Tag Archives | starting a home business

Are You Really Serious About Starting a Home Business?

By Lowell on May 31, 2015 in Blog

If you are really serious about starting a home business and expect it to be successful, then you really need to get serious about it. You have to treat it just like a job – schedule your time to work on it just like you would have hours where you are expected to show up and perform for a job.

If it was a job, would you have the attitude that you will do it if you get a chance, and if you can squeeze it in to your social calendar? Not likely because you wouldn’t have the job very long if that was the way you handled it. It is the same concept with your own business – you need to take it seriously. It has to be a priority.

You really need to make your home business work schedule part of your business plan. Determine how many hours you have per day or per week to work on your business. While you may have a day job, a family and pets, etc. that demand your attention and are definitely the priority, if you want to add a home business to your life then you need to make some structured time for it. Whether it is 2 hours or 10 hours you need to use the time wisely and be consistent.

One thing that is a huge energy rip-off is email. You should learn how to only open emails that are relevant to your business during your home business time. Even at that if there is nothing pressing you should just glance over it and file it. Don’t waste your time trying to read every ad that comes into your inbox. It is hard to ignore total chaos so just archive everything – if it is from companies you are working with then make a folder for those and file things away.

Some time in the future when you have spare time you can go through them – but again you need to learn how to just glance over them so you don’t waste your time – if there is something critical it will be in the subject or first paragraph. Understand that it is an avalanche and you will never catch up or keep up with it so you just need to get it out of the way.

You need to have a definite plan on how you will spend your time. For example, with the email out of the way (and say you gave that 15 minutes), if you have anything that you need to do related to that, like pay a bill or sign up for something before the deadline, then get that done (say 15 minutes for this). Knowing that one of the most important (free and effective) ways to promote your online business is to use your blog, maybe give yourself (30 minutes) to compose a few paragraphs, or more if you have something more to say. Original content is always best, but if you don’t have anything unique, then maybe post an article by someone else, and of course including their links, etc. to give them full credit when you copy and paste it to your blog.

Some other tasks that are typical to an online marketing business would be to manage your list in your autoresponder, (15 minutes); do some advertising with whatever strategies you are using – for instance solo ads, traffic exchanges, list builders (30 minutes); Check your affiliate programs for commissions by logging in to each one and looking for your reports (15 minutes); Check in to your social networks, etc., to see if you have any messages (business-related) to respond to; add here whatever else for your business that you may need to devote some time to.

Just remember not to get ‘lost’ on any site that you are on. It has been determined by people who track statistics, etc., that people are wasting time, for example when they need an answer from a search engine and they typically would need to click 1 or 2 links to get their information. However one link always seems to lead to another and you have just wasted an hour by going to 6 or 7 different sites. Maybe you even forgot what you were doing. While this is fun and interesting, you have just taken up time you could have used to promote your own business.

Do You Think You Can Start a Successful Online Home Business?

By Lowell on May 22, 2015 in Blog

Look at this question this way: You have to think you can. There is so much you can glean from this little saying by Henry Ford: “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”.

When you think you can do something then you will try to do it. Conversely, some people will not even try if they think they can’t do something. So they will never know if they could have succeeded. What a waste of potential!

What characteristic would you say is pretty universal in people who are successful? The answer is self-confidence. A person that has this gift will usually always see everything through that lense. They believe in themselves and their abilities and that if they put their mind to it then they can do it.

Sometimes though people will lose their confidence in themselves if they have had critical people in their lives or they have suffered some failures. So they have to work at making themselves feel stronger. Sometimes it takes nothing more than determination and some self-talk to get them over the hump that will allow them to try something new like starting a home business and to believe that it is possible for them to succeed.

Another saying that is so important to remember in this regard is something like ‘the road to success is littered with failures’. We learn from our mistakes and mistakes are not really failures but lessons. So with each mistake we learn what we can and take it with us. We now have more information and have built a little strength of character in that we are still trying even after we made a mistake. ‘Try and try again’.

The only true failure is the one who will not even try or who quits trying just because everything is not immediate. Most things in reality require time and effort to succeed. We need to listen to the voice within us that tells us ‘I think I can’. When we begin to have doubts or we get angry because it appears we have wasted our time on another mistake, we need to not feed that negative energy. Refuse to go there.

A great way to blow those kind of thoughts out of the water is to realize how blessed you are, and to remember all the victories and accomplishments that you have had in your life. Think of specifically what they were and remember the feelings that you had when you had these experiences. Believe in yourself no matter what and always start from that point each day.

Home Business Opportunities – A Recipe for Success

By Lowell on April 15, 2015 in Blog

If you have ever baked a cake and did not follow the directions in the recipe, you may have had an inedible disaster. If you are lucky (and creative) you may be able to rescue it by crumbling it over ice cream, or some other way to think of cake.

It’s pretty much the same with most things – there are correct ways to do things, and some ways work better than others. Some things lend themselves to creativity in that you can sometimes do them slightly differently and they will still work. You may even be able to improve upon them. For others though it is imperative that you stick to the recipe if you want the same results as you envision – for example our cake.

When you are doing something new, that you have never done before or that you are really not sure of how to do it exactly, it is a logical conclusion to realize you need some direction. Even the hyper-creative or non-conformist should have some frame of reference – or ‘ballpark’ idea of what is involved at least in getting started.

Following directions requires a certain amount of humility but it doesn’t mean you are not in charge of your own business or that you are working for someone else again. You just need a plan and some idea of what to do, where to get what you need to do it – just general direction at the least.

With art for example you can’t learn ‘talent’ – you either have it or you don’t. However even someone with great talent will likely need to learn technique and do some experimenting before they find their ‘niche’ or to find the medium that they can excel at. Someone with little talent or experience who has a real desire to learn how to do something well, can often develop their expertise.

The point is it is probably best to have some kind of expert advice at the least when you are thinking about starting a home business. You can actually benefit and save yourself buckets of money and time if you are willing to consider what those with a successful track record have to share with you in the way of information and more.

With that said, what worked in 1998 in many cases, will have played itself out by now, as people are learning more and developing tools and resources that we can use ‘off the shelf’, rather than to have to learn a programming language or anything super-technical. Each generation of software for example often has more ease of use as well as ‘upgraded’ capabilities.

We just need to be aware of and try to understand to the best of our ability what, where, why and how to. If one is very analytical it would be to their advantage, as long as they know when to stop analyzing and start taking action with what they know. This is a fine art in itself and many people hide behind learning and never feel they know enough to actually do it. This is a mistake.

With any business that requires marketing and advertising (and they all do if you want to attract customers and income), it is best if you get started as soon as possible. Even while you are still learning, because it requires lots of momentum to be building at all times. This is because not everyone you reach will respond and you need to eliminate them to find the people who are interested and will take action.

For example at getting started soonest, at point A you learn you will need to use an autoresponder for your business; and you will need to load it with messages and create a list of prospects to send them to.

First you would do a comparative analysis of good autoresponder companies and see what the costs are, what the functions are, and determine the superior one with a good reputation that you can afford. Then you would either start composing your messages or enlist the help of a ghostwriter or copywriter.

Next, for an online business you would need to create a ‘web form’ for people to add their email address to (‘opt-in’) from your website or blog. If you have the money to accelerate this process you may participate in a ‘list building’ program or send out ‘solo ads’ that invite someone to receive information from you. To incentivize you might want to add a free gift for doing so.

So each one of these steps requires analysis and making a decision based on your own situation. If you skipped one step you may create chaos and confusion (and waste) because you will not be able to do what you intend unless you have covered each detail sufficiently.

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