Home Business Ideas and Opportunities

Archive | May, 2015

Are You Really Serious About Starting a Home Business?

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.

start up business

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.

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Work at Home to Supplement Your Income

It sure seems that wages don’t keep up with the cost of living as it soars year after year. Not to mention how it will become more difficult to live on social security and retirement savings as the cost of living continues to rise. So whether you are still working or have retired, the need for more money is an ever-present reality.

Financial Help Needed!

If you are receiving social security earlier than full retirement age, you can still earn money and only beyond a certain amount would it require a deduction in your benefits. If you have reached full retirement age, it won’t be deducted at all. Beyond what you would need to use to supplement your living expenses, etc., you could start saving whatever you don’t need to use.

If you are still working at a day job and just barely scraping by – or at the least have nothing left over to save after your living expenses, then working at home to build another income is a very wise thing to do. Having a second job is a little more tedious in that you are spending a lot of time traveling from home to job one and then from job one to job two. All that commute time is really unpaid labor. It is stressful and dangerous — one commute is bad enough, not to mention so much time away from home.

When you have a home business you can just come home from work and relax, have dinner and visit with your family. Then instead of ‘the boob tube’ you can go to your computer and start working in a relaxed and friendly environment. This is relevant because many times the work environment is not friendly and in fact is hostile, which is more stress.

If you have a business in your home there are certain tax advantages in that you can claim a percentage of your maintenance costs as business expense – whether your home business is full or part-time. For example you can claim some of your rent or mortgage, utilities, equipment, security, communications, etc. Additionally anything directly spent on your business is deductible as well, such as advertising, technical support, etc.

Consult your Federal and State tax websites to get forms and schedules that include instructions on what is a legitimate deduction and how to claim it. Be sure to have documentation for every deduction you take and keep it for at least 7-years in case of an audit. The regulations change so be sure each year to check the rules.

There are a number of things you can do to earn ‘passive’ and residual income more or less on ‘autopilot’ once you have it all set up and running. The easiest thing to do to start a business is to join one or more affiliate programs. This is because they will provide almost everything you need to start earning money if you will just do the work consistently.

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Work at Home Business Start-Up – Keep Growing & Changing

The first few years nothing needs to be written in stone as far as what exactly your business will include. One thing is very clear and that is that ‘multiple streams of income’ has extreme logic from many perspectives as far as a ‘goal’ or ‘target for your business plan.

keep growing

If you go in with an exact idea and you have everything you need to implement it, then you can spend the years refining and perfecting the processes to run your business effectively so that it will generate bigger and bigger profits as the years roll by. Some people learn best by doing = ‘hands on’ and therefore everything can be seen as an experiment. Others just need to read the directions and follow the instructions.

But the point is not to get stuck in any way before you are able to determine what it is you really want to do, how you want to do it and if it works when you try it. If it is something you see as worthwhile then you can tweak things to make them better and then move forward. No, not off to live at the beach just yet, although you deserve some free time to unwind after you have achieved a benchmark.

Back to work, it is time to expand what you have built so far! That is add some more facets that can represent more profit. It can also be more security in maintaining a decent level of income. One basic premise of the multiple income streams concept is that if one product is not doing so hot at any given time that it won’t hurt your bottom line as much if you have something else going that may be doing better at the time.

When you look at all the different opportunities for your home business they can really grow out of each other. For instance, It may be a very good idea to include programs and tools that you actually use to conduct your business, as more sources of income. In fact being able to believe in something you are selling is a great benefit. The more you know by first-hand experience, is as valuable as reputation (testimonials, reviews, etc).

For example if you are an affiliate marketer and you are using certain traffic programs, list builders or resources to promote your affiliate program, it’s a very smart idea to become an affiliate and be able to sell the tools you use to earn more commissions. Many times you can actually first cover your expenses by selling the same thing you are paying to use yourself. Then you can use your own tool for free. So you have to consider that money you didn’t have to spend as income just as much as if you made a sale.

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Home Business Ideas and Opportunities

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