptical or negative. At the same time you need to be realistic though. Be sure to do your due diligence so that you don’t make the wrong decision that causes you to take the wrong action, such as taking a gamble with more than you can afford to lose.

Life does involve taking risks but you want to minimize the risk by being informed and not rushing or acting from your emotions rather than your logic. Not gambling with more than you can afford to lose of course is a wise decision. Taking a few small risks may be necessary to get anywhere in this life.

For example losing $10-20 to take a chance that you will find something you need would be unfortunate, but will not ruin you. On the other hand gambling with the month’s rent money would be disastrous if you lost it, so don’t even go there. Don’t speculate, imagining you will get your money back in time to pay the rent. What if you don’t? Then what?

So starting with yourself you need to determine what you want to do, and you need a few more details than ‘to make money from home’. Do you like marketing and/or sales? If you have never done it before would you like to learn how and accept that there will be work involved and it may be unpaid work until you get going?

If you are not crazy about marketing and sales that is understandable and so you should decide what it is that you could do to earn money from home. However you need to understand that whatever the business is, if you want to find customers and make money you will need to do a certain amount of marketing and advertising to generate sales whether you love it or hate it!

Ideally you could pay for some services in this regard but the truth is most people starting a home business are doing it because they don’t have enough money. Typically they start out with a small operating budget and as such need to learn how to do things for themselves.

Note that marketing and selling on the Internet is probably 150% less expensive than offline; (think in terms of saving for example on paper, printing, postage, phones, etc). Just as a home business is 250% less costly than paying rent in a storefront or office building; (all you need is some space and a computer with an Internet connection).

Almost everything you need to do to promote your business online can be done for free if you are willing and able to devote your time consistently. Exactly WHAT your business will be will determine how much it would cost you to do it.

For example you may want to sell some products like a ‘manufacturer’s representative’, selling products that are technically owned by others – an ‘independent consultant’; Or you may wish to create your own products – anything from software to arts & crafts gifts; or provide a service such as web design, ghostwriting, search engine optimization, customer service or technical support.

Now just because you don’t know exactly how to do something that seems attractive to you does NOT mean you can’t do it. It just means you will have to learn or you will need to partner up with somebody who can help you with that particular facet of developing your home business plan.

The Home Office – Focus on Business

By Lowell on June 26, 2015 in Blog

While it’s so much more relaxed and casual to work from your home office, you still need to keep in mind that it is for the purpose of business that you are there. As part of focusing your mind on the work you need to do to develop and maintain a business, what you see in front of you is directly related.

Why add continually navigating chaos to your work-related tasks every time you do something? It wastes time and energy, not to mention causes you to lose focus on what you need to be doing. Make staying organized part of your work day and put things away! Get folders for things and even if all you have is a box or plastic crate, put your folders or important papers in there. ‘Out of sight out of mind’ has special relevance here. If your workspace is organized you will think and see things more clearly. Remove anything that is not related to business out of your office space entirely if you can.

There is more than one reason for creating a focused environment in your home office. For tax purposes, particularly if it is the case that you only make part of your income from home, when you are claiming home business tax deductions (which you should) then you have to have a clear delineation to separate ‘home’ from ‘business’. In fact an actual door on your office is required. (For those lucky enough to earn their entire income from home, you don’t need the door but you still need to have an area dedicated only to business.

In any case you can figure the square feet in your living space and determine how much is used exclusively for business. Then you can deduct expenses based on that percentage for rent, utilities, insurance, etc, in addition to directly related business expenses such as office supplies, equipment, advertising, etc.

Just be sure you have receipts for every penny you claim. Another element to organize is to keep a folder marked ‘Taxes’ where you put receipts and invoices all year long so you are not scrambling at the last minute, and maybe even missing something that would have been a deduction to your self-employment income taxes.

Be sure that part of your organization and focus involves committing your time (scheduling) – where you will sit and work and do nothing else. Turn on your voice mail and be sure that your family and friends know and respect your hours of business just as they would have to if you were going off to a job. If you have little kids then obviously this time allocated to your business should be when they are at school or sleeping if possible.

You really won’t get as much done, or retain as much information if you are constantly being interrupted by the doorbell, phone, kids, dog, etc. Of course the kids (and dogs) are some of the main good reasons you have for starting a home business; and of course you can’t always have 100% control over them, but with a little planning and mutual respect you can have more time for them and still have a successful business.

Oh – and don’t forget to rest – when you shut down (and put everything away) at the end of your work time, shut the door – even if the door is only in your mind. You have to have a time where you are OFF work – to relax and enjoy the other facets of your life. Resist the temptation to log back on your computer every time you get a bright idea. Just write it down and take care of it next time you go back to work.

Build a Strong Foundation With Residual Income

By Lowell on June 2, 2015 in Blog

What is ‘residual’ income? It is income where you make a sale one time and it generates income on a regular basis going forward. Residual income can even be earned on multiple levels. For example if you refer someone to an affiliate program, you make a commission for a percentage of the initial sale. In the future when your customer pays their membership fees for the program each month, you earn a percentage of that as a commission. With ‘multi-level-marketing’ you may also receive a percentage of the commissions when your customer makes sales of their own.

So the idea is that you have income that continues to generate as a result of that initial sale for as long as your customer remains active in the program. This would also be true if you were directly selling a service, for as long as your customer continues to use the service.

Usually if you are selling products directly, these are considered ‘one-time-only’ commissions, as you earn money only one time when the purchase is made. Nothing wrong with this but it does take much more work to build and sustain your momentum to keep those one-time sales coming in on a regular basis.

It is a good idea to have a combination of sales types and the money all adds up to represent a substantial income. However it does seem like a brighter idea to have residual income – just in the way it is more efficient to plant ‘perennials’ that bloom every season after they are planted once, than it is to have ‘annuals’ that you must replant every year.

It’s fun that the plant analogy really does work so well when discussing residual income too – because for example when you have a perennial plant it will not only bloom each year in the same place, but the wind will carry the seeds and the plant may pop up in many different places.

With residual income it is the same in that you have contacted the initial customer who then contacts others, who contact others and before you know it you have built an ‘organization’ just from that one initial action that you took by ‘planting the seed’.

Internet marketing and in fact marketing in any industry is about generating lots of volume with your efforts. This is because the majority of people will not be interested and will not respond. It is a bit like the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’ in that you must weed through all the people who won’t be interested to find the few that will.

Actually there are many that will respond over time – but just as a percentage of the human population on earth, only a few (million) are interested in starting a home business or working from home. Remember as well that it is believed that people do not usually respond to an ad the first time they see it. It is approximately the 5th or 6th time. This is another reason to always keep the volume of your advertising turned up to the max. This week someone may not be interested – but things are always changing and maybe next week they will change their mind and respond to your ad!

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